Waste Wise -
CUESA · Rethinking Food Waste
Lifestyle, Native App (iOS) Design
Role
UX Designer
Deliverables
UX Research
Content Strategy
User Flow
User Interface
Wireframes
High-fidelity prototype
Link
*Conceptual client
Overview
Who is CUESA: CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) is dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food.
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What we did: Native iOS App design inspired by the sustainability section on CUESA’S desktop site. Our goal was to reduce food waste across the globe.
How does CUESA define sustainability and act on reducing food waste?
What prevents them from achieving their goal?
What does CUESA have?
Programs pertain to food waste and educating community around sustainable living practices.
Art project championing farmers and advocates
Excursions to explore the farms and facilities of their farmers market sellers
Connect urban dwellers with their local food shed
Helps make locally grown foods more affordable by matching federal nutrition benefits
Initiatives they have taken right in their very own farmer’s markets to keep food waste out of landfills.
Stations and displays throughout the farmer’s markets to educate vendors and shoppers
Decreasing overall waste through compost, recycling and landfill bins stationed throughout markets
Phasing out the use of plastic bags and no longer offering bottled water
Brand Attributes
Business Goals​​
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Maintaining the programs centered around healthy food education and sustainable living.
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Reducing food waste globally.
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Teaching kids, adults alike about entrepreneurship and promoting stewardship across their communities.
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Supporting and paying homage to local farmers and small food businesses.
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Raising awareness of the food production system and accessibility to healthy foods at low cost.
Informing
Sustainable
Community
Healthy Food Education
Supporting
Engaging
Local
Activities
Environmental
What is CUESA lacking?
Lack of attention
Sustainability section located on footer
Lack of interaction and engagement
Only focus on learning
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Lack of learning resources
Only two articles related to sustainability
Critical Thinking
How how how how how
does design help CUESA achieve its goal?
Awareness is not enough
when people know what to do and still aren't doing it.
Then
Engagement and Interaction are needed.
“Food waste is a complicated and messy issue, the goal is to understand what resonates with people.”
User Research
-By synthesizing insights from affinity mapping, user surveys, and job stories, our team began to better understand true user needs and the gap from CUESA's current product.
User Survey
Step 1
-We started with user surveys to get a grasp on what our users currently knew about sustainable living, how they felt about it, and what their habits currently were when it came to sustainability and food waste.
They are​​
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somewhat familiar with sustainable living
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interested in learning more
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maintaining a sustainable lifestyle
Step 2
-Next we got more specific around​ food waste.
They
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like having fresh produce
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don't feel comfortable throwing away food
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can resonate with food waste to some degree
So if they can resonate with the issue, why can’t they still can't develop a sustainable life style?
Why is food waste still such a big issue?
Step 3
-Careful not to make any assumptions, we moved on to user interviews and synthesized the information from both our interviews and surveys. Here we used affinity mapping to develop the user persona and job stories.
Persona
Planet Preserver
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A health-conscious individual who cares about the environment.
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Familiar with sustainable living.
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Curious about how they can be more informed and better incorporate additional practices into their daily routine.
Devout Dreamer
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A hopeful advocate that cares but doesn’t know much about sustainable living.
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They are open to learning and developing it as a lifestyle.
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They want the entire experience to be delightful and enjoyable so that they can stay engaged.
Job Stories
A “Job-to-be-done” methodology combined with our newly discovered persona allowed me to understand the motivation behind our user's needs.
“When I'm done grocery shopping for the week, I want to be aware of how much food I have while I consume them, so I can know what I need to buy next time .”
“When I am trying to develop a habit, I want to have clear guidance, so I can be consistent and repeat doing it without spending too much time and energy.”
The Problem
-What upsets our users?
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They are unclear on an effective way to begin integrating additional sustainable practices into their daily routine
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Currently has no way to organize their sustainable habits and track their progress
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Desire a system that will help them utilize or compost food that’s already in their household
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Needs a more efficient way to stay informed about sustainable living practices
The Solution
-How does design help?
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Providing a streamlined way to view overall progress
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An easy way to browse, track, and add new habits
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Creative ways to reuse food and maintain food inventory
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Developing connection with the sustainable living community
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Efficient ways to consume and practice sustainability tips
Product Perspective
Learning · Engaging · Interacting
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The fundamental relationship between the user, the design, and the technology will make or break success.
How can we help users develop a sustainable lifestyle while maintaining CUESA's business goals and brand identity?
Content Strategy
Process
Ideating
Grouping
Specifying
Prioritizing
Two metrics
UX
1.
UX
2.
Step 1 - Ideating
- Brainstorming ideas based on previous research
Brand Attributes
Business Goals
Solution to user needs
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Step 2 - Grouping
- Grouping them according to different the phases in which that users interact with the product
Awarenes
Engage
Return
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Step 3 - Specifying
-Listing potential features and tasks according to ideas in step 2
Awarenes
Engage
Return
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Social media
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Connecting local community
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News page
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Events section
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Tracking progress features
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Explore page
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Browse, track, and add new habits
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Reuse food
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Maintain food inventory
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Buidling connections
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Show results
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Gamification
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Challenging & Activiteis
Step 4 - Prioritizing
-Prioritizing features based on difficulty to achieve and value to users
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Explore page
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News page
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Events section
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Social media
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Browse, track, and add new habits
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Page dedicated to local community
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Buidling connections
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Reuse food
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Gamification
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Maintain food inventory
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Show results
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Tracking progress features
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Challenging & Activiteis
After synthesizing all the information, I ended up with five key tasks: food, explore, home, activity, and community
User Flow
- With the main tasks decided, building unique user flows allowed me to specify nuanced actions under each which our design would have to account for
Information Architecture
- This practice allowed me to organize content effectively, making sure users completed tasks without extraneous friction.
Usability Testing
-We first did usability testing with a Mid-Fi prototype. Our goal was to detect & fix confusing or frustrating issues with functionality.
Here are two examples of the evolved iterations after testing.
Not engaging and visually appealing
A celebration - motivation that the plant preserver & devout dreamer both require
Increase clickable area to improve usability
- I conducted the second round of usability testing with a Hi-Fi prototype. Here I looked to see if we had in fact solved the previous issues and went on to discover new potential problems that came with our proposed increased page weight.
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The load time was increased due to the high quality of images. Some pages appeared with images missing, which made participants confused & frustrated. Below are two proposed solutions to optimize the user experience of interacting with loading screens (“skeleton screens” and “blur up.”)
Skeleton Screen
Blur Up
Conduct new usability tests to see if the updated product better meets user needs and business goals.
* This iteration was for the implementation phase, so it will not be shown in the prototype.
Click to walk through the prototype
Takeaways
What’s next
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Conduct new usability studies to see if the product reflects user needs and business goals in order to discover the values it will bring to the public.
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Gather quantitative and qualitative data to measure the design impact.
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What I’ve learned
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Evidence-based and user-centered strategies can prevent subjective assumptions and justify design decisions.
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Mapping the information architecture and understanding content strategy helped fill the gap between initial research and our proposed solution, specifically the feature and task prioritization.
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Consideration of the business’s values and goals was necessary for a complete & intentional design.
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Asking why and continuing to dig until we hit the root of the issue.