EatFree App

Overview

EatFree is a new way to find, share, save, and update community fridges near you.

Community fridges are a fantastic mutual aid resource for free food. In many instances, locations, details, and important information about these fridges is not kept in one convenient place for people who need these resources. EatFree aims to address bringing community fridges to an online space. In many cities, free food resources are found through word of mouth and there isn’t a centralized app they can use to find nearby locations. EatFree will help young adult to elderly users find community fridges near them.

In this project I worked solo, conducting all interviews, research, sketches and designs.

Contextual Inquiry

To best understand the needs of the users, I interviewed people who access community fridges and pantries to find out how they learn about these types of resources. I found a need for creating an online database of fridges so that users can see locations all in one place as well as save them for later, share with friends or family, and read up about fridge details. These interviews taught me that the most valuable feature was something that could tell users what is in the fridge as accurately as possible.

Empathy Map

I created an empathy map to better understand how the EatFree users think, feel, act, and speak about community food resource navigation. This exercise helped me to put myself in the users shoes and think about the things they feel in order to target those emotions with my app.

Impact vs Effort Matrix

I knew from my interview findings that real time updates of fridges was the most impactful and original concept for my app. I used an impact vs effort matrix to brainstorm features and evaluate their importance and work needed to complete them to help narrow down my focus. This exercise helped me decide that I wanted to go forward with search, check in, sharing, and requesting features. Other features that were less impactful were excluded to keep the app uncomplicated and simplistic without minimizing the needs of users.

Main Task & Flow

The main task I targeted for my app was updating a fridge nearby. I wanted a streamlined way for users to find a nearby fridge and upload what they say to the app. This would help the next person coming to the fridge have a real time update of what to expect.

Sketches

Before designing, I sketched out the 4 main screens I would be working on to best understand what needed to go into the components. I created map, fridge details, check in, and confirmation pages.

Style Guide

I chose vibrant and fun colors to keep my app upbeat and positive. I created a clean look to make sure users of all ages and abilities were able to interact with EatFree. I used Montserrat and Hind for their modern qualities. Hind, being created for user interface design, helped to make the app accessible, as it has high legibility. I used a food icon pack to allow users to scan the pages without having to read every detail on it. Lastly, I checked that my buttons and text met contrast standards to ensure everything was readable for users with colorblindness.

Final Solutions

Lastly, I created high-fi screens using my style guide and sketches. My final prototype includes all the screens to find a nearby fridge, read the details of it, and check in to help other users see live updates of the fridge contents, details and more. I focused on what things the users would need and find most valuable. I included fridge fullness, cleanliness, fridge temp, item requests, reporting what is stocked, and ability to submit a photo and comments for each individual fridge posting.