Fridgee

A. Introduction

Concept

Fridgee is a mobile app designed to provide portals to community fridge donors, donees, and volunteers so that they can get and provide accurate information about the fridges.

Problem

Food security is a problem for many people the world over, and it has led some in the US to seek out less conventional means of acquiring food. Some people in a growing number of cities have taken it upon themselves to create community fridges. These are refrigerators set up outdoors in a community, allowing donors to add food and donees to take food. However, since these are guerilla, DIY operations, the item tracking is lacking.

Solution

Our goal was to design a product that could give donors, donees, and volunteers a way to contribute to the proper maintenance of these community fridges and their inventories.

B. Research

With the goal of finding a specific issue for a specific audience, we began by brainstorming possible audiences, problems, and concepts and by conducting a competitive analysis to understand the nature of other apps trying to address issues of food insecurity.
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Then, while we conducted Internet research regarding food insecurity, my partner came across a social media post related to community fridges. We researched them specifically to see what sorts of issues they face.
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I visited a community fridge near my house to understand what they look like and how they operate and was able to interview a volunteer that happened to be there. This is how I noticed that the inventory information on the website of the organization maintaining the fridges did not align with the inventory I saw at the actual fridge. This was our design opportunity.

C. Interface Design

Wireframes

After discussing the scope and features of the app, we created wireframes for all three portals—donor, donee, and volunteer—while working out how information would be organized.

High-Fidelity Screens

Our initial plan was to prototype the entire app; however, because of the time constraints, we chose to focus on the volunteer portal for the interactive prototype.

D. Future/Reflection

Conduct additional research to develop the flow related to reporting fridge damage.
Test app with community fridge volunteers to get feedback.
Prototype the entire app.
Present app to the org Los Angeles Community Fridges.

As an app, Fridgee is simple, user-friendly, effective, and fun. We gave careful consideration to how people would use it and how the app could best accommodate the users’ needs. We also feel the app was successful because Adobe Creative Jam judges selected Fridgee as a finalist in the competition.

Armel Patanian

Fridgee | Mobile App

Team

My Role