EcoFresh
Grocery & meal prep made simple
Every year, Americans waste ~60 million tons of food, costing the average family of four $1,600.* Figuring out how to grocery shop and plan meals efficiently without wasting food and money can be frustrating and overwhelming.
*RECYCLE TRACK SYSTEM, 2023 REPORT
What is
Ecofresh?
The mission
EcoFresh is an app that aims to streamline grocery shopping, meal planning, and home cooking. We've noticed that potential users face challenges creating grocery lists, finding new recipes, and reducing their food waste at home, leading to frustration from extra trips to the store and recipe improvisation.
The research
The design process began with research. we sought out information that would help us to understand both what a future user would want and expect from this design. it was also important for us to learn what exists already, what works, and what has yet to be attempted.
After a primary discussion to go over who exactly we thought this app will be designed for, we created a interview plan to test really hone in on who our users will be and what pain points they might have that we could alleviate. after conducting 5 interviews, We came away with some new insights...
“I try to use most of my produce, but there’s always something that goes to waste.”
- 22, cooks for 3-5 others
“The hardest part about meal prepping is making sure I have all the right ingredients.”
- 24, cooks for a family of 5
“When grocery shopping, I have a hard time knowing what I need. I have a hard time finding ingredients to make things.”
- 29, cooks for 2
66% of survey respondents said they spent more than they planned while grocery shopping
66% of survey respondents said they use apps to help make grocery shopping easier
We Also researched both direct and indirect potential competitors to discover what isn’t currently being done as well as what could be done better.
Key takeaways
from Research
Users struggle to create grocery lists that have everything they need, leading to wasted time on multiple trips to the grocery store
There was variability in how often users cook and how many people they cook for, indicating the need for flexible options
Most users have used food-related apps to help them cook
Meal Prepping can be extremely time-consuming, leaving users discouraged from doing so.
Users are often searching for ways to save time and money when it comes to cooking and grocery shopping
Multiple users linked difficulties with organization to increased food waste
Using the information we gathered from user interviews, we began working to synthesize the data into a user persona. We used this user persona as a tool to help empathize with our future users.
Design ideation
Equipped with a user persona, data from our user interviews and competitor analysis, we narrowed down the features we believed would be best for our design.
Get suggested recipes from existing ingredients
Adjust portion sizes of recipes
Auto-generated grocery lists from selected recipes
View meal plan history
Save recipes to reference later
Now with clear goals for what we want to implement, we broke out the pen and paper to create a few rough sketches of our ideas. this part of the process allowed us to see what everyone was envisioning, find common themes, and gain a new perspective on the direction we wanted to take.
Drawing from the best elements of each sketch, keeping in mind what we learned from our user interviews, we moved the design from paper and ink and moved it into figma. we created user flow for the app and linked our pages together creating a clickable figma prototype ready for testing.
Testing & Iteration
Now that we had our prototype ready, our team moved onto to testing. Usability tests were conducted with 5 different volunteers. Users were walked giver 5 tasks to complete while our team observed their behavior and noted any pain points.
we then synthesized the data into a success rate based on how well users were able to complete a given TASK.
watching FIRST HAND AS USERS MOVED THROUGH THE PROTOTYPE GAVE US A FEW INSIGHTS INTO THE HANG-UPS THEY WERE EXPERIENCING. WE ALSO LEARNED HOW USERS WOULD INTUITIVLY NAVIGATE. FROM THESE TESTS WE WERE ABLE TO GATHER A FEW KEY INSIGHTS.
Users appreciated being able to browse recipes by category
Users were not clear about the difference between their bookmarked recipes and history
Users expressed confusion about date information in their history
Users were unsure whether or not a new item was added to their grocery list
Now that we had a clear idea of the pain points in our design we began out second iteration of the prototype.
Change # 1 : my pantry
We added a function that allows users to see what items they have on hand based on what was added to their previous grocery list and what recipes they have marked as made.
Change # 2: search filters
to help users find recipes, a filter function was added that allows users to sort their search results by cooking time, cuisine, or by only using items they have logged into their pantry.
Change # 3 : adding a new
item to recipes list
a change was made to how users add items to their grocery list. previously items were automatically sorted alphabetically, however after testing we found that users had trouble verifying the item was actually added. New items now appear at the top of their specific category immediately after being added.
Change # 4 : change recipes
the navigation to previous recipes was moved to meal plans based on feedback we received during testing. an indicator was also added that gave users a clear timeframe in order to help them find previous recipes.
the final conclusion
Through our research we determined that the biggest pain points when cooking meals at home were excess food waste and the amount of time it takes to plan meals for the week. EcoFresh solves these issues by helping users find recipes they love and scheduling them throughout the week, this helps users save time, money, and avoid food waste. We designed EcoFresh to be as user friendly as possible so that anyone can quickly get accustomed to the app and start planning their meals efficiently. Finding recipes and finding the time to make them has never been easier, thanks to EcoFresh.
research & design done by Matthew Morales, Yamini Pant, Katherine Han, And Andrew Williamson
case study design by matthew morales
tools used: figma - miro - trelo - canva - gfiles