Capstone

Design Challenge

HMW encourage restaurants in WA in reducing food waste?

In America nationwide, 40% of food waste coming from restaurants, grocery stores and food service companies. The problem requires an understanding of the complete workflow and the restaurant system.

So, who are we designing for?
‍
Our aim was to enable the restaurant business to reduce food waste. Our main users would be chefs, cooks and managers. We mapped out the stakeholders in the business and highlighted the ones of interest.

The stakeholder diagram we created to define out actors of interest.

Our Concept

Foodfolio is an inventory management tool that integrates menu and sales to track inventory in real time and estimate future needs.

Here a concept video created by my teammate that defines what Foodfolio does.

Key Features

An actionable dashboard

The inventory alerts add to the dashboard and provide the staff prompts for actions that can be taken. It provides customer and sales trends at a glance along with a summarised inventory.

Menu based inventory

Storing the recipe quantities and to connect sale with the inventory and track ingredient preparation, waste and estimate requirements tailored to restaurant's usage.

PoS integration to save waste

Integrating the PoS used by the restaurant to keep inventory updated in real time and enable promotions for overstocked items to reduce potential waste.

Process Timeline

Although I played a key role in all the listed tasks, I took over significant responsibility on tasks highlighted.

Research

Social listening
Desk Research
Research Plan
User Interviews
Thematic Analysis
Insight generation

Ideation

User Personas
Brainstorming
Affinity Map
Downselection
Competitive Analysis
Lean Canvas
Journey Map

Prototyping

Information Arch
Service Blueprint
App Prototypes
Video Prototyping

Landscape and User Research

The field was new to us and we dived into research to understand what the gaps are, identify the barriers restaurants face when managing food and it's surplus. I lead user and landscape research in identifying insights and opportunities. My role included enabling and guiding the process, along with identifying the methods to use.

Semi Structured Interviews

We conducted 10 user interviews and 2 expert interviews to gain insight into the current food system, analyze and deep dive into pain points and find methods used to reduce waste. We then coded the data and used thematic analysis to make sense.

That's us analysing our findings. We spoke with various people in the industry and found themes in the responses.

Landscape Analysis

I led the efforts to study the complete production process and gain a deeper understanding of the work being done in the food service system. We analysed 20+ organisations to identify gaps in the market to recognise areas of opportunities.

These are some of the solutions in the space that we mapped to stages in the process they solved for.

How does Food turn into waste? A Journey.

With the data and studies on the system we drew a journey evaluating the methods used in the places we talked to. The aim was to trace how food converts to waste.

We visualised how food turns into excess food, the contributors and mitigation strategies used.

Insights and Findings

From the themes mapped, we extracted multiple findings and insights, 3 of the most impactful ones are as below.

The 3 insights of 5 that we referred to in our process.

Opportunity Areas

Establish an expectation that reducing food waste improves profit margin and encourage action.
Minimize the discrepancy in ingredient needs and improve the precision in inventory management.
Build a hassle free system that supports restaurants giving away excess food or reducing waste.
Inculcate an understanding that the food waste problem is highly correlated with daily behaviors

Ideation

We came up with 60 ideas and narrowed down to 3. The aim was to create a solution the supports prevention in early stages, easy application at restaurant, feasible and inexpensive set up.

Downselection

Brainstorming & Affinity Map : With desk research we came up with 40+ ideas and affinity mapped them.
Dot voting & Scenarios : We did a dot voting exercise and created scenarios for top 5 ideas
Selecting Final Idea: Our criteria was how close the idea provided for hedonic be goals of self improvement and development.

Storyboarding

We picked various the aspects that contribute to the final concept. Our decisions were guided by earlier insights and I proceeded to storyboard the concept.

Defining the concept

An inventory management system that enables predicting accurate food needs.

With our concept drawn out we prioritized aspects to prototype and move forward with. Below is a visual of the core offering we decided to focus on and offer.

Foodfolio system

I established existing network Foodfolio would bea part to ensure reasonable scoping down. This remain true to our goals and core offerings while being part of the system.

Architecture and Flows

We collaborated on the Information Architecture as a team, after which I took a deep dive on expanding and establishing the screen flows within the page.

Making Foodfolio App

While my teammates focused on the video and documentation, I took lead on interactions and the Foodfolio screens.

Low fidelity Explorations

We began sketching layouts and UI screens and them making an initial representation of it in lower fidelity on Figma.

High to Mid fidelity Explorations

I collaborated with my teammate on the visual schema and moodboard. While they they explore variations in brand colors and visual language, I was responsible for applying and translating these into a design system, components and screens.

Final Screens and Flows

With continuous feedback and iteration I completed the final screens and flows for the screens prioritised and features offered.

Reflections & Learnings

If I had more time I would...

- Conduct contextual enquiry and user test solution.
- Look into building a community and create channels for positive feedback on waste reduction.

What went well?

- Since our approach was toward encouraging a business, we interviewed multiple role and had a variety of perspectives. It enabled looking at the problem more holistically.

Challenges we faced

- Since users were a niche set and quite busy, access was tough. I put in extensive efforts to ensure the project had sufficient interview data.
- We uncovered the problem is a result of multiple factors in the system workflow and it took sometime to pin down insights to act on.