A global issue
Our initial research into the problem area.
Our team started with secondary research to understand the problem at a global scale and define some core statistics which would help us pitch to our "investors" (the class and professor). We searched high and low for statistics and studies around this topic and found three striking figures which guided our entire project. The three figures are: "1/3rd of all food produced is wasted", "55% of all edible leftovers are left unused", and "3.5lbs of food is wasted per person per household each week".
Next we took research into our own hands and conducted our primary research with 4 different techniques. We conducted, 2 participant observations, 11 cultural probes, 29 interviews with experts/users, and received 106 survey results. I played a large role in this process, creating the cultural probe diary, conducting interviews and more. We had just a 1.5 week timeframe. We used all of this great data together and affinitized, finding trends and commonalities between insights to develop deeper and more meaningful How Might We statements.
Together we moved forward with a more clear and distinct path forward. Our final target audience was 18-35 year old home cooks who cook for small households.