Over a semester, I lead product design in a multi-disciplinary project from the University of Sydney over a semester. I paired with one engineer and another UX designer, and together, we came up with SaveBites: a product which sells high-quality surplus food to reduce food waste.
Role: Lead Product Designer
Duration: 8 weeks
Client: Personal Project
Personalised recommondations and all available restaurants and dishes are showcased on the home page for quick access.
Grab high-quality surplus food on the way home or to your next location. Save time and energy and get the next meal or treat with ease.
Support you with all important information you need: detailed menu, pick-up window, distance and price, etc.
I wanted to know what causes food shortage apart from the growth of human population to better understand the problem space. I made some assumptions across the whole food production chain and researched to validate those statements.
Turned out, we have produced enough food for the human population. We just waste them during the food production chain. Especially on a consumption level as developed countries.
With the research in mind, we decided to focus on reducing food waste on a consumption level instead of inventing new food sources. We started with households as we personally have similar experiences. We performed interview, survey and affinity mapping to understand why people have food waste at home and what they are doing to reduce that.
Though people throw away expired food or food they think is unsafe to eat, they don't think it's a behaviour that needs to change. This finding was then proven by a research conducted by the Project Steering Group.
From a business point of view, we decided to move on to the retails as they appear to also generate a generous amount of food waste on the daily basis and have the incentives to pay to minimise it.
We brainstormed and discussed how to reduce food waste in retails and refined our ideas from 8 to 1.
We analysed the market and growth potential of our design concept using 3 methodologies: market analysis, competitor analysis and risk analysis.
Due to COVID lockdown, we performed an online ethnographic analysis to understand our potential users then created personas and user journey map to visualise our users.
Before we start building our product, we conducted kano model to identify feature priorities.
1. If I had more time, I would conduct user testing to see whether our product is intuitive to use and further iterate it.
2. With more time and budget, I would interview restaurant and bakery owners and employees to understand their work flows. It can benefit us as designers to create a product that can seamlessly blend into their working schedule and meet their needs.
Challenge
What are we trying to solve?
How might we help the world’s food supply to support a rising human population?