My journey to tackling food waste began in the most familiar place: my own kitchen. Observing my habits, I realized how often I overlooked expired foods and repeatedly purchased items I already had. This sparked crucial conversations with friends and family, uncovering a shared struggle across many households: managing groceries efficiently is harder than it seems.

In crafting EcoPantry, it was crucial to first understand who we are designing for. This led us to create detailed personas that represent our primary users, ensuring our solutions are finely tuned to their lifestyles and challenges.

In confronting the realities of food waste revealed through our personas, we identified that despite an increase in environmental awareness, many households still find themselves caught in a wasteful cycle due to inadequate food management tools. It's not just about spoiled milk or stale bread; it's money in the trash and more strain on the planet. This gap highlights a broader issue: there is a need for an intuitive solution that not only helps track and manage food but also integrates seamlessly into varied lifestyles, encouraging long-term sustainable practices.

This hypothesis builds on the identified need for a more intuitive solution to food management, anticipating that improved visibility and control over pantry items will lead directly to reduced waste and enhanced sustainability in everyday life. We predict that by embedding EcoPantry into the routine processes of planning, shopping, and cooking, we can facilitate a substantial shift towards more conscious consumption patterns. This will not only save money and reduce environmental impact but also promote a culture of sustainability that aligns with modern lifestyles.

This visualization acts as a roadmap, guiding our design at every stage. By mapping the user journey, we identify moments of delight, frustration, or need, allowing us to tailor EcoPantry’s features to not only meet but also anticipate user needs, making each interaction intuitive and engaging. This ensures the app resonates deeply with users like Emma and Ethan, who are committed to sustainable living.

This allowed us to identify what these platforms were missing and how EcoPantry could uniquely fill those gaps. Our competitive analysis revealed that while some apps offered basic inventory management, none provided the integrated community engagement and personalized grocery list suggestions to further motivate efforts in food conservation.

Our aim was to design functionalities that not only facilitate easy management of kitchen inventory but also foster a supportive and interactive community focused on sustainable living. By integrating feedback from potential users and identifying gaps in existing apps, we were able to prioritize features that enhance convenience, encourage responsible consumption, and build a sense of community among users who are passionate about reducing food waste. This creative process ensured that EcoPantry would offer unique solutions that resonate deeply with users' daily habits and environmental values.

We chose features that mirror the common practice of sorting by type to simplify pantry management. Recognizing the importance of community in sustainability efforts, we wanted EcoPantry to let users build a supportive network together. We also implemented features to ensure users are aware of their grocery shopping patterns and expiry dates to minimize waste. Additionally, we opted to steer clear of having a monetary-based feature to maintain the community-focused spirit of the app and avoid introducing competitive elements that could detract from its primary goal of fostering a sustainable lifestyle.

Our research into sustainability showed that using darker colors—along with red and green—on OLED displays (which is used by most mobile devices nowadays) is more energy efficient. Because of that, we decided to use a dominantly green color palette for EcoPantry, reflecting both our commitment to environmental sustainability and user inclusivity.

We also made sure to use the Contrast Plugin by WillowTree in Figma to check that our design's contrast ratio for text meets the WCAG standards Level AA & AAA. These standards ensure that text is readable by people with moderately low vision, including those with color blindness.

By understanding the typical paths users would take, we optimized the app’s architecture, making every interaction straightforward and minimizing user effort.

At this stage, our focus was on functionality and layout, avoiding intricate design elements that might distract from the core user interactions. These wireframes served as a blueprint for further refinement and high-fidelity development.

These high-fidelity prototypes provided a realistic preview of how EcoPantry would look and feel to the end-user. Our goal was to create an interface that not only looked good but also promoted a seamless and inclusive user experience, ensuring that EcoPantry could be easily navigated by everyone, fostering a broader adoption and making sustainable living accessible to the wider community.

Their insights were invaluable, highlighting both the strengths and areas for improvement in EcoPantry:
1. The design was praised for its strong connection to sustainability with measurable outcomes. Our use of colors and graphics was noted for enhancing usability while maintaining thematic consistency.
2. Feedback commended the thoroughness of our user research and the effective alignment of user flows and interaction designs with user personas and their goals.
3. The necessity for a more refined gamification system was pointed out, with a focus on how it could better serve the app’s mission to enhance user engagement and contribute meaningfully to sustainability goals.

I am grateful for this opportunity to enrich my overall approach to design and further grow as a UX designer.