Description:

This project was for a course that we took, TO 426 (Mobile App Innovation). In order to complete the course, we were required to design an application and implement a minimum-viable-product in Android Studio and Google Firebase. After the course, I completely redesigned the application, improving the platform's visual design, interface, and example content, creating the components and iconography from scratch.

Problem

At the University of Michigan, many events end up with leftover food that ends up getting thrown away and wasted. At the same time, many students go hungry throughout their day.

Audience

Students across Michigan sporadically post in a dedicated Facebook group as well as college-specific GroupMe group-chats when they spot leftover food around campus. The photos below are sourced directly from these platforms, confirming that students are aware of leftover-food, try to take advantage of it, and share it whenever possible.

Michigan has an combined student population of nearly 50,000. Because our community of students spans across many different academic levels, programs, and student organizations, there exists a need to simultaneously connect hungry students and eliminate food waste.

"Foodzilla intends to both eliminate food waste, and serve our involved, busy, caring, but hungry community of Wolverines." - Our Team

Our Process

Discovery

We first began by sending out surveys to students around campus, asking students' about their experiences surrounding food insecurity and sharing leftovers. We learned that:

1. ⦿  77% of students saw leftovers around campus
2. ⦿  42% of students would definitely report leftover food to others, 47% might, and 10% wouldn't

This verifies our established problem space and allows us to dig deeper into our users' pain-points.

Hungry students expressed 3 primary pain-points that interfered with normal eating habits and a sufficient diet:

1. ⦿  70% of students said Lack of Time
2. ⦿  45% of students said Inconvenience
3. ⦿  43% of students said Financial constraints

Sketches

I first began by sketching paper prototypes to test in class. Based on these sketches, our team was now deciding between either a map that showed spottings and events as pins, and a vertical card-list interface.

Users noted that it would be easier to navigate the card-list system because they could quickly see the type of food available. Development constraints also led us to agree, as coding out the map would require too much time on our end.

To cater to the primary pain-points of lack of time and inconvenience, we could either sort cards by proximity to user or freshness of food. We decided to move forward with freshness because food safety is of utmost important.

Wireframe

After paper-prototyping and user-testing, I moved to Figma to design our high fidelity wireframes. I decided to use a lighter color-scheme to allow the warmer images of food and scenery to stand out more.

Prototype:
'H' to Restart

Future Considerations

Behavior

What are some ways we could positively shape and influence behavior? What are ways we could incentivize users to share leftovers and host events? How could we prevent fake food spottings? Future iterations of Foodzilla must predict and account for unexpected behavior.

Well-being

How would we maintain high standards of food safety among users? Though Foodzilla feautures a colored-coded “freshness level” for the food in question, a strict automatic expiration for leftovers should be added to further protect the health of our users.

Monetization

What are some ways we could monetize Foodzilla? Although the very philosophy of Foodzilla is centered around access to free food, we could create revenue streams by displaying ads as a card among the list, or within leftover details.

We could also connect and engage with the greater Ann Arbor community, partnering with local restaurants, food banks, and student organizations to create mutually-beneficial relationships between them and Foodzilla.