Regain control over chaotic pantries - Minimize Food Waste with Pantrol
A mobile app that helps households reduce food waste through smarter tracking and reminders
Project
Pantry Database and Management
Timeline
3 weeks - June, 2022
Type
Concept + Prototype
My Role
Product Designer, Project Management - Conducted research, ideation, wireframes, and UI design
About
This project was the 2º place winner of a Hackathon from a partnership between Earth Hacks and Amerikahaus among other companies.
Motivation: Food wast - I believe these two words give enough motivation.
Design Challenges
We had a hypothesys that we were not able to test due to time constraints, however this is part of a hackathon’s format. Leaving aside the judgment thoughts, rely on heavy research and deliver fast solutions that the group believes can generate high impact with low effort.
The Process
Created in Adobe Illustrator
1. Empathize / Debrief • 2. Research / Explore • 3. Define / Ideate • 4. Create / Design
3D asset created in Blender
Where it hurts?
Every year, millions of tons of food are wasted, much of it because people forget what’s already in their fridge or pantry. Beyond environmental impact, this leads to frustration and unnecessary spending.
In conversations with households, I noticed a recurring theme: managing groceries feels chaotic. Users struggle to remember what they have, plan meals, and avoid buying duplicates.
Challenge: How can we design a simple, daily-use tool that helps people track their groceries, reduce waste, and save money?
690 million people went hungry in 2019 - with this number expected to rise.
Research & Insights
Methods
• User interviews with 8 households
• Competitive analysis of grocery and meal-planning apps
• Surveys on shopping and food habits
Key Insights
• Users often forget what’s in their pantry, leading to duplicate purchases.
• Manual tracking (notes, photos) is time-consuming and prone to errors.
• People want subtle reminders, not intrusive notifications.
Quote from a user: “I often go to the supermarket and buy more than I actually need. I pick up general items ‘just in case,’ and by the end of the week, a lot goes unused. It feels wasteful, but I don’t have a better system.”
Opportunity: A tool that tracks pantry items, suggests what to use, and reminds users in a non-intrusive way.
Olio App - Competitor Solution
Insight from Survey
People find easy to do the groceries list, although people often buy duplicate food and find expired food in their pantry.
Created in Adobe Illustrator
Target Audience
To build this profile I conducted three interviews and a survey with twelve people, with the purpose to gather insights and deny or verify a hypothesis.
The insights gathered was:
• Most of the people feel bad about expired food when they find it at home.
• 75% of the people find it easy or very easy to buy what one needs from the grocery store.
• 58,3% of the people are very likely to often buy duplicate and unnecessary items.
Created in Adobe Illustrator - 8 Interviews was conducted to create this Persona Profile
Key Insight
• As Paulo, I want to have a clear picture of my pantry, so I can feel more in control.
Solution
A personalized food database is built for each user based on the items entered into Pantrol. Users will receive notifications when their food is about to expire. This notification provides the user with options to either incorporate the item in suggested recipes or to donate the food. For users who participate in a community composting program or engage in at home composting, instructions on how to properly compost each item are provided.
Additionally, Pantrol creates a customized grocery shopping list based on the user’s logged food database and previous grocery shopping history. Thus, allowing the user to know exactly what items they have at home and what items they need to buy. This function helps the user to prevent and minimize their food waste as well as save money by notifying the user that they already own the item and do not need to purchase it.
Companies that elect to put the Pantrol stamp with a QR Code on their products are also encouraged to provide additional product information, such as a easy scan the expiring date and third-party sustainability certifications to show the user that their company is transparent about their products and are committed to reducing food waste.
How it works
User Journey
Created in Figma
Information Architecture
Created in Figma
Flow Study
Created in Figma
Low Fidelity prototype Study
First wireframe draft, following the flow study, with the intention of planning levels of information, structure and intended behaviour.
The colors
My strategy was to use colors that were food related, also to influence some action, linking with environment and nature.
red: shade was selected as the main color, working as a call to action color, but still gentle and warming.
Black: shade mixed with a little bit of red to be used on the text to match the primary color.
Off White AND SAND: shades to be used as background and middle level respectively, so I could have some contrast between these colors.
Green: shade, vibrant, to be used as little as possible, and show the user the great action they took towards helping the environment.
App Prototype
Prototype's overview in figma
Conclusion
We, as a team, were very satisfied with the end result given the timeframe to work on this project. We achieved second place in the competition.
I believe that spending solid time doing deep research and setting a target audience from the beginning was crucial to further develop the product in the right direction, and it was part of the end success.
Therefore, I understand that more user testing is necessary to validate if the visual design is working as planned, but due to time constraints we needed to move forward.
TL;DR (Quick Overview for Scanners)
Problem: Food waste due to forgotten pantry items
Solution: Smart grocery tracker with subtle notifications
Impact: Improved user control, reduced duplicate purchases, and saved money