Foodshare is a project developed by Cornell undergraduates and graduate students for the course Human-Computer Interaction. It follows the core tenets of the user-centered design process and imagines a future in which students, campus organizations, and dining halls work in symbiosis to reduce food waste through food-sharing, a model proven effective in European and Asian countries.
Some history about food sharing: non-profits, student orgs, and campus initiatives have historically worked towards solving food insecurity among students. Yet, dining halls and student organizations weren't being tapped into despite these existing efforts. As for Cornell's dining halls and eateries, compostables are weighed and collected regularly, and on a yearly basis we would find:
"800 tons of food scraps and organic kitchen waste from Cornell dining halls and small eateries" Cornell Sustainable Campus
With our problem space in mind, we began reaching out to our target audience, Cornell students who have shown a demonstrated need for free or reduced-priced food. Our main point for interviews was the Cornell food pantry, a hub spot for students to purchase subsidized food items for their groceries.
With our problem space in mind, we began reaching out to our target audience, Cornell students who have shown a demonstrated need for free or reduced-priced food. Our main point for interviews was the Cornell food pantry, a hub spot for students to purchase subsidized food items for their groceries.
We began identifying who our target audience was, their goals, and their pain points, and it allowed us to create our persona: Jimmy, a Master's student who is price-conscious and finds many ways to save his money, even if it comes at the cost of having unhealthy meals taking up his life. His academic profile is quite strong, as he prioritizes his schoolwork so much to the point that he misses a few meals a week. To this point, Jimmy cannot help but avoid situations where he has to cook or shop for groceries, but he still desires and places a high value on healthy, prepared meals.
With our persona and his goals in mind, we set out on deciding what would be the best way for them to meet these goals. Our solution would end up being a web app that allow our user to access this server regardless of mobile or desktop usage. We wanted our design to: deliver an experience where the user can find current food availability around campus and allows the persona goal to be achieved in a minimal number of steps.
Because the scope of our user research revolved around food-insecure Cornellians, we will be focusing on the end-user experience for the remainder of this project.
As we got closer to finishing our final prototyping, we had the time and initiative to conduct heuristic evaluations of our design and figure out where our design can be improved. Two of our analyses can be seen below:
As Foodshare@Cornell has reached its natural pausing point, we can slow down and look towards the potential future of this web app, as well as some questions it leaves us.
Of course, the logistical issue of laying down the infrastructure to this is great. Dining halls have to be consulted, proposals need to be done justifying the cost of this project, feasibility needs to be assessed (although initial research suggests this is not a long shot), and another design journey (likely at a greater scale than this) needs to be treaded to create a full interface for food dining halls, participating clubs and organizations, and volunteers. However, once the ball gets rolling (by us or another group), we hope that this project serves as a model for student-centered products in the social engagement sphere and beyond.
Thank you for reading!
