Design Rationale

The different versions in our top 3 designs represented different styles of thinkers, and were inspired by brainstormed designs from different team members. Option 1 was intended more for visual thinkers, with an emphasis on including product images and visually representing the expiration calendar. Option 2 was focused more on “what am I trying to do?” Data is still organized hierarchically but with less of a visual emphasis – more data and images are available for those who are willing to click again to view it. Option 3 took a different approach and thought of the “Home” screen more of a “My Home” screen, with different inventory spaces available up front with images, taking the user to a filtered Inventory / Pantry view. List and Pantry views are deliberately similar, and are designed to show as many items on the screen as possible while allowing the user to click on items to view detail.

We selected the final design because it best married the things we liked most about the multiple designs we built. We liked using bold buttons in a navigation bar that was always accessible, and always allowed a quick access to other functions. Our design philosophy was centered around "what am I trying to do, and what will I probably want to do next?" In our limited self-administered tests, we found that this design enabled a user to go through the full life-cycle - from searching for an item to add to a grocery list, to buying it and placing it in the inventory, to removing and replacing it when it is used or expires - with a minimum number of clicks.

In the previous phase, our user research taught us that viewing expiration dates is valuable. Most users have had generally positive experiences with scanning barcodes with their phone camera, so that should be our lead data entry method when adding new items to list – and respondents specifically wanted that feature. Finally, we also need to ensure that the database we query when scanning items includes non-food items, which are common in respondents’ pantries. Finally, this application will be competing with paper and basic mobile notes apps, so it has to be extremely simple to use, while still offering benefits that these other methods do not offer.