Overview

PantryPal is an app designed to help users track and manage their pantry inventory. The app is connected to a physical smart pantry. Users can reduce food waste, and save money by avoiding unnecessary purchases.

Timeline

Jan 2023 - March 2023

Team

• Aster Li
• Fatimah Almansour
• Linh Duong
• Nibedita Paul
• ThitThit Thein Win

My Role

Designer/Researcher

Research and Ideation

Context

Stocking up on food and ending up wasting a considerable amount of it are hassles that bother most grocery store customers. Additionally, it would be time-consuming to check the fridge and the pantry daily for expired and nearly expired items. Therefore, we created PantryPal, which has simplified the process to make it easy for customers to get control of their pantry before and after their grocery shopping.

Findings

From 5 user interviews and 10 survey responses, we learned that people, especially the household manager always want to manage their pantry with less time and effort, but they cannot easily do that because:

1. Time constraints: The household managers often have busy schedules and may not have a lot of time to devote to organizing and managing the pantry.
2. Inventory tracking issues: it is time-consuming to take note of the used items. What’s more, if multiple people in the household are using the pantry, it can be difficult to keep track of what has been used and what needs to be restocked.
3. Expired and spoiled food: The household managers have to be ensure that their pantry is well-stocked and that the food is safe to eat, which can be difficult when trying to keep track of expiration dates.
4. Budget constraints: The household managers may have to balance the need to keep the pantry well-stocked with the need to stay within a budget, which can be challenging.

Persona

Our mission

• Help build an organized smart pantry
• Allow keep track of the pantry food effortlessly
• Notify with important information such as expiring food, low stock food, and food location
• Help save time for ordering essential items on a regular basis

Users Scenarios

• Track inventory of different types of items (items with/without barcodes)

• Set up auto-reorder for essential items

• Make a grocery shopping list

Design Phase

User testing

1. Overall navigation

2. Auto-reorder

3. Create a shopping list for your next grocery shopping

Key Takeaways

• Embracing Team Diversity: As a part of a team with diverse backgrounds, We witnessed how creativity and innovation thrived, ultimately resulting in a comprehensive and inclusive app design.
• Valuing User Research: Engaging with our users opened our eyes to their needs, expectations, and desires, which played a crucial role in shaping the app.
• Valuable knowledge of smart technology integration: As a team coming up with smart pantry products, we researched and gained knowledge related to engineering, product, and other professional fields.
• Improvement of project management skills: We successfully completed this within a time constraint of 10 weeks.
• A glimpse of what a real-world UX-design job would look like: Through the design process, we practiced Figma, and learned new design techniques, tools, and methodologies that can improve our skills as UX designers.
• A brand new understanding of the users-focused design: The project requires us to conduct research and gather feedback from users. This can give us a deeper understanding of user needs, behaviors, and preferences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, PantryPal exemplifies an innovative solution to managing pantry inventory and reducing food waste through a smart pantry-connected app. The project's strength lies in its comprehensive UX design process, which includes personas, scenarios, and wireframes. Though the project faced limitations such as not testing on the target audience and a lack of engineering expertise, these were largely mitigated. Moving forward, it's imperative to conduct testing with the target audience and consider collaborations with engineers to refine and scale the app, ultimately establishing PantryPal as an indispensable tool in the modern kitchen.