Phase 2

Introduction

It is frustrating to realize you cannot remember what you have on hand when preparing meals or grocery shopping. Even worse is the last-minute trip to purchase “that one missing ingredient”. It is an awful feeling to throw out food because you lost track of its expiration date. There have been several attempts by developers to create a solution, but these applications often contain frivolous features such as recipe suggestions and diet planning that are not utilized by most end users. Furthermore, poorly developed scanners and complicated interfaces make many of them unusable. In short, users need simple and functional tools to provide accurate information about their food purchases. 


Related Work

There have been many attempts in recent history to design food tracking applications. Systems such as “smart refrigerators'' or mobile applications with embedded UPC (Universal Product Code) scanners are becoming more common. Smart Appliances require a complex array of sensors to weigh items and track their contents. When sensors detect a product is almost gone the appliance alerts the user. However, these sensors are often unreliable for food items such as vegetables, or anything not contained in a packaged unit. They are also expensive to replace. [1][2][3] As Ufot found in his study, people would prefer to use a UPC scanner over inputting the information themselves or relying on sensors. [4] However, many Mobile applications like Cooklist include frivolous meal planning and recipe features. [5] These features can be desirable for some, but they often make the interface difficult to use and require membership costs. Smart appliances are also following this trend, and it is annoying when all you want to know is what’s in the cupboard.[6] Our app will also feature an option for selecting the expiration date. This is becoming more desirable for people to know and keep track of as products increase in numbers.[7] There was also an investigation done in Hong Kong that showed that adding in expiration date and a few other quality measures increase the use of the app.[8] This will be an important part of our app and will solve that issue of not knowing if what you are using for dinner that night will still be good enough to eat. Another aspect of the app that could be beneficial along with the idea of knowing when your food is going to expire is that it could also help reduce the waste of food products. A thesis was performed on this idea in stores showing that using expiration date tracking software reduced the food waste the store was producing.[9] 

Methodology

To gather data for the design of our application, we will use a variety of investigation methods. Note that this plan may evolve as the course progresses and as we try some methods and begin analyzing data. 

We will use Contextual Inquiry to embed with users in three separate use cases: as they manage their pantry, as they prepare their grocery list, and as they prepare a meal. Specifically, we will use the IDEO Shadowing method to observe users as they go through these processes. We will use these opportunities to observe any pain points, identify any tools or workarounds that they are using, and to ask about the thought processes behind decisions as they make them. These sessions will be recorded for easier note taking and analysis. Combining the IDEO Narration method with Shadowing should enable us to learn users’ motivations or thought processes behind the decisions they make or the steps they take when executing on these tasks.

We will also use a survey or questionnaire created with Qualtrics to gauge and quantify users’ motivations and experiences with food inventory, expiration, and meal preparation. Questions will include asking how frequently they change their meal plan when they are missing a needed ingredient, how often they go shopping mid-meal prep (or send a partner or family member to shop) when missing a needed ingredient, how often they purge expired groceries, and more.

Once we have collected this data, we will use it to find patterns in behavior, list out pain points users are experiencing, and note tools and workarounds they are using. Using this inferred data, we will create user stories for our application. These will enable us to narrow or expand our app’s intended feature set using data-driven design.

Project Outcome

We propose a Mobile application called MyPantry. Our application will provide users with a virtual cupboard and refrigerator, which they can quickly open when they are shopping or planning their meals. New items will be scanned in through video or typed in manually by the user when there is no UPC to scan. Once in the database users will be able to make comments and enter the item's expiration date. We will use the Open Food Facts database to obtain product information such as price, nutritional profile, and images. Users will receive notifications when food items are going to expire. Our prototype will be written in python. The OpenCV framework will be used to optimize the scanner and allow users to scan items in virtually any conditions. Our interface will be simple to use and allow users to view their items without any paid features such as meal tracking and recipe suggestions.  

References