MY EXPERIENCE

I have had many different types of housing experiences: I have lived with my family, alone, or with my roommates; I have lived in my home country and in foreign lands. In these experiences, my daily food consumption compels me to open the fridge almost every day. But I often encounter problems during the use of fridges, food expiration, odor contamination, excessive food, etc.

OBJECTIVE

To design a mobile app that eases young adults’ and young workers’ fridges using experience by helping them organize the refrigerator, remind foods’ freshness, and cook meals.

RESEARCH

During the research above, I found that many are troubled by storage, detection, and cleaning when it comes to fridge use. Thus, I conducted further market research online. By collecting a lot of user experience data, I understood the common troubles they share, in order to facilitate the summary of troubles and in-depth targeted interviews later on in the project.

2nd-hand Research

Judging from the demographics of those who complain online, most of them focus on work or study instead of life. Thus, when they are troubled by their fridge use, rather than spending time figuring out how to better manage their fridges, they choose to complain about the ineffectiveness of their fridges' design or that it is what a fridge usually looks like. Therefore, their demands about fridges mainly focus on how it can better serve their fast-food lifestyle.

1st-hand Research — Interview

To better understand the pain points of using the fridge, I interview people from age 19 to 30. Here is the main content of a typical interview:

1. When, in general, does the interviewee use their fridge?

2. What, in general, does the interviewee put in their fridge?

3. What aspects of fridge use does the interviewee wish could be improved?

Target User Persona

User Journey Map & User Requirements

I drew a user journey map pointing out the issues the target user may face when they use the fridge and make food, such as forgetting when they put the leftovers in the fridge and buying too much food than they need, etc.

By concluding the first-hand and second-hand resources, I came up with four major pain points:

1. Not knowing what’s inside the fridge

2. Uncertain about the conditions of the items

3. Putting items in random places in the fridge

4. Hoarding too much food to fit in the fridge

Stakeholder Map

After the above series of research, I have drawn the following stakeholder map. It includes the major fridge-related activities of my target users and the general functionalities of my design.

Related Product Analysis

After researching smart fridges, applications, and tutorial videos, I have created a radar chart based on personalization, user-friendliness, and information currency. In my design, I will try to incorporate their strengths and avoid their weaknesses, in order to make my design more efficient, personalized, and user-friendly.

MY DESIGN

After the above series of research, I have drawn the following flow diagram. It includes the major fridge-related activities of my target users and the general functionalities of my design.

Main Functions

System Design