Project Log
Foodie , less waste, more meals.
A fridge & pantry tracker designed to cut household food waste, built and user-tested as a Human-Computer Interaction course project.
01
Overview
Foodie is a mobile app concept that helps people keep track of what's in their fridge and pantry so groceries actually get used before they expire. Built for CS 3873 (Human-Computer Interaction) at Georgia Tech with a team of four, the project took an idea through user research, wireframing, and a full evaluation study with real users.
02
The Problem
College students throw out a surprising amount of food. Groceries get pushed to the back of the fridge, expiration dates get forgotten, and meal planning rarely happens. We wanted a tool that made it effortless to know what you have, what's about to go bad, and what to use first, without turning inventory management into another chore.
03
Approach
We focused on speed and clarity over features. Two principles guided every design decision: adding an item had to take seconds, not minutes, and the user should always be able to see what was about to expire at a glance. We prototyped a camera-based add flow so users could snap a photo instead of typing, paired with a clean list view sorted by days remaining.
04
Design & Build
I worked in Figma to build out wireframes for the core flows: onboarding, camera capture, manual item entry, the inventory list, and item detail. We iterated based on peer reviews and a round of user interviews. Two notable changes came out of testing, we renamed the ambiguous "ADD" button to "ADD MORE ITEMS" so users understood it returned them to the camera, and we introduced a dedicated "unopened goods" section so countdowns only started once an item was opened.
05 · Interactive prototype
Try the core flow
The prototype turns our central design principle into a six-step interaction: make adding food fast, then make freshness easy to scan. Move through the flow or select any step to see how an item travels from camera to pantry.
Current step
Welcome
A clear entry point for new and returning users.
Foodie
Track freshness.
Reduce waste. Eat smarter.
06
Outcome
We ran a five-user evaluation study using a mix of timed tasks, a Likert scale survey, and NASA TLX workload ratings. Results: a 37-second average task completion time on first use, an average score of 5/5 on "adding an item is effortless" and "the user interface is intuitive," and unanimously low mental, physical, and temporal demand on the NASA TLX. Users described the app with words like "life-changing" and "easy."
07
What I Learned
The biggest takeaway: good HCI is about removing friction, not adding features. The interfaces that scored highest in testing were the ones where we cut steps, clarified labels, and trusted users to figure out the rest. I also got hands-on with Figma as a real design tool, not just for screens, but for thinking through flows before a single line of code is written.