Crisper
Your own kitchen manager that brings smooth cooking experience with zero food waste.
Timeline
4 month
Team
Self
Project Advisor
Federico Villa, Neil Torrefiel
Key Skills
Design Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, User testing, Visual Design
OVERVIEW
Before 2020, almost every trend agency has predicted that there would be fewer and fewer people cook at home. Home cooking was declining, until Covid hit.
As more young professionals adapted to WFH and cooking at home, problems of food waste and meal managing emerged.
Crisper is an App that helps young people to better manage their kitchen and grocery activities in order to reduce food waste and gain confidence in cooking.
In fact
It started with some observations in my own apartment...
2020 is an unusual year for most of us. Clearly the lockdown has had a profound impact on how people live – from consumer behavior to how we eat every meal.
This is what I see every day in my own apartment during Covid: While everyone wanted to reduce their grocery trips, the grocery basket became larger and larger and our fridge was fully packed all the time.
As a result, many food items were left in the corner unnoticed, which were never used before getting spoiled.
Phase 1
Research
Return of home cooking
A report from HUNTER reveals that more than half (54%) of consumers cooked more during the Covid crisis, and 51% of them said they will continue to do so post-pandemic.
Surge in E-Grocery
Online shopping likely will remain top of mind for grocery customers. Oracle Grocery Retail survey finds that 53% of consumer shopped online for groceries during the pandemic, and 93% of them plan to shop online for groceries post-pandemic
Increase in basket size
To reduce non-essential travel, people are now shopping for more items on fewer trips, so they need to be more mindful of what they get for each trip.
7 Ways the Pandemic Has Changed How We Shop for Food
Reduction in spending
People are becoming more sensitive about price and would like to reduce unnecessary spending to save money in response to the uncertainty of the future.
How COVID-19 is changing consumer behavior –now and forever
Secondary Research
How did Covid change people's behavior related to food?
My secondary research is mostly around the new trends that Covid brought among grocery shopping, cooking, and general consumer behavior. One core question I wanted to answer was what has changed and what would stick post-pandemic.
Confirm Inventory
Adjust and confirm Inventory list
After adding the inventory, the system will automatically select food items and put each item into recommended storage space. Crisper sets up default shelf lives based on data provided in Stilltasty.com. User can simply hit confirm or edit the list by dragging and dropping the items to different storage space.
Smart recipe
Crisper knows what is in your fridge and gives recipe suggestions accordingly
Crisper discovers recipes that utilize the ingredients that the users already own, so that cooking can be started right away.
Users can also search for recipes by the ingredients they have. Recipes will always indicate what food items users have and they can add the missing ingredients to the shopping list.
Adding Inventory
We know people are lazy: Sync the grocery inventory to the system with just one click.
There are three ways to add the item: Scanning QR code on the receipt, directly through the sharing link from the online store website and manually enter the item.
Crisper partners with grocery stores like Wholefoods to help those retail stores gain customer loyalty and reach their sustainability mission. Meanwhile, Crisper users can track what item they get easily with one click.
Phase 2
Opportunity & Strategy
Phase 3
Ideation & Evaluation
Phase 1
Research
Interview
What are people's food consumption habits?
I conducted 8 one-on-one interviews and collected 72 survey responses to understand people's behaviors around grocery, cooking, and food storage as well as if anything has changed due to Covid.
Questions I wanted to understand
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What causes people to waste food?
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How do people feel about wasting food and what have they done to prevent it?
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What inherently motivates people to reduce food waste?
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What motivates people to cook? What makes it less arduous?
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Has the post-pandemic situation changed people’s affiliations to cooking?
Through customer journey mapping, 4 opportunity areas emerge
I synthesized my research findings and formed a journey map of Brianna - a young professional that struggles with managing her food. By mapping out her behavior and thought throughout the meal planning cycle, I discovered some design opportunities in grocery, food storage, and cooking.
Phase 2
Opportunity & Strategy
Persona
Customer Journey Map
What did people say?
“At the time I'm grocery shopping I'm super enthusiastic, I feel like I'm gonna make so much. But when I come back home I don’t feel want to cook it anymore.”
“I keep telling myself I feel bad for throwing food. But I'm super busy right now and I just wish it was a mindless task”
“I feel like there is a huge gap between cooking and grocery. I need to get groceries for the whole week but I can’t decide what to eat for that week.”
People forget about the items in their fridge, leading to a lot of
food waste. 😓
Lack of food shelf life knowledge and preservation methods result in food spoilage. 😕
People are unable to use the ingredients as planned due to procrastination and lack of motivation for cooking. 😔
Unrealistic assessments around food requirements leading to the purchase of extra groceries. 😣
Insights
I found that the causes of food waste generally fall into three phases: Storage, Grocery, and Cooking.
Pain Point
Design Opportunity
😓 Forgetfulness
1
✅ How might we enable users to know what food to eat first, without having to check their fridge?
😕 Lack of food preservation knowledge
✅ How might we guide users towards proper food storage?
2
😔 Procrastination and lack of motivation for cooking
✅ How might we ease stress and increase proactiveness towards cooking?
4
😣 Over purchase groceries
✅ How might we create awareness of one’s own food consumption and grocery habit?
3
Phase 3
Ideation
Turning the pain points into design opportunities
Wireframe
Clarify the user flow and the key features
I took the prototype to people's home and did several rounds of testing.
Most of the feedback I got is around the indication of food shelf lives. People couldn't associate the color-coded backgrounds as indications of how long food have lasted. (Many people thought it was based on the food category).
Thus, I made two changes: 1. Using progression bar instead of colored background 2. Adding an informational onboarding section.
Prototyping &Testing
Phase 4
Change #1
Iterate the indication of food shelf life
Log item usage
Tell Crisper if you have used up the food items or thrown them away
When a food item is used or goes bad, users can edit the fridge dashboard by logging if the food items are consumed or wasted， and how much is wasted.
Crisper will keep tracking the wasted amount and summarize it into a report.
Ideating
After evaluating several sacrificial ideas, I confirmed my design direction
Your own kitchen manager brings you smooth cooking experience with zero food waste.
Final Design
Crisper
Change #2
Adding an onboarding section
I created an onboarding flow to familiarize users with the color system used across the App, as well as introduce the core features.
Competitive analysis
Existing products addressed some of the pain points, but none of them provides a comprehensive kitchen experience
New Customer Journey Map
Here is how Crisper works
Feature 1
How might we enable people to know what food to eat first, without having to check their fridge?
Feature 2
How might we ease stress and increase proactiveness towards cooking?
Fridge overview
Quickly get item shelf life overview and receive spoilage notification
After confirmation, Crisper will start to track all the food items for how long they have stayed. Users can easily glance through the fridge overview and easily tell what food items are going to expire by the color-coded progress bar.
In case people forget about checking the app, Crisper will also send notifications when there is any food that is close to expiring and needs to be used.
Feature 3
How might we guide users towards proper food storage?
Feature 4
How might we create awareness of one’s own food consumption and grocery habit?
Daily insight
Insights on food preservation and kitchen tips
Crisper provides articles that give tips on better food preservation and creative usage of ingredients. Insights are selected by an algorithm based on users' recent food consumption reports and grocery lists.
Report
Summarize of your grocery habit and food consumption pattern
Crisper tracks users' grocery spendings in each category and compares them with the amount wasted to increase users' awareness of their food waste behaviors.
The report also shows what food items that users tend to waste, which can remind users to avoid overshopping.
Know what you have before open the fridge.
Recipe based on
the ingredients
you already have.
Analyze your food consumption and grocery habits.
Next step
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Test the functionality in a real life to measure the value of the solution
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Explore edge cases and different using scenarios.
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Explore the integration on partner business for a less-input experience