Soodie
Rewarding sustainability for eco-friendly foodies.
As part of Western Founders Network’s 2020 Product Design Sprint, my team and I were challenged to find a solution to plastic waste. Single use containers represent a significant source of waste and environmental impact due to their low recyclability. Soodie, is a rewards app designed for eco-conscious foodies to incentivize the use of reusable utensils.
ROLE
UX Design, Research, Ideate, Prototype, Solution Pitch
TOOLS
Figma
DURATION
24 hours
TEAM
Mitchell Li, Yvone Yang, Justine Trieu (me)
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we reduce the plastic pollution produced each year in the food and drink service industry?
The Solution
With Soodie, users can continue their foodie adventures while being incentivized to be sustainable through it all. Soodie uses a double-sided business model that benefits local food service businesses and their customers alike with incentives for using reusables.
THE OPPORTUNITY
With the various settings plastic is used & polluted, of particular concern is single-use plastic in the food service industry has a significant contribution to. This is why most experts agree that reusables are best for the environment and why my team focused on encouraging reusables in our solution.
User Research
My team and I collected data using a survey and got responses from 10 respondents that fit out criteria. We decided our target users were eco-conscious Millennial/Gen-Z foodies as a group who would find the most value from this app. This demographic can be characterized by their passionate love of food, interest in trendy & “instagrammable” eats, eating out 3-5 times a week, and an average to above-average level of environmental consciousness.
We also conducted research on the landscape of the food service industry to better understand current trends.
KEY FINDINGS
86%
of respondents wish to take steps to minimize their ecological footprint
74%
report they intend to use reusable containers attributed their lack of use due to forgetfulness
92%
reported a willingness to carry reusable containers around if incentivized
Users want to lead more sustainable lifestyles but need incentives to adopt new habits.
Defining User Goals
Through our research, we defined the user goals for our product to achieve.
CUSTOMER
Playful — app is satisfying to use
Educational — app provides accurate information on a user’s personal environmental impact
Rewarding — a feel-good experience for users
BUSINESS
Customer Loyalty — increased customer loyalty through incentive program
Awareness — increased awareness & exposure to new customers
Brand Image — elevated eco-friendly brand perception
Ideating
Branding
We opted for a soft & minimal green colour palette, as well as a cute logo character. These decisions were intended to represent sustainability in a friendly & approachable way.
Solution
Earning Points
The dashboard features all the popular food/drink services that are partnered with Soodie and offer BYOTC (Bring Your Own Takeout Container). Users have a quick overview their points earned sorted by the restaurants that the user is closest to earning their next reward.
The “My Impact” sections provides an overview of the user’s total impact on the environment since using Soodie with different metrics. When a user brings in reusables for their meals or drinks, the employee at the cash register can scan the user’s unique barcode to award points. The following screen will show how many points they earned, as well as their impact on the environment from this single action.
Redeeming Rewards
On Rewards page, users can view all the rewards they have accumulated. There are sorting features included based on category of food for easy access to rewards for the foods/drinks the user is craving. The following screen will show how many points they earned, as well as their impact on the environment from this single action.
Finding a Restaurant
Users also have the option to focus on their favourite restaurants to see available rewards, upcoming ones, and other restaurant-specific information. They can navigate to these pages either in the Popular Near You section, from the search bar, or by pressing “SEE MORE” on the rewards page.
Challenges & Takeaways
Know your users
While this may be rather obvious, our target user group of Millennial/Gen-Z foodies is a very large demographic. It would have been more helpful to gather more detailed user research on their habits, other interests, types of food/restaurants (trendy, insta-worthy, local gems, large chains) to better inform our design decisions.
Remote teamwork
My team collaboratively built this app within 24 hours working remotely. We learned to manage our time, delegate tasks suited to our unique strengths, and collaborate effectively online. A large chunk of time was dedicated to ideating and planning as a team so that we were all in alignment before the designing stage. This included ideating features, branding, determining user goals and wireframing.
Keeping feasibility in mind
Although I am a business student, with this being my first design sprint, there were times when I neglected the feasibility of the product to focus on the visual design. I thought the product idea was solid and I wanted to get straight into designing thinking the that is what’s most important. Thankfully my teammates (who come from consulting backgrounds) helped slow things down to further discuss the product’s value proposition to businesses and competitive advantage. Looking back, this design sprint has taught me the value of every stage in the design process & the pitfall of cutting corners.
In my pursuit to learn and practice UX/UI design, I found it challenging to finish my projects. I second-guessed every little aspect of the design, played around with spacing for hours, and never seemed to be happy with the outcome. This is one of the reasons the 24-hour Product Design Sprint hosted by Western Founders Network was such an incredible learning experience for me as a budding designer. The time pressure forced me to commit to my design choices and prioritize other elements of the project such as research, testing, & pitching. Furthermore, many of my previous projects were independent. Working in a team was great practice for not only communicating and justifying my design ideas, but also working collaboratively with non-designers. This product design sprint was one of my first but most definitely not the last and I look forward to continue to develop my skills in future projects!