Kitch-a-dee

Problem Statment

• Who: Average American Households
• roughly $2.2k worth of food is wasted every year
• Overbuying food
• Expired Food
• Food not stored properly
• Lack of planning
• What: Food Waste
• 40% of the food is wasted annually in the US
• 40-50% of the wasted food come from consumers
• 20% of the wastes in landfill is food
• Why: Wasteful
• Economically, the amount of money wasted on food could have been put to better use. It also make the price of food more expensive.
• Environmentally, food wastes in landfill creates large amount of methan which could lead to global warming and climate change. It also wasted the resources we used to grow and make food.
• Ethically, 1 in 6 Americans are food insecure, meaning they lack access to enough food. Wastng food is "luxury" and it's our duty to take care of those who's in need

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User Research

Our project focused mainly on average American Households.

• Family with kids
• Young couple
• Elderly
• People who live alone
• College students who share a house

We divided the researach into three parts:online survey, interviews and observation.

• Here's a list of questions we asked and what we found:
• How often do you go grocery shopping? Most of the respondents purchase groceries once a week, or more frequently. 13.5% purchase groceries twice a month, and one outlier purchases groceries less than once a month. Interesting, only 13.5% of the people said they never overbuy food.
• How often do you find expired food in your fridge? 8.1% of the people said never. 64.9% of the food wastes come from fruits and vegetables.
• How much money is wasted annually on food in your household? Surprisingly, majority of the family gave an number that was below average("better-than-average effect"). In fact, only 19.4% of people think they waste more than average.
• Do you throw out products on the sell-by date? 56.8% said they throw out some of the expired food, while 40.5% said they do not for any products.
• Do you use any products to limit food wastes? Below is a bar graph of what we found:
• Will you be interesting using a product that saves money and reduce food waste? Majority of them responded "yes". 80% said they prefer it affordable and 56% prefer it environmental friendly.

• Here's what we found when we observe people:
• @hub on UW campus: 
• Majority of the students buy food and some bring lunch bagsThose who bring food carry smaller portions of foodThose who buy food cannot control the portionMost of the people throw away their food if they can't finish itPossible reasonings for those who brings food:CheaperEasier to carryNot enough time to prepare foodPossible reasonings for those who buy food:FastNo size optionsInconvenient to carry leftovers
• @ a volunteer's home 
• She went grocery shopping but couldn't remember if there was pork at home. She got pork anyways.She tried the leftover soup and found it tastes odd. She dumped the soup in the sink.She tried to make toast but the bread was moldy, so she threw it in the trash bin.Possile reasonings of her behavior:She doesn't make grovery listsShe doesn't remember what she boughtShe doesn't remember when food expiredShe doesn't know what to do with leftover foodShe doesn't use compost bin.
• We interviewed 2 people from our community. Here's what we found:
• JS is a mother of 3 children(8, 11 and 16 years old)
• Forget to cancel overordering groceries online sometimesOwns a large fridge and buys a lot of food to fill it.When she buys things that her kids don't like, food gets thrown out.When she goes grocery shopping, she usually forget what she has at home.She's pretty familiar with smartophones and wish there's a easier way to make grocery lists.
• CJ has a 19-year-old daughter
• He does majority of the cookingHe only knows 40%-50% of the food in the fridge.His family throws away leftovers because no one eats them.His family eats out a lot.He has a compost bin but bugs and odor drive him crazy.He's looking for a solution that takes care of the food problem.

Conclusion: People don't usually keep track of what they have and tend to overbuy groceries. Even if the food is about to expire, people don't pay attention until they have to throw it out. People might also throw away food because it's not desirable anymore. Most people are aware of food waste, but they're not aware of how much food is wasted. According to "better-than-average effect", people tend to believe that their performances are above average, but in fact, they're not. Unfortunately, reducing food waste is not the #1 problem for many people. our goal is to find a cheaper, greener and more convenient solution.

‍Stakeholder Analysis

My team had identified few stakeholders: families, grocery stores, organizations and RFID chip companies. But I think there're more than we could imagine. I made a chart that contains four section. Each stakeholder is placed on a section according to their interests and power. I also color coded each them based on their benefits. Red means not beneficial and green means beneficial. Here's the plot:

Those who are most beneficial: Large families, elderly and college students. Those who are most unbeneficial: grocery stores, food processing companies, restaurants and fast food restaurants.Analysis of main stakeholdersLarge families: Save food wastes definitly save a lot of money for them because they buys more food than other family and it's more likely they have a hard time manage food items at home.Elderly: They might not buy too much food themselves, but since we're focusing on average American household, they might make large meals for their grandchildren and they consumes less calories.College Students: They ususally want to save money and enjoy food at the same time. Some of them might have a hard time doing grocery shopping because of too much homework. Others might have too much leftovers from parties and pizza nights. Many colleges offer buffet style meal plan, so they might not finish all their food.Grocery Stores: Less grocery shopping means less profit for the grocery stores. They might not be strongly against the idea of reducing food waste, but the solution could reduce their sales too.Food Processing Companies: If the needs go down, the amount of production goes down at the same time, which means less revenue. Food processing companies might not like this idea.Restaurants and Fast Food Restaurants: Less food waste means people will either eat what they get or get what they can eat. People might want smaller portions from the restaurants and if there's no small portion, they might just cook at home.

‍Draft Design

In order to solve the problem of food waste at home, we’ve decided to create a system which allows users to get accurate real time data describing what they have in their kitchens. The system relies on a variety of RFID chip technologies and a convenient mobile app which displays the items users have in their home kitchens. The app sends notifications when food is about to expire, has a suggested customizable grocery list, and even recommends recipes based on the ingredients in your kitchen. The system comes with multiple RFID chip sensors which can be placed throughout your kitchen and which are synced together via Bluetooth. We were inspired by the new Seattle based Amazon Grocery Store, and are working under the assumption that traditional barcoded products will be a thing of the past.

‍Prototyping

Coming soon.

Checkout our original deign blog here.