Cynthia Zhang - Phone Fridge

Software: Figma

"Phone Fridge" is my app idea that's still a work in progress.

The app intends to reduce food waste and help users live more sustainably

WIP Logo Designs

What is "Phone Fridge" exactly?

Simply put, "Phone Fridge" is an app I've wanted to make for a while now, aiming to solve some problems regarding food waste. I began this project after noticing a pattern in my life where I unintentionally threw away food I didn't use, either because it spoiled without me knowing or I didn't know how to use it up. I desperately needed a tool that helped me keep track of food expiration dates, and also suggested recipes to use up ingredients. The goal of Phone Fridge is to act as this missing tool.

Origin story?

In 2020, when I was supposed to be in Providence oil painting in RISD illustration studios, I was instead home in Shanghai staying up late on my computer to attend classes set in EST. This meant my sophomore year in college I spent entirely at home with my parents, seeing them more often than I did even in high school. When junior year rolled around, it was time to head back on-campus, this time living in a dorm with a private (though shared amongst me and my three roommates) kitchen instead of one publically used by a whole dorm building. We also had a fridge that was our responsibility to fill up. Of course, there's the choice of eating at our dining hall for every meal of every day, but I had this strange urge to learn to cook for myself. Here is where the troubles began.

I'm not the best book and tend to buy things I think I will use in the future, such as sausages, eggs, cream cheese, that type of stuff. However, I found that I often forgot about my groceries and usually ended up throwing most of them away since they spoiled. I've tried documenting these groceries myself, but I end up never going back to that list I made weeks ago. I'm pretty much still a beginner home cook, so I wish I also knew easy ways to use my leftover groceries. Often a recipe will ask for only a bit of what you end up buying; for example, (and this is based on a true story) in shrimp scampi, you only need a bit of parsley, but what do I do with the rest? What do I do with the stem? It just sits in my refrigerator welting away. It's unintentional food waste and I end up wasting money too.

If it’s not clear yet, the app I want to make is one I desperately need. It’ll help people track the food in their fridge and remind them if they are about to be spoiled or not, not to mention just generally educate people about how long food can actually be kept in the refrigerator; did you know an opened package of cream cheese only lasts for ten days? If I’m not using it every day, or if my roommates aren’t cream cheese lovers (they aren’t and I’m not), that food will most definitely be thrown away.

What are the main goals?

To help users:

- Track their groceries

- Remind them of food expiration/spoilage

- Suggest recipes to use for unused groceries/scraps

Ideally, they can create a shopping list inside the app, and tell the app if they've opened certain packages or not. The app should also educate people on how to store certain items and their must-use dates. Those dates on actual food packages confuse me a lot, so I'm aiming to develop a clear-cut way of telling people when to use up ingredients and how to tell if something's gone bad. It would also educate users on how to store food properly so as not to infect each other if they do spoil.

Progress so far?

I don't have any background in CS or coding, but I am a designer so I've tried to create the design and UI/UX of the app using Figma, and am presently working on making the app usable with Bravo. This is an independently run project, but if it takes off I am hoping to build a team and help others solve the same problems I have. Feel free to take a run through my work-in-progress prototype on Figma as of now shown below.

Though being completely original is nice, while working on this project I've found services that aim to provide similar solutions to my app. I haven't given up though, because this started out with a problem I had personally and I believe I can also solve that problem.

Initial sketching & Brainstorming

UI/UX Inspiration

I referenced apps that provide a similar service/have a similar interface to what I want my app to have. Apps shown: FoodKeeper, MyFitnessPal, and Intent on IOS.