FridgEats is a smart fridge camera that utilizes advanced motion tracking technology to recognize and identify food items, thereby significantly reducing food waste and storage problems. Its accompanying app allows users to quickly locate specific food products and suggests personalized cooking recipes based on the ingredients users already have in the fridge.
Role: Design lead
Areas: Research, Strategy, Branding, Product Development, Design
Software: Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop
Introduction
Abstract
According to a research, the annual food waste from a single family is estimated to be $1,866 whereas 77% of Americans responded that the biggest reason for the waste is because they forget what is in their refrigerator. Although many smart products were introduced to solve this issue, these products still lack to provide food storage location and additional guidance for users to efficiently find and use stored food products. Thus, this research aimed to design a smart product by implementing motion tracking technology to help users make better use of their food products at home.
Design Background
Although smart kitchen appliances has been introduced in past years, these products may not as affordable and not compatible. As motion capture technology has been used in various fields, smart fridge camera has space for improvement by implementing the technology to help users in the kitchen.
Who are the users affected?
-Family of 4 or more who likes to cook
What issues are they facing?
1.Digging in the fridge to find specific food ingredients
2. Forget what is stored in the fridge
3. Hard to keep track of all refrigerated food products
Which leads to...
1. Additional time before cooking or eating
2. Buy additional or unnecessary ingredients for cooking
3. More food waste
Research Question:
"How can a single family household better locate and use food products in their refrigerator to reduce potential food waste?"
User Storytelling
Persona Research
Storyboard
The user story represents the possible usability problem of a home refrigerator from a user group.
UX Product Design
Branding Concept
Mind map
Idea sketches from keywords
Vector sketches
Final Brand Guide
Product Design & User Interaction
Product Design
Product Role of the Design Solution:
–Help users make the best use of perishable food items inside their home refrigerator for storage and cooking.
–FridgEats’ smart fridge camera will monitor user action made inside the refrigerator and track food products to trace food availability and location while providing its information on an app.
User Interaction:
Users will have two applications, Smart fridge camera and a smartphone application.
1. Fridge Camera:
- Slide switch to turn on/off
- Button input for wifi connect
2. FridgEats app (major user interaction):
- Finger touch for buttons
- Gestural interface to zoom in & out
- Voice commands to utilize specific actions
Product Functions:
1. Fridge Camera:
- Rotate in all angles to capture
- Motion Sensor
- Night vision
- Trace product storage location (from motion sensor)
2. FridgEats app
- Illustrate product locator map
- Show recordings of actions inside the fridge
- Search product availability
- Find recipes from available food products
- System setup (including fridge model input for mapping)
- Camera installation and instruction guide
Fridge camera idea sketches
Product Mockup
Product details
Key functions
User Flowchart
User Flow chart
Wireframe
Low-fidelity
High-Fidelity
User Testing and Usability
Development of Surveys
Demographic / pre-test survey was given before the usability test using google forms.
Demographic survey
Pre-test survey
Usability test statements:
1. Register your refrigerator for personalized installation guide
"You are prompt to either scan or manually add serial label of your refrigerator to view FrigEats installation guide based on your refrigerator"
2. Find where specific food product (Broccoli) is located
"You are trying to find Broccoli without digging in your refrigerator using the “find” feature in the FrigEats app."
3. Find cooking recipes of specific or available ingredients
"You want to use specific ingredients to cook dinner for your family without going to the grocery store for additional ingredients. Find cooking recipe using an ingredient from the 'cook' page."
4. View previous recordings
"You want to view image captures and videos of what has been recorded inside your refrigerator. Find and view previous recordings from my account."
Testing Methods
Total of 4 user tasks were given to 5 participants using the Maze, a user testing platform, while all participant’s process were monitored using Webex screen share.
Participants were given two minute maximum time to complete each tasks intend to record the outcome as a fail if the participants exceed the time limit. Duration of each time for individual tasks and path of clicks were recorded in Maze.
Test snapshots
After usability tests, each participants were given post-test surveys using google forms.
Pre-test survey
Data Analysis & Findings
Pre-test results
Usability test outcomes
Post-test outcomes
Out of five participants tested, only four had full success rate in all tasks. Although 80% of participants had direct success rate for task 2, finding broccoli, two of the participants noted that it would have been difficult to locate the page by clicking “view details” without any instructions given.
Correspondingly, all participants who replied that they have encountered difficulty found task 2 most difficult. However, all users responded that visual and written descriptions were easy to understand with positive rate of overall experience.
