Market Mate
Overview
Global food waste is a contributor to climate change. Market Mate aims to combat this negative environmental impact by targeting the biggest offenders: consumers. Market Mate streamlines the grocery planning, shopping, and cooking experience to prevent home chefs from overbuying and throwing away unused food.
Team
Taya Voronko, Sean Lawrence, Victor Appelqvist
Role
User Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Timeline
12 weeks
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Tackling Food Waste
How can we reduce food waste to combat climate change?
Understanding the Space
Food waste is a massive problem that starts during agriculture, trickles through the supply chain, makes its way to consumer’s trash bins, and finishes at landfills and recycling plants. The threat of climate change has brought a new sense of urgency to reducing food waste. We set out to understand how and why food goes to waste at each step in the supply chain.
Literature Review
We began our research online. We knew that food waste occurs at every stage of the supply chain, but we wanted to gain a deeper understanding as to who wastes food and why.
40% of food waste in the US is due to consumers, typically from consumers overbuying food and later throwing it away.
Consumers + retailers will reject food based on color, bumps, bruises, abnormalities, etc.
Consumers don’t understand the sell-by/expiration dates; many foods are still safe to eat after the expiration date. This confusion leads to more food thrown out.
Interviews
To better understand the space, we asked consumers about their grocery shopping routine, how they decided what to purchase, and if/how they avoided food waste.
“I try to buy foods so I can combine them with different recipes.”
— Cheryl
“I go to a grocery store without a list and I buy more than I need.”
— James
“Produce is usually the thing I waste the most of because it’s so perishable.”
— Michael
“I’ll take inventory, make a grocery list, then go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.”
— Arielle
Key Takeaways
Planning - Many consumers planned for their grocery shops. They made a list, chose recipes ahead of time, bought in smaller quantities, etc. Most kept this grocery list on an app or in the notes on their cell phones.
Overbuying - With or without planning, many consumers still overbought food on their grocery shops and ended up throwing it out.
Food Expiration - Consumers don’t always understand what sell-buy and expiration dates mean and how long food really lasts. This led them to throwing out food that was still safe to eat.
Convenience - Consumers were most likely to adopt choices that were convenient, whether that be their choice in grocery store, the type + quantity of food they purchased, how they disposed of it, etc. Usually, the more convenient choice is the preferable choice, regardless of the possible negative environmental/financial costs.
Waste - Waste takes two forms for consumers: food and money. But most consumers don’t realize exactly how much they’re wasting of either. Many had an “ignorance is bliss” attitude, because they realized they likely wasted more of both than they would like.
Environmentalism - Consumers were proud to point out that they used reusable shopping bags, but also admitted that most of the products they purchased were packaged in single-use plastics and acknowledged that they produced a lot of food waste. This suggests that although consumers are aware of and participate in environmental trends, they may not apply environmental consciousness to every step of their routine.
Narrowing Focus
Because consumers are the biggest food waste offenders we chose to center our design process around them. By reducing food waste on the consumer level, we can impact climate change on a global scale.
Journey Map
We talked to a grocery store goer to learn about her step by step process from pre-shop to waste disposal.
Key Opportunity Areas
Based off our research and journey map, we looked at the areas where the most waste occurred, and areas where there was an effort to reduce waste, but efforts could still be improved. What aspects help reduce waste and how could they be further optimized?
Planning - How do consumers prepare to buy + cook food: pantry inventory, grocery lists, recipe selection, reusable packaging + bags, trash collection, etc.
Transportation - How do consumers get to their food?: public transport, car, bike, walking.
Packaging - What is food packaged in + how do consumer package it?: reusable bags, single-use plastic, glass jars, reusable containers.
Storage - Once purchased, where do consumers store their food?: the fridge, cabinets, freezer, pantry.
Cooking - What tools and methods do consumers use to prepare their food?: kitchen appliances, cutlery, recipe books/apps, videos, with friends/family, etc.
Leftovers - What do consumers do with the cooked food they haven’t eaten?: trash, freezer, fridge, reusable containers, give away.
Garbage Disposal - When it’s time to throw food out, where do consumers toss it?: recycling, trash, compost.
Ideation
We began brainstorming solutions that took into account our key opportunity areas and research.
Design Direction
After scoping out products already available on the market, our team decided to design a solution within the mobile app space.
Competitor Analysis
We narrowed our competitor analysis to some of the most popular grocery shopping + recipe list apps available on the app store. We included Wegmans, a popular grocery store in the Northeast US, to give us some insight into the apps individual grocery stores offer.
Pantry vs Shopping List: “Pantry” keeps track of what users already have at home, “Shopping List” keeps track of what users want to buy at the store.
Smart Recipe Suggestion- The ability of an app to detect what’s in the user’s pantry and make recipe suggestions using those ingredients.
Wireframes/Sketches
Our team sketched out a few wireframes that included some of the basic features and layouts we wanted to include in our app. We also looked at competitor apps to help inspire a UI that would be familiar and intuitive to new users.
Market Mate V1
The first version of Market Mate includes only the most essential features we wanted to incorporate into the app. At this point, we wanted to test a proof of concept of the integrated pantry/grocery list with users to get their feedback before moving forward with more sophisticated design.
User Feedback
“I like the grocery list feature so you can check off things that have been bought easily.”
— Mariel
“It would be nice if the user didn’t have to go back to the home screen to check the pantry feature.”
— Katie
“It seems like a lot of apps that are already available on the app store. I don’t see what makes it different.”
— Cheryl
“I like that you can search specific ingredients to narrow down the recipe search.”
— Paul
Key Takeaways
Not unique - Users did not see what new value Market Mate was bringing to the grocery/recipe app market.
Basic - The features were simple, which made the app easy to use, but not a standout when compared to other apps.
Search - Users liked that they could do recipe search by ingredient, but there was no way to automatically import what was already in their pantry to the search bar.
Navigation - Users felt that the navigation wasn’t always straight-forward or intuitive.
Grocery + Pantry - It wasn’t clear to users how the pantry and grocery list were connected. Also, users felt that they were unlikely to fill out their virtual pantry on the app manually.
Market Mate V2
In the second version of Market Mate we further developed the pantry, add item, recipe, and profile features. Users could now sort by ingredient or recipe on the recipe feature, sort through general grocery items to add to their list via the grocery list search, and see how long they had until the food in their pantry went bad.
User Feedback
“I would love if there was an option to pair a drink with your meal, that would be really great for dinner parties.”
— Cheryl
“Are the grocery list feature and pantry connected? I’m confused as to how or if they interact.”
— Harry
“For recipes, does the app already know what I have or do I have to input it each time? I rather the app just know.”
— Darinelle
Key Takeaways
Recipe Search - It still wasn’t clear to users if the recipe search already knew what was in their pantry or if they would have to manually input the ingredients.
Ingredient Checklist - Similar to recipe search, users wanted the app to already know what was in their pantry and “uncheck” it from ingredient list so that they could add it to grocery list without checking their pantry again.
Limited Options - The item search feature didn’t have enough item options for users to add to their carts, and it wasn’t clear if users could add items that the app didn’t have (ex. if “onion” did not show up in search, could they still add it to their list).
Grocery + Pantry - Users still had trouble understanding the connection and functionality of the pantry and grocery list features.
Market Mate V3
In the third iteration of Market Mate we worked to address the user feedback and refine the visual design. Our team added some smaller features that would make app use easier and more engaging: recipe + list sharing, drink pairing, recipe screen locking, recipe ingredient select, more “previous page” buttons, a user-inputted item add button for lists, and an updated navigation bar. These features aided in solving many of the problems our users previously faced and further enhanced their app experience.
User Feedback
“The buttons in the grocery list are a bit small, I feel like I’d have trouble pressing and reading them. Also, it’s difficult to tell the difference between the green colors, I’m not sure what they mean.”
— Cheryl
“The look of the Add Items pages doesn’t look fully fleshed out, it doesn’t feel like I’m using a real app.”
— Mariel
“I really like the how many options the recipe feature has. I feel like the ‘By Recipe’ is great when I’m planning meals, and the ‘My Pantry’ is great for when I’m starting to run out of food and don’t know what to make.”
— Katie
Key Takeaways
Visual Design - Users felt that some of the pictures, buttons, and text were too small or close together, making the app harder to use.
Grocery + Pantry - Users had less trouble understanding the connection and functionality of the grocery list and pantry features than they had in past iterations. Some users noted that the color difference between a selected and non-selected item on the lists wasn’t obvious enough.
The Final Design
Introducing Market Mate: A complete grocery planning, shopping, and cooking solution to implicitly reduce consumer food waste + its carbon footprint.
Market Mate V4
For the fourth and final version of Market Mate we further fine-tuned the pantry and grocery list features for the most user-friendly version yet. Our team worked to improve the overall visual design, organization, and small details for all the app pages to deliver the finalized Market Mate app, a solution tailored to reduce consumer food waste!
Reflections
Balance - A common challenge in design problems is avoiding “over designing” a solution. Our team brainstormed dozens of features to add to the app, but the more we considered adding, the more cumbersome the app could become for the user. The best solution usually is the one where the designers knew what to cut and what to keep.
Business Potential - Our team recognized that Market Mate had the potential to monetize the app by partnering with brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. so that when a user searched for an item, that brand comes up first. For example, if a user searched “cola” Coca-Cola would be the first product to appear.
A Global Pandemic - The COVID-19 pandemic hit in the middle of our design process. While that made our process more challenging, it also made the app more relevant than ever. Consumers were now limiting their grocery trips, so planning and avoiding waste became crucial. Market Mate became a useful tool to optimize grocery shopping and planning in a pandemic.
