Reducing Food Waste
Interactive experience for the SOS lab to teach middle school students about the food waste.
Team
Me, one UX student and two graphic design students
Tools
Figma, Spline & Adobe Illustrator
Project Duration
4 interactive classroom sessions
Overview
In my interactive design class, my team and I developed an interactive learning experience on reducing food waste for middle school students. This experience was created for the MSU museum's modular SOS lab, which is a museum room equipped with a 3D globe. We hope that this interactive learning experience will help students better understand this pressing issue and motivate them to make a positive impact in their own communities.
The Problem
Food waste is a significant issue in the global community, with an estimated one third of all food produced going to waste each year. This not only has environmental consequences, but also contributes to food insecurity and economic inefficiency.
The Goal
The goal of this interactive learning experience is to increase awareness among middle school students about the impact of food waste and encourage them to take action to reduce it in their own lives, in order to contribute to a more sustainable and equitable global community.
Brainstorm
Field Trip to SOS lab
On the first day of the project, our professor took us to the SOS lab and showed us the globe and some examples to inspire our design.
Brain dump
After the field trip, my team and I brainstormed a variety of global issues, including climate change, poverty, culture, internet, and consumption. We wrote our ideas on sticky notes.
Define
Once we had topic of interest, we grouped them together based on common themes. After that, we held a vote to decide on the topic we wanted to create an innovative learning experience. After a careful consideration, we ultimately decided on food waste as the focus of our project.
Starting The Design
Mood board
On the second day, we spent time getting inspiration and creating mood boards. My section of the mood board focused on realism and depicted the impact of food waste on a global scale. It showed how some parts of the world have an abundance of food while others have nothing. I wanted to represent the real-world consequences of food waste and inspire action to address this issue.
User Task Flow
After creating the mood boards, our team began discussing potential interactions such as gifs, videos, and visual elements. The user task flow is as follows: when the student enters the SOS Lab, a map appears on the 3d globe displaying the top five countries with the greatest contribution to food waste. The user is then prompted on the kiosk to select a location to view data on food waste. Once the user has finished viewing the information, they are given the option to take action to prevent food waste or not. If they choose to take action, they will be shown a video of food from the top five countries being redistributed around the globe. If they choose not to take action, they will see a video of someone drowning in food.
Wireframe
After determining the user task flow, we created wireframes to better understand and visualize our idea. This allowed us to see how the project would look and function in practice, and make any necessary changes to ensure that it met our goals and the needs of our users.
Prototyping
High-fidelity Prototype
After completing our wireframe, we presented it to the class, we received feedback from the professor and our classmates. We then used this feedback to create a high fidelity prototype, which allowed us to further refine and improve our project.
Video walk through
Going Forward
Takeaways
Impact
Designing an interactive learning experience for middle school students about food waste was a fulfilling project for us. We recognized the importance of addressing this issue and wanted to create an engaging and meaningful way for young learners to learn about it. While we were unable to present our project to students as this was a class project, we were proud of the interactive experience we created and believed it would effectively educate and motivate middle school students to take action and make a positive impact in their own lives and communities.
What I learned
Working in a group with individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives was an interesting and rewarding experience. We had to listen to and consider everyone's ideas and find a way to integrate them into our project. It was not always easy, but we were able to compromise and come to a consensus that we were all happy with. In the end, our hard work paid off and we were proud of the interactive learning experience we had designed. It was a great feeling to see our final prototype and positive feedback we received from the professor and the client.
Let’s connect!
If you have any feedback and constructive criticism, please send me a message, email or connect via Linkedin; any and all feedback and criticism will be highly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to read the case study.
