Problem

Wasting food is harmful to ourselves, our communities, and our environment.

• 3.3 gigatons of greenhouse gas are emitted from the landfills filled with food waste (that is ⅓ the amount of greenhouse gas released from fossil fuels)

• $165 billion is wasted on food every year in the U.S.

• More than 8 metric tons of CO2 are emitted per household

Need

Food waste has dangerous and detrimental effects on our environment, which makes the need for this solution quite urgent. Our application intends to make a large, positive impact on the environment, the food production system and the problem of hunger. By lessening our food waste, we are also saving money, minimizing our carbon footprint and allowing more opportunities and resources for hunger relief.

It is our responsibility to do better for our environment by making a conscious effort and sharing our resources.

Objectives

• To create a solution that improves or facilitates energy efficiency in metropolitan areas and urban centers.

• To educate people about the problem

Empathize

In order to understand our user, we first needed to understand why they produce so much waste. To go about answering this question, we conducted research and interviews which gave us the opportunity to directly observe what our users do, how they think, and what they want.

Interviews

The Codeathon took place in one of the buildings on the Northeastern campus, which gave us a prime opportunity to connect with our users. Through observation and communication, we learned about their habits, views, motivations, and frustrations. This helped us develop a deep understanding of our target user and visualize the world from their perspective.

Define

Now that we had a solid foundation, we could work towards defining the problem through research, interviews and creating personas. During this phase, we used all of the data that we collected to gather insights and identify any unmet user needs.

Persona Creation

Based on all of our research, we developed one primary persona: Jim.

Jim is a full-time college student who lives with his roommates in an apartment off-campus. Between school, extra-curricular activities, and his part-time job, Jim hardly has the time to think about food and manage his meals and waste. Often times, he either forgets about the produce in the back of his fridge or simply doesn’t have time to use all of his groceries before they expire. As a result, he ends up wasting a large amount of food and money.

Using this persona, we thought about one main task:

Ideate

Once we had the problem clearly defined, we could start brainstorming potential solutions with the following questions in mind:

• How can we encourage people to stop wasting food?

• How can we make the biggest impact?

As we considered and discussed the answers to these questions, our solution came to life. Together we sketched out nearly a dozen ideas before we finally found one that we all agreed on. During this phase, we ideated the core features of our application based on user wants and needs.

Prototype

The goal of this phase was to understand which components of our ideas worked, and which did not by weighing the impact vs. feasibility through feedback on our prototypes. Using the research and user feedback that we received from interviews, we built wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes of our application. We then returned to our users for more feedback to ensure that we were on the right track. From there, we used this feedback to design mockups of the core features using Adobe Photoshop and create a digital prototype using InVision.

Test

Throughout the design process, we communicated with our users and kept them both involved and in mind. We did this by constantly asking ourselves:

• Does this solution meet user needs?

• How does it improve how they think and act?

During this phase, we predominantly determined which features worked and how users responded to our prototypes. Using this information, we entered the iteration phase and made adjustments to our prototype as needed.

Challenges

• The time constraint! 2 days! Don’t get me wrong, it was a total rush, but I would’ve loved more time.

• Finding diverse people to interview in an unfamiliar area with a limited number of people

• Building the courage to present in front of Chelsea Clinton

Outcomes

• A digital prototype of the mobile application

• A presentation to a panel of judges who are currently working in the fields of technology and social innovation