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TIAKI, Your Assistant to Lower Food Wastage

  • Writer: Skylir
    Skylir
  • Jun 14, 2020
  • 7 min read

Updated: Apr 4


TIAKI is a food tracker utilising the traffic light colour system to display food tracking data, aimed at reducing food waste among young New Zealanders. Using the Double Diamond framework, we created an intuitive and accessible tool that monitors the expiration of household food items, encourages better consumption habits, and integrates with existing kitchen appliances.



Design Process


As my first year as a design student comes to an end, our final task for the semester was to develop a solution in groups of four, aimed at addressing one of the following problems:


  1. Promoting wellness and physical activity (e.g., daily steps, physical activity, sleep).

  2. Lowering water usage (e.g., daily household water usage, number of full flushes).

  3. Lowering food wastage (e.g., weekly food wastage, plastic discarded).

  4. Lowering electricity usage (e.g., daily electricity usage).

  5. Promoting social connectedness (e.g., days since last communication with parents).


After a short discussion, our group decided to tackle the food wastage challenge, and chose the Double Diamond framework (Problem ---> Discover ---> Define ---> Develop ---> Deliver) to guide our design process.



Discover


In the researching process, we discovered a significant number of kiwis waste food, energy and approximately 1.17 billion dollars collectively per year out of convenience according to the 'Love Food Hate Waste' research study. Imagine the other socially beneficial causes these resources could be redirected to.


To narrow down our focus, we chose young Kiwis aged between 16 to 24 as our target group, because this demographic shows that 47% of young people are in the high food waste category in our research. Therefore we will focus on reducing the waste problem at its peak contributor demographic (WasteMINZ, 2018).


Another essential factor in choosing this target group is that team Hyphae are part of that demographic. Consequently, we can easily empathise and already have valuable insights into the mindsets of our target group.



Define


During the define phase, we delved into the mind of our target user to detail their thoughts and interactions around the issue of food wastage by creating an empathy map and a jorney map - tracking the interactions our users could have with the potential design solution. 


Our work led us forming our design statement:


We will design a data visualisation to encourage young people to reduce their food waste. This will allow them to save money on excessive food purchases, conserve the environment and create greater respect for our resources. Many young people do have the perception that food waste is an issue which needs to be reduced, however many of them are not motivated enough. Therefore, our design will need to track the proximity of food items expiring in the user's home. Critically, it will also need to prompt the target user to create better food consumption habits. 


Along with our goals:


  1. The visualization should gather data about food items in the users household.

  2. The visualization must be intuitive and straightforward to use.

  3. The visualization must be accessible to the target users. 

  4. The design should enhance existing kitchen appliances. 


Develop


During the development phase, we brainstormed ideations through team zoom calls. We decided to create a screen which visualized the food wastage data of items in the users household and began ideating for the visualisation and specification prototypes. We considered three main questions; What will it look like? What are the mechanisms involved, and are these viable? What is the user's interaction with it?


Ideation 1

The first ideations involved a visualisation of weekly food wastage on the fridge door where food with the shortest lifespans are stored, meaning the user can easily access their food information and link it to their items. Additionally, the fridge door provides a poignant space for the visualisation to be placed as it is a large flat surface and is located in the kitchen. The coloured bubbles would signify the amount of high food wastage that was created. Users would manually enter in items to a food tracker system. This data would then be visualized in a bubble on a touch screen for the user to interact with.

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Ideation 2


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Ideation 3


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Ideation 4



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Ideation 5

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Ideation 6


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Ideation 7



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Final Ideation Prototype


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Deliver


The final design is a sleek looking and modern feeling food tracker. It uses intuitive traffic light colour symbolism to show the food items progressing to their expiry in the vertical columns. The screen can be fitted onto any fridge, which enables greater user accessibility for you to easily upgrade any surface to become smart with this visualisation design.

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Origin of Project Name


Having created the final ideation, we brainstormed names for the design. Our team was naturally drawn to using Maori names to add an Aotearoa element to the design. Through some research in the Maori dictionary, we came across the term 'Tiaki' meaning to safeguard, hold in trust and to protect (Maori Dictionary, 2020). These concepts complemented our design statement to conserve the environment and create greater respect for our resources. Our design not only tracks food but by creating greater awareness of food wastage, it also fosters respect and appreciation for nature's finite resources. Thus, our design is named 'Tiaki'.



Specification:


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Reflections


In reflection, one of our biggest struggles was following the brief. Trying to design something that exhibits information, but is also physical, was something quite challenging for us. Originally our design was very much focused on an intelligent UI displayed on a touch screen, but this was not ‘physical’ enough. Although the touch screen interface was the more plausible/useful design, we had to adapt the idea into a more abstract form to display the data in a physical manner.

Once well within the iteration stage, our team began to comment on whether or not we chose the right topic to focus on — the bane of choice. Ultimately, although we may have found this topic extremely difficult to design for, it challenged us to think outside the box, and have a more critical eye on the service design in our world. With all environmental issues, the problems are deep rooted in the seemingly ordinary systems that exist in our everyday life. This has taught us to oppose the norm and not take “oh but we have done this for years and it’s worked fine” as an answer.


Looking into the future, we propose the development of an accompanying mobile app. This would receive data from the fridge system and make it available when in the grocery store or at work. This would be beneficial as recipes can be planned prior to meal-time, and no double-ups of food purchases would occur. This makes the design more accessible during everyday life, not only at the fridge. 

The app could include features such as the current stats of your food items to keep you up to date on the go. Suggest recipes to create from food which will soon reach the expiry. A shopping list creator with recommendations of your most frequently used items and supermarkets with the best deals for your list. And an educational page containing general information about food wastage, it’s causes and how to prevent it. Additionally, to improve the sustainability of our design in the future, we would like to use more eco-friendly materials to fit along the design theme of conserving natural resources.


In the challenging times, my teammates (Clara, Alice and Marco) provided support, laughters and care. They showed kindness when a hand was in need. That to me, is one of the best qualities of a designer and a human being. Despite we were pressured by time, we remained clear communication and strong work ethic. To me, the mark we will soon recieve doesn not matter as much anymore, because we have achieve something beyond numbers - a bond. I am extremely grateful and thankful to refer to them as my partners, and until we collaborate again, I want to wish them all the very best with the following semester and I expect myself to keep practicing time management and enhance my work efficiency in order to make a better team member.


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