FoodForYou
Responsibility
Research, Design, Test
Role
UX Researcher, UX Designer
Team
User Centered Interaction Design
Course Project
Period
2017.9 - 2018.1
OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW
Sharing is one of good ways for dealing with surplus foods, one of the big problem and issue all over the world, especially in Taiwan with high density of population. Yet recent solutions for food sharing arouse several issues which reduce the willingness and efficiency. Our research conducted user-centered design process, proposing an app design, which includes personalized recommendation system, dealing procedure, and a reputation system as the solution to the problem.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
“The design intervention certainly addresses an important need for the population. I think this is a very necessary and useful application area and applaud the authors for embarking on work within this space.”
--- From reviewers, CHI 2018 Student Design Competition
The main reasons of food waste in consumption stage are excessive purchasing, over-preparation and unwillingness to consume leftovers.
In this study, we created a mobile application prototype, FoodForYou, as a channel to share surplus food with people nearby and take what she/he needs from others’ sharing. Users can search their favorite food sharing nearby their location, start a sharing, or participate in one. Unlike existing surplus food and leftover sharing group on social media (e.g. Facebook), FoodForYou contains personalized recommendation system, dealing procedure, and a reputation system to enhance user’s willing to start or participate a surplus food sharing.
With the intention of helping people build a support network which will ease the various waste of food. FoodForYou can be a low-cost and efficient solution for surplus food sharing in the future.
CHALLENGE
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If there is no fair third party within the trade or share, how do we build trust and convenient simultaneously?
RESEARCH
Contextual Inquiry
To understand needs, behaviors, and values of target user, we conducted seven semi-structured interviews at first. We selected participants with food sharing experience to conduct contextual interviews and built an affinity diagram to identify the major themes to inform our design.
Survey
In order to investigate target users on social media who usually launch or participate in food sharing with strangers on the Internet, we distributed questionnaires to “Leftover Terminator”, a famous Facebook group focused on sharing leftover and surplus food with strangers in Taiwan, composed of nearly 20,000 people.
Persona
We built two personas, a receiver and a provider that show their different behaviors, goals, and motivations.
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Jolin (Provider)：Jolin shares her food very often, sometimes even with numerous receivers. She has to manage inventory of her food and to communicate with multiple receivers. She is more willing to share with receivers she trusts.
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Kevin (Receiver)：Kevin wants to find food with special flavor that he likes and is nearby himself. He wants to know precisely the characteristics of the sharer to avoid mistakenly recognizing others while meeting in person.
Define
We proposed the key requirements for the product that support the food sharing community：
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assisting provider to manage the inventory of surplus food,
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finding surplus food of interested that is nearby,
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communicating in numerous channels for various needs from multiple receivers,
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helping recognize the food provider and receivers,
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establishing trust between unknown food provider and receivers to create opportunities for food sharing.
DESIGN
Brainstorming
Given the design requirements, we brainstormed and sketched more than 75 solutions. We then consolidated our ideas down to two via extensive discussion. We considered that a platform allowing providers and receivers to perform food sharing activities will best support their needs. we also narrowed down to using mobile as the platform.
User Flow & Prototype
FoodForYou covers the whole food sharing process. We divided the workflow into three stages
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setting up/finding a good sharing event
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meeting in person
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after transaction
Based on the stages and the ideas we came up with, we started building paper prototype to validate our design concepts as soon as possible. Lastly, we create our hi-fi design in MarvelApp.
Users can see sharing events nearby or based on their preference. Providers can create food sharing with detailed descriptions. Meanwhile, receivers will see the information of events. During transaction, we provide sharing management and clothing notifications functionalities. Provider can confirm which receiver has completed the transaction. Both of them can leave comments on reputation rating system.
EVALUATION
Think Aloud & Usability Test
We evaluated FoodForYou with participants to understand how they perceived the usefulness and usability of the system. All of the participants had participated in group purchasing for food. All participant but one had experience in surplus food sharing and participating in others food sharing.
・Harris has brought fruits from hometown and shared with friends in his lab
・Michelle launched group buying in Facebook group more than ten times
・Lin often sells second-hand items and surplus food, she also participates group-buying
・Chiu used to participate in group buying of food
・Anne usually attend the food sharing and group buying launched by dormitory neighbors
・Huang have received surplus food from others, launched food sharing, and participated in group buying launched by others. She is currently designing electric car sharing APP
Conclusion
We designed FoodForYou, a system for people to make it easier and faster to share surplus food. Currently, our design focused on non-profit sharing and sharing with people nearby. We aim to extend the features based on the feedback, such as adding mobile payment, social network connection, and following users with similar taste in the future. FoodForYou has potential to become an emerging product for group buying, whose needs are covered by our design, including item and receiver management, clothing notification, and review system. Through FoodForYou, our hope is to make a real impact toward encouraging the eco-friendly behavior and partnerships for mutual benefit by food sharing.
In general, our participants felt satisfied with FoodForYou. In average, our participants had an average 32.7 (SD = 13.8) points of NASA-TLX, indicating low cognitive load in operating the system.
Participants thought the form of details for sharing food was useful, this feature helped them complete their sharing post in a smooth and easy way. During sharing, they considered the clothing notification a practical feature.
Moreover, users thought the inventory counter made the transaction more manageable, as one participant commented:
“Besides the adorable interface, receiver management really interests me. This app can be really useful in large-scale event held at university or enterprise, which creates much surplus food.”