Re:Fresh

Inspiration

The modern zero-waste movement began in the 1980s and found a new wave of interest in the early 2010s. The zero-waste movement's ongoing momentum continues to inspire RE:Fresh today. We've observed how much of this waste originates in our own kitchen, where food often spoils before we use it. This realization drove us to create RE:Fresh, an app that empowers individuals to manage their kitchen inventory effectively and effortlessly, reduce waste, and make more sustainable choices in their daily lives.

RE:Fresh understands the challenges individuals may face in managing household tasks, including reducing waste due to our busy lives and busy minds. With that in mind, RE:Fresh is designed with customizable settings, clear instructions, and intuitive organization to accommodate diverse needs and preferences, ensuring an inclusive and empowering user experience.

What it does

We are your one-stop app that keeps track of items in your fridge, pantry, and more. With intuitive features like expiration notifications and a budget tracker, you'll never let another item go to waste or overspend at the grocery store again. RE:Fresh offers personalized recipe suggestions based on your inventory, connecting you to a vibrant community of other sustainable food enthusiasts.

Inclusivity is at the heart of RE:Fresh. We recognize the unique challenges neurodivergent individuals may face in managing food inventory and reducing waste. Our user-friendly interface and customizable settings cater to all individuals, ensuring everyone can effortlessly navigate and utilize the app to its fullest potential.

How we built it

Collaboratively brainstormed ideas for app structures and flow, addressing any "how might we" statements, constraints, and developing survey questions.
Researched the impact of neurodiversity on food management and surveyed users.
Iterated on layouts and designs using Procreate and Figma.
Developed user flows to ensure a seamless experience for neurodivergent users.

Challenges we ran into

One significant challenge we encountered was obtaining accurate survey responses from neurodivergent individuals. Ensuring that our research accurately reflected their diverse experiences and perspectives required careful consideration of survey design and accessibility. We also ran into a lot of formatting challenges and experiences with Figma. We often struggled with having some lines be exactly parallel to each other. Another obstacle we came across was using the shaping tools often and figuring out how to round out the edges of square frames. Layers were also a new thing that took a while for us to understand and grasp that we can edit different ones while bringing others to the front or the back.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of being able to create an environment that inspires individual and collective sustainable living practices in users of all and neurodivergent backgrounds. Although this is not a perfect model that addresses all potential issues, we hope that the concept is one that will be further explored and achievable in the near future.

What we learned

Another thing we learned is that it's difficult to imagine what your target user is thinking when you yourself are not part of that target demographic. Typically in our designs, we look at users that we can easily survey or interview as a convenience sample such as college students or even adults that we have easy access to like our parents. With users that aren’t as easy to survey, such as neurodivergent folks, we can't exactly pinpoint what pain means and frustrations they might have especially with using typical methods like surveys due to feasibility constraints. As a result, we decided to look at other methods of understanding and empathizing with these users like research papers and critiquing existing products that these users already interact with normally.

What's next for Re:Fresh

In the future, we plan to expand Re:Fresh with additional features based on user feedback and further research into the needs of neurodivergent individuals. We aim to continue refining the app to make it an indispensable tool for promoting independence and sustainability in food management.