Gohan
Role: UX designer leading the app and responsive website design from conception to delivery
Responsibilities: Conducting interviews, paper, and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, managing usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs, determining information architecture, and responsive design.
Tools: Adobe Xd, Gdrive, Jamboard
Duration: August 2021 to September 2021 (3 weeks).
Project vision
Gohan is a French organization focused on food sustainability. The organization needs a tool that helps restaurants or bakeries learn about and manage their food waste. Gohan’s primary target users include chefs and bakers who are concerned with the amount of food they waste and would like to learn more about what they can do to reduce waste.
Challenge
On average, every day, a restaurant throws in the trash 10% of the raw materials it purchases. Over the year, this represents 400,000 tonnes of food waste. How to put an end to this waste? Everyone is concerned, from large restaurant chains to bakeries.
Solution
Design an app that will improve education on the topic of food waste and help people manage their food waste.
1. Understanding the user
User research: SummaryI used Gohan’s data on food waste to developing interview questions, which were then used to conduct user interviews. Most interview participants reported feeling bad about food waste, but they didn’t actively try to reduce their own food waste. The feedback received through research made it very clear that users would be open and willing to work towards eliminating food waste if they had access to an easy-to-use tool to help guide them.
Persona: Max:
Max is a chef who needs a solution to reduce food loss because Some of the food he throws away is food with a very short expiration date.
2. Starting the design
Digital wireframes
After ideating and drafting some paper wireframes, I created the initial designs for the Gohan food saver app.
These designs focused on publishing meals/products with a discount. The goal is to encourage customers to come and buy. and at the same time it helps the restaurants or bakeries to reduce their losses
Low-fidelity prototype
To prepare for usability testing, I created a low-fidelity prototype that connected the user flow of viewing an item about to expire and using it in a recipe.
Usability study: findings
Deal. People want easy access to adding deals from the home page
Preview. People want to preview the deal before publishing
Notification. People preferred clear notifications of when the deal is published.
3. Refining Design
Mockups
High-fidelity prototype
The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability study.
4. Going forward
Impact:
Users shared that the app made food waste seem like something they could actually help reduce. One quote from peer feedback was that “Gohan app helps bring caring about the environment to a personal level in a way that’s easy and engaging.”
What I learned:
I learned that even though the problem I was trying to solve was a big one, diligently going through each step of the design process and aligning with specific user needs helping me come up with solutions that were both feasible and useful.
Next steps
Conduct research on how successful the app is in reaching the goal to reduce food waste.
Add educational resources for users to learn about food waste.
Provide incentives and rewards to users for successfully reducing their food waste.