What’s in the fridge

The Brief:

Over a two week sprint, research, design and build a mobile app which addresses a social, cultural or economic issue . This can be to meet the needs of yourself, a specific social group or a larger audience. I decided to tackle a problem that most people encounter; what do I have in my fridge and what can I make with it.

Skills Used:

Concept Mapping, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, User Flows, Prototyping, User Testing & User Interface Design. Software used: Omingraffle, Photoshop, Sketch & Marvel.

The Problem:

People are busy, they want to eat well and not keep throwing old food away because they have forgotten it was in the fridge or they didn’t know what to do with it. Whilst it would be ideal to plan meals ahead of time this is not always possible, it also doesn’t always solve the issue of what to do with that aubergine that needs eating.

The Insight:

Users like to cook and are always happy to save money by wasting less food and using up things that they already have at home. It is often difficult to remember what you have in your fridge when you are on your way home, the majority of users wanted to have a better understanding of what they already had and how they could incorporate it into a meal.

The Idea:

An app that users can check whilst shopping to show what ingredients they currently have and what extras they need to buy to make a meal based on how much they are willing to spend.

Mapping the journey:

I decided to storyboard the problem to help me make clear when the mobile app would be. It highlighted that it would be mainly used in the evenings, either at home or in the supermarket. I mapped out the flow of a typical users journey through the mobile app, it was clear that it was fairly complex so I broke that down into a series of smaller flows to make it much clearer.

User Goals:

After finishing the user flows and research with my users, I identified the following user goals for the mobile app:

1. Upload all your ingredients to the App.

2. Find recipes based on the food you have.

3. Creating a shopping list

Testing & Iterations:

I tested with various users, firstly with the initial screen sketches and then with a Marvel prototype. The response to the app was very encouraging and I was able to make changes based on user feedback.

The key changes made during testing were:

1. Shopping List: Ability to add all ingredients from a recipe to your shopping list.

2. Main Menu: Changed from a off-screen menu to a full screen grid, this made it much clearer for users to understand the options available to them.

3. Favourites: Users wanted a way to add recipes to a saved list so a favourite function was added.

After getting the initial feedback on the first set of screens I produced a second cleaner set to set about testing again, once I was confident with the layout and flow I proceeded into mid-fidelity and then visual design.

Design:

I decided to keep the design of the app simple, I wanted the images of food to standout and by using a white background and a strong sans-serif typeface I was able to create a clean style. I used a serif typeface for the bylines, ingredients and recipes, which gives a hierarchy of information for the user and is also easier to read when following a recipe.

When testing it became apparent that the icon choice needed further work. Although the icons were easy to understand and represented the sections as users would expect, they didn’t sit so well together due to their line weight. I took the time to re-factor the icons to make them work more harmoniously as a group. I also introduced colour into the menu bar to highlight the area a user was in.

Final Screens:

Outcome:

A fun and friendly application which would allow users to create a virtual fridge to help them save money and waste less. They can view recipes based on what they have in the fridge and their desired level of spending, create shopping lists and save recipes using the favourites list.