Make cooking easier for the inexperienced.

FridgeMate

UW/UX TILE Designation 2021 | 2nd Place Winner

Project Overview

Duration: 1 Week
Role: Product Designer
Contributors: Grace Tse, Alex Huang
Toolkit: Figma, Miro, Photoshop

As students enter post-secondary school, they may be cooking on their own for the very first time. On top of that, living with roommates and sharing a kitchen with unfamiliar faces can be daunting. Our goal is to make the cooking experience easier for the inexperienced and make use of limited ingredients at home to make healthy meals.

Challenge

"How might we help young adults with limited experience, time, and budget, cook more efficiently in their households so that they can reduce the amount of food waste in their daily lives?"

Design Process

1. Research

To ensure the selected problem statement accurately represented the needs of users, external research was conducted. We found that “Millennials and Gen X were more likely to get their recipes from the Internet than boomers,” and that, “only 31% of 18-to-29-year-olds felt confident in the kitchen, as opposed to nearly half of adults over 50.”

Moreover, when it comes to food waste, there is over 100kg of food waste generated by a household per year.

2. Synthesize

To narrow down features and functions, the team listed out personal wants and needs when it came to cooking.

3. Ideate

A PACT Analysis was conducted to finalize our intentions with the app in the context of each category.

4. Design

User Flow

Wireframe

The Final Design

View Prototype File

Style Guide

Future Iteration and Goals

Due to the short timeline of this project, the team was unable to conduct user interviews during the design process. Here are some future next steps I would take on to develop a better solution:
- Create a survey to ensure the selected problem statement accurately represented the needs of users
- Conduct user interviews after the initial design to identify user pain points and make edits

I really enjoyed working on this project with my teammate, Alex Huang, as it was regarding a topic I was passionate about! Having moved away from home for my freshman year, I wish an application like FridgeMate existed to make cooking easier.