Reducing Food Waste in the Community

Acumen Human Centred Design - Derby Jammers | Jen, Jean and Simon

How might we reduce food waste in our community?

DiscoveryPhase...

Objectives:

● Understand food waste and loss issues● Identify any working solutions in existence● Identify innovation and originality● Understand the food production ecosystem

We contacted users from every point in the food-production chain; from farmers, through to charity CEOs, small business owners, store managers and end-consumers.

We interviewed people about how they managed food waste in their own home and investigated commercial solutions to food waste currently in use.

We sought to understand where the best place to tackle food waste might begin.

What we learned...

Food skills are the basis for a healthy life and well-being.

People’s homes are one of the worst places for

food waste.

Younger people especially lack food skills.

Food marketing and advertising affects how people think about food waste.

People want appealing food, but don’t know how

to achieve this.

How might we...

… reduce dependency on skills without making

food impersonal?

… make food advertising portray reducing waste

positively?

… work with food retailers to be more

proactive in reducing food waste?

Key insights...

1. Skills come first and are the basis for everything else.

2. Businesses are motivated by profit,

not the health of their customers.

3. Marketing has done a lot of damage, but can

also be a force for good.

4. Planning is crucial for efficiency.

Our BIG IDEA...

Making the most of technology and big

data.

A intelligent lifestyle tool that takes the

work out of food skills.

Reducing food waste in the home

and in-store.

Story Board

1. Awareness: Food retailer and manufacturers include positive call-to-action at point-of-purchase and throughout marketing.

2. Interaction Consumer signs up via tablet / mobile device. Encounters loyalty card data as a starting point to food planning, with further options for manual personalisation e.g. gluten free, or vegan

3. Planning Tool creates a weekly food plan based upon preferences and purchase history

4. In-store Mobile device scanned upon entry to store. Retailer stock levels compared to meal plan. Meal plan adjusts and delivers vouchers for any items overstocked or reaching end-of-life to encourage customer to purchase these

5. Point-of-purchase After shopping, scanned meal plan updates in real time to account for any extra items or impulse shopping purchases

6. At home Meal recipes with how-to videos and instructions delivered to device at pre-set times. Alarms utlilised to help manage timings

7. Optimisation Meals ticked off as made and eaten. Any changes recorded and meal-plan updates to account for food not used.

Persona

SB3

Prototype

We prototyped the product with a full-time working single parent...

Clearing out food that had gone to waste, and preparing for next day’s

food.

Visiting the supermarket and

exploring her shopper journey

in detail.

Exploring the point-of-purchase

experience.

Finally, cooking a meal afterwards.

We used drawn examples of the tool at

each stage to gain feedback and insight.

TabletInterface

Evaluation

We wanted to find out...

1. Would the tool fit well with the shopping and cooking experience?

2. How was the tool perceived in relation to reducing food waste?

3. How easy was the tool to use

during the process?

“ This tool is amazing! I’m terrible at organisation at home because I’m so busy and would love to try using something like

this to help me save money and food”.

WSYLTET integrated well into the shopping experience as it was delivered

via mobile devices, (eventually supported by 3G or instore Wifi).

Prototyping also identified the fact that WSYLTET could also be used to teach and encourage food skills amongst the

family’s children.

The places in the consumer journey where the tool interfaced received a positive response from the consumer

about the potential to reduce food waste.

The initial prototyped interface designs, adapted for each device type and using a

simple and uncluttered design made using the tool inuitive and easy.

Our next iteration of prototyping would be to run a full test of the user experience across 2-3 days based upon a short run of gathered shopping

data and delivering a short meal plan by email.