Building a New Inventory System for Small Businesses in Canada

TIMELINE: 1 week design sprint 

MY ROLE :UX researcher, UX designer, Wireframing Prototying 

CLIENT: Small businesses 

Tools: Figma, Sketch, Invision

THE PROBLEM 

1/2 of all food product worldwide is wasted. Toronto taxpayers spend $10 million a year getting rid of food waste. 

How might we help individuals or organizations reduce their food waste using digital technology?

    THE SOLUTUON

   Created an app and packaging solution to give small business owners the tools to reduce their food-waste footprint, while also providing them with advanced intentory management to track the produce life-cycle so they know when the food is going to expire, they can put to produce on sale or donate accordingly.  

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To preface, this project was the very first design challenge I have done at BrainStation during my User Experience Bootcamp. I am incredibly proud of what my team and I had accomplished, even before learning anything about grids, typography, colour theory, and all other UX/UI fundamentals. I have completed multiple design sprints since then, and it all started from here!

RESEARCH 

We started off my conducting secondary research on foodwaste in Canada, we focused on researching key market players who are affected by this problem space and researching existing solutions that have helped reduce food waste.

• 58% of canadian-produced food is wasted creating an annual loss of $49 billion dollars and 56 million tonnes of harmful greenhouse gasses
• Majority of the food waste occurs at grocery stores. They throw out tons of produce everyday

User Interviews

We conducted primary research by directly interviewing 15 customers aged 22-30 in Canada, a grocery store manager at IGA, and we also called the sysco inventory department to gather data 

Questions asked:

• What is your experience choosing produce at the store based on how it looks/the expiry date? Does the expiry date of foods affect your buying choices?

•  What do you think happens when produce goes bad in grocery stores? Would you say your household has a problem with food waste?

• Would you be willing to pay a slight premium to purchase fresh produce packaged in a way to preserve shelf life? Why/Whynot?

• What do you currently have in place to preserve the longevity of food? (Retailers)

• What do you do with the produce once its about to go bad? (Retailers/Consumers) Would you be interested in tracking your produce life cycle? 

• What do you currently have in place  to track the produce life cycle? (Retailers) 

Customer Insights:

• People buy based on how ripe the food is and how long it will last, majority of homes frequently waste food because it goes bad fast 
• Most people would be interested in concept of packaging that keeps shelf life longer to save money, if the packaging is natural
• When buying bulk produce, everyone was buying based off of look, not expiry date

Sysco Inventory Department Insights:

• Great inventory management system, they track when the produce arrives and when it is being delivered. A worker also goes around the produce wharehouse to physically check if all the produce is fresh every week 
• Proprietary software, they have their own inventory management system for years
• Temperature controlled delivery trucks when delivering produce 

IGA Store Manager Insights: 

• They only track when the inventory arrives, they have no idea when the produce will expire. Poor inventory management 
• Very old/basic software to track inventory arrival 
• Immense food waste daily 

After deciding that we are focuing on the retailers as our key stakeholder,  we mapped out the produce life-cycle and placed our how might we statement at the part of the life-cycle we will implement our solution in. 

How might we track sustainably packaged produce in order to reduce food waste?

Proto-Persona

The solution

APP Inspiration

The first gradient of our app is inspired from Apple's master card gradient. Essentially the green indicated the produce in your store is fresh, the yellow indicates the produce is about to expire soon, and the red indicates the produce has gone bad. 

The name "Alfresh" was inspired from Batman's trusty butler, Alfred. Alfresh the go-to hand for grocery store managers, it will do all of the work for you, just like Batman's butler. 

Final Prototype 

Login page, home page, sign out page

Add New Inventory

Expiry Check 

Current Inventory

Let's Connect!