UX Case Study
WASTE NO MORE
Introducing "Waste No More" - Your Food Waste Warrior!
WNM connects students and staff in hostels and is crafted to tackle the pressing issue of food wastage in hostel environments. This app empowers both hostel residents and mess staff to make informed decisions about food consumption and management.
About the Project
Target Audience
This application is designed to be user-friendly for the hostel residents and hostel mess managing staff to control as much food wastage as possible.
Tired of seeing perfectly good food go to waste in your hostel mess?
Say hello to WNM, the app designed to tackle food wastage head-on!
Deliverables
User Experience Research
Design Process
Secondary Research
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals which are directly being affected by the problem are :
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No poverty
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Zero hunger
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Good health and well-being
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Responsible consumption and production
4 weeks
Duration
The inefficiency of managing food resources within the hostel mess leads to significant food wastage, where large quantities of prepared food are discarded daily due to overproduction, poor meal planning, and inadequate storage practices.
I took this opportunity to address this issue by conducting user research and creating an app idea that could help prevent wastage.
Overview
Challenge
The hostel mess faces a significant problem of food wastage, where a substantial amount of prepared food is discarded daily due to overproduction, poor meal planning, and inadequate storage practices which contributes to environmental concerns and undermines efforts to provide nutritious meals to residents.
User Research
To understand the problem further and uncover potential solutions I surveyed 21 people to obtain quantitative data of the future users.
To validate my assumptions and gain new insights into the,
I conducted user interviews with 10 people.
Questionnaire
I surveyed 21 people to obtain quantitative data on future users.
Here are the questions asked:
•How often do you eat at the hostel mess?
•Have you ever observed food being wasted in the hostel mess?
•Please describe the most common reasons you think food is wasted in the mess.
•Have you personally ever left food on your plate in the mess?
•What typically leads to you leaving food on your plate?
•Are there any specific dishes or food items that are frequently wasted in the mess?
•Do you think there are efforts taken in your hostel mess to reduce food wastage?
•Are you aware of the environmental and ethical consequences of food waste?
•Would you be willing to initiate in reducing food wastage in your hostel mess?
•Would you install and use an app that would notify you regularly about your availability for the meal?
Survey Results
Insights and Findings
I also conducted interviews among potential users to get qualitative data to help understand what would be their motivations and help optimize decisions.
Here are some of the very helpful insights:
•Making food is a business and cheaper ingredients mean lesser expenses and more profits.
•Mass produced food is many a time made with cheap ingredients.
•Time is money, time saved by cooking in a hurry is valuable.
•Most hostels include food along with the cost for stay, this means that whether you eat or not, they will still get paid.
•Same food eaten many times can appear to be tasteless.
•Meal timings do not align with the resident’s schedule.
•Messes may prepare food in large quantities to ensure they don’t run out.
•Take how much food you can finish.
•Don’t be greedy about food on special occasions.
•Left over food should be distributed to poor or in need.
•Know which particular meal or dish is getting wasted most.
•Cook according to the number of people.
•Improve food quality.
•Let residents vote for the menu.
•Support local food banks.
•Educate yourself and others about food wastage.
I hope you liked my work.
Thank you for scrolling!
Based on the insights gained in the interview stage, I created a user persona to synthesize my findings and empathize with my interviewees. The persona allowed me to combine the common themes into a distinct use case which helped me to ideate better solutions confidently.
Let me introduce you to Aman, our user persona:
User Persona
I created an empathy map as a visual tool used in user persona development to help me understand and visualize a Aman's thoughts, feelings, and motivations, leading to a deeper understanding of their needs and behaviors.
Empathy Mapping
To solve this problem, I created an app idea that registered hostels will use. This app will be used by the managing team and the hostel residents. There are certain features that this app will provide that will help reach the goal of reducing food wastage.
These key features are:
Features of the App
•Individual resident’s login
•Menu for the current month (Menu will be displayed day-wise/calendar wise)
•Consists of tabs and filters
•Upcoming month’s menu will be decided based on voting results (Everyone gets to vote for options of dishes for each meal)
•A ‘What’s New?’ button which will highlight and show special dishes for that month
•Settings will include a night and day theme for better visibility for the user
•Daily notification alerts will be sent to know the resident’s availability for that meal 3-4 hours before meal preparation (Food production control)
•Whichever hostel chooses to initiate in controlling or reducing their food wastage can get themselves registered on the main domain website