Cassandra Broeker
Vesta: The Smart Kitchen of the Future
A theoretical solution for food waste in the home kitchen
Why do people waste food?
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I was standing in front of my fridge, staring at a packet of chicken in my hand. It had gone bad, and now I had to throw it out. I thought about why this had happened - had I tucked it behind something else and missed it? Had I gotten busy and eaten out one too many times? Am I the only person who has this problem? And, most importantly: Could I use UX design to solve the problem of food waste in the kitchen?
I teamed up three other UX designers to use design thinking to tackle the problem of kitchen food waste. We created Vesta, the kitchen management tool of the future. Vesta uses RFID data to help users stay on top of their grocery needs to make cooking at home easier and less wasteful.
Timeline: 3 week sprint
Team: Cassandra Broeker, Benjamin Dobbin, Jacob Tuller, Amy Taylor
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My Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, UX Writer, UI Designer
Tools: Figma, Miro, Trello, Photoshop, Zoom
The Design Process
1.1 Survey
What are the root causes behind food waste?
I knew that I wasted food because I lost track of it in my fridge, but why do most people waste food? To test my assumptions against a larger population who is more likely to cook at home, we distributed a survey though a Parents in Austin Facebook group, and received 40 responses.
Key Results:
People in this category - who do no pre-planning - were more likely to report that they create food waste when asked about their pain points.
Major Takeaways:
Lack of organization is one reason why people waste food.
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So, my personal problem of losing track of food and creating food waste was not exactly reflected in the data. People wasted food for all sorts of reasons, with one root cause in common: Lack of organization. This gave me an excellent jumping off point to continue my qualitative research.
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1.2 User Interviews
User interviews gave us qualitative, in-depth information about how people experience lack of organization and wasting food.
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So, with a good direction to run in, we dug in deeply to the problems that people experience when cooking at home.
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Methods:
Collectively, we conducted 7 remote user interviews over Zoom.
Participant Requirements:
People in households of varying sizes who cook at home at least a few times a week.
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Interview Questions:
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What is your current grocery shopping and cooking process?
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Where are the pain points in that process for you?
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What types of technology do you use in that process?
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How often do you cook at home, and do you want to cook at home more?
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How do you find new recipes?
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2.1 Affinity Diagram
Our participants have extremely different habits, routines and shopping styles, but there are some common pain points.
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After we grouped the data into an affinity diagram in a silent sort, we discussed the patterns that were starting to emerge, gave them group names, and extracted useful insights. Then we performed a dot vote to find the problems that we wanted to address first.
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Useful User Insights:
Whether too loose or too strict, their habits and routines weren't really working for them and their family.
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"I wish that I could get better at meal planning for the week. I struggle making and following a plan, so my shopping trips feel all over the place, and I often don't know what to make for dinner."
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Food, trash, and money. Most of our users felt like they generated a lot of waste. Especially food waste. Some from ignorance of how to use an ingredient, and some from lack of organization.
"Food goes bad in the back of my fridge and even my pantry all the time, and I have to throw it out. It feels bad creating that much waste. Sometimes it's because I forgot about it, sometimes it's because I bought a specialty ingredient and I don't know what to do with it."
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Grocery shopping and cooking at home is time consuming and labor-intensive. It requires more time, energy, and planning than users want it to.
"Grocery shopping takes so much time! We have to go to Costco and Central Market most weeks. Cooking dinner every night can be a big source of stress, but I want to eat takeout less often and I want my kids to eat healthy."
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While these user insights were coalescing into a useful persona, an opposite pattern was also emerging: Users who had very few problems in the kitchen.
Their routine works perfectly for them, and they create almost no food waste. Everything operates like a well-oiled machine
"Grocery Shopping and cooking isn't really that stressful for me anymore. We've built a really solid routine, and buy the same things every week. Nothing really goes bad. Staying on top of it does take a lot of time, but there's a system in place, so I don't have to think about it any more."
Cooking is a fun exploration in a well-stocked and well organized kitchen! Trying new foods, having an eye on personal nutrition goals, and exposing your kids to new cuisines is fun!
"I take nutrition seriously, and I actually really enjoy cooking and trying new recipes and discovering new foods."
Less Useful User Insights (Or Are They?)
2.2 The User vs. the Anti-User
So... What now? I had identified a group of users who didn't need my solution.
I started to doubt my own idea for a minute. If some people could just get organized and solve the issue of food waste on their own, was there really a need for a design intervention? But then I remembered all of the users who still struggled and needed a solution.​
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Why not learn from them? What makes them so successful in the kitchen, and how can we replicate that for our users? I created two empathy maps to compare the user and the anti-user.
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The User
Kajal: "I never want to have to think about what to make for dinner ever again"
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Thinks: ​
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I want to offload the mental labor of cooking at home - I'm busy!
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I want an easy way to collaborate with my husband and kids
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Feels:​
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Frustrated with how often she grocery shops
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Decision paralysis because she has to make different grocery decisions each week
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Does:​
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Doesn't plan meals ahead of time
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Goes to the grocery store with no concrete plan, forgets things and has to make multiple trips per week
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Buys different ingredients each week, leftover ingredients go bad
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Never organizes the fridge and pantry, puts things back in different places each time
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The Anti-User
Saira: "My routine is so rock-solid that I never have to think about it."
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Thinks: ​
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I have to put effort in to stay organized, but I don't mind
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I like using Alexa as our shared shopping list so my husband and I are on the same page
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Feels: ​
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Satisfaction from a well-organized kitchen
- Joy and fulfillment from trying new things and having fun in the kitchen
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Does: ​​
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​Makes a meal plan for the week
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Creates a household shopping list and sticks to it to minimize grocery trips between her and her husband
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Buys the exact same staples every week and combines them in new ways
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Has a clear plan for how the fridge and pantry should be organized
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User Persona
With a better understanding of how the anti-user operated, I created a fully fleshed out User Persona named Kajal.
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2.3 Story Board
What would a successful grocery shopping and cooking routine look like for Kajal?
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How can I help her achieve her goals, meet her needs, and solve for her pain points? I decided to create a story board to explore what her day to day looks like when she's operating more like the anti-user thanks to our potential solution.
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Kajal doesn’t have time to plan out dinners this week, so she asks her kitchen to make a 6 day meal plan, and to generate a shopping list.
It's Kajal’s husband's turn to go to the store that week, and he uses the list. In the store, he checks the current inventory to see if they're out of some family staples.
Later in the week, Kajal was at work and had forgotten that she needs to bake cupcakes for her son's bake sale. She checks her inventory on her phone to find out what ingredients they have on hand, and puts in an Instacart order for what they still need.
That night, Kajal and her son make cupcakes together. They follow the recipe from their kitchen app on her ipad. They enjoy the recipe so much that they save it to make it again sometime.
2.4 Problem Statement
In a few sentences: What is the problem I am trying to solve?
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Our users need a way build a routine and stay organized so that they spend less mental energy and generate less food waste.
3.1 Brainstorming
Now that we had defined the problem, we turned towards ideating a solution. We collectively performed an I Like, I Wish, What If brainstorming session, and came up with a ton of ideas that we needed to pair down to what we could actually build within our time constraints.
What if you could get a custom meal plan based on what you already have in stock and what's about to go bad?
Learning algorithm that predicts grocery needs?
Automatic nutrition tracking and logging?
VUI capabilities ?
Seamless integration with all family devices and existing apps?
Library for recipes you find online from any source?
Progressively difficult recipes?
3.2 The Solution
When we solidified our solution, we kept in mind that we wanted to provide our users with all the information they could possibly get from an RFID tag, like date purchased, the use-by date, the amount/weight, and the nutritional information. How could we best leverage all of that information to take the burden of planning and organization off of people's shoulders so they could cook more often, waste less food, and go to the grocery store less often?
Current Inventory
An auto-synched inventory that encompasses the fridge and pantry by way of RFID sensors, viewable on user's personal devices and accessible both visually and through voice inquiries through a VUI. Each item comes with recipe suggestions
Integrated Shopping List
A communal shopping list that can be updated from any connected device, and sorted in a myriad of ways, including by what store each item is available at, at the source of online orders from any ordering service
Recipe Center
A space to save favorite recipes and discover new recipes. Recipes are presented based on what's currently in your inventory, and include a learning algorithm to improve suggestions based on preferences. A way to get creative with ingredients on hand
Meal Planning
A tool that takes on the burden of planning. Recipe suggestions presented with the goal of not allowing any items to expire, and minimizing trips to the store. The same learning algorithm as the recipe center will tailor meal plans more specifically to household needs over time
3.3 User Flow for Meal Planning
The meal planning process was the most intricate, so we created a user flow to conceptualize the steps our users might take through the process. We brought the screens from this flow with us into the iterating and testing phases. We iterated on it late through the process.
4.1 Sketches
Now that we had finalized our solution, we split up to sketch. When we came back together, we gave each other feedback about the features we liked, and what we wanted to bring into our low-fi iteration.
4.2 UI Stylesheet
After we had some features hammered out, we turned to our style sheet. We went through a million iterations and played around with a million color palettes, designing around the core of fresh, colorful but still clean, and photo-dominant. We also finally came to a consensus on a name: Vesta. Vesta is the Roman goddess of the hearth and home, and everyone could use a little divine intervention in the kitchen every so often.
4.3 Testing and Iterating
We separated again to design the low-fi iterations of each page. We then performed remote moderated user testing on each other's designs in the low-fi state to find what worked and what needed iterating on. We then came back together and implemented the needed changes across the wider design, and repeated the process for our mid-fi testing. Once we had gotten our user feedback, I took ownership over the final iteration and unified the UI across all screens and added the interactions.
Inventory
Shopping List
Recipe Center
Final Meal Planning Flow
The Future
As a team, it was difficult to escape from scope creep during this process. We had a million ideas, and had to prioritize based off of user interview data. That being said, we had some exciting ideas for the future of Vesta.
Voice-User Interface
I would love to explore the best way to implement a VUI in the context of the kitchen. What problems do people have while following a recipe for the first time? Are any of those problems barriers to learning new recipes? Would people benefit from verbal instruction over written instructions? The research possibilities are extremely exciting.
Integration
We would love to explore how to integrate Vesta with other apps, messaging, and social media. Would users want a separate communication center just for household meal planning, or would they rather it be integrated with their current messaging habits? Would it be possible to save recipes they found on social media to Vesta, and convert it into our recipe format?
Machine Learning
How could we utilize machine learning to automate more shopping and cooking processes and take another mental load off of our users? What if Vesta knew what you were probably going to run out of before you did so and could auto-order it for you, no input necessary? We would have loved to have had the time to investigate what things users want taken off of their plates.
Future Plans
As a team, it was difficult to escape from scope creep during this process. We had a million ideas, and had to prioritize based off of user interview data. That being said, we had some exciting ideas for the future of Vesta.
Voice-User Interface
I would love to explore the best way to implement a VUI in the context of the kitchen. What problems do people have while following a recipe for the first time? Are any of those problems barriers to learning new recipes? Would people benefit from verbal instruction over written instructions? The research possibilities are extremely exciting.
Integration
We would love to explore how to integrate Vesta with other apps, messaging, and social media. Would users want a separate communication center just for household meal planning, or would they rather it be integrated with their current messaging habits? Would it be possible to save recipes they found on social media to Vesta, and convert it into our recipe format?
Machine Learning
How could we utilize machine learning to automate more shopping and cooking processes and take another mental load off of our users? What if Vesta knew what you were probably going to run out of before you did so and could auto-order it for you, no input necessary? We would have loved to have had the time to investigate what things users want taken off of their plates.
Nutrition and Fitness Tracking
A lot of our users brought up the issue of health, and how irritating it is to track calories and macros. How might we build that type of tracking into the app? Could we assist users in their pursuit of their fitness goals?
In Conclusion:
Creating Vesta was an extremely fulfilling experience, in no small thanks to the absolutely fantastic team I had to work with. Many thanks go to Benjamin Dobbin, Any Taylor, and Jacob Tuller.