Last Call
WINTER 2022 (Capstone Project)
Last Call is an app that aims to reduce food waste created by restaurants and independent grocery stores.
The primary function allows businesses to list unsold food surplus that would otherwise be going to waste on our platform to sell at a reduced price to students and low-income households.
Roles: Visual Design, UX, Business, & Project Manager
Created with Figma.
Collaborators
Serena Patel (Business, UX)
JiaJia Kong (Visual Design, Business, UX, PM)
Cindy Quach (Business)
James Ahn (Visual Design, UX)
Diya Dadlani (Visual Design, UX)
Aliya Khaki (Visual Design, UX, PM)
Jacob Brintnell (UX, Business, Visual Design)
Georgia Nyland (Business)
The Problem
Last Call address the UN Sustainability Development Goal of zero hunger.
Through user research conducted by the User Experience team, we concluded there are two main target user groups for our product: the consumer (user) and businesses (vendors). With the consumer group, we tackle the problem of food affordability, and with the vendor group we tackle the issue of food waste.
Consumer
The consumer group refers to the users of the app that will be making purchases of food from vendors, targeting low-income households and students in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Areas. The average Canadian spends $200-$254/month on groceries, and might face problems such as finding affordable food, storage of food, lack of time, safe cooking, lack of food choices, and fear of hunger. With the COVID-19 pandemic, Toronto reported a 45% increase in visits to food banks, and new food bank clients increased by 61%.
Vendor
The vendor group refers to businesses such as local grocery stores or restaurant owners. Food waste in Canada is about $31 billion per year, with 9% of the waste contributed from hotels, restaurants, and other institutions. Main reasons for restaurant food waste include not eating certain parts, expired food, mistakes in the kitchen, customers leaving food on their plates, and incorrect orders that are sent back.
Our Goals
We connect local customers with local restaurants to provide good meals for people. This encourages local shopping and reduce waste. Partnering with vendors allows us to find better means to distribute excess food by allowing low-income families and students to have access these meal options at lower costs. With Last Call, we are trying to create a more sustainable world plus future and improving accessibility to resources for low income households and students.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
The Process
Preliminary Research
Through user research and secondary research, we learned that there was a need for our project, and that it was indeed viable. From a user survey we conducted, the majority of our users were from the Kitchener-Waterloo area. According to Statistics Canada, the cities in Ontario where people live in low-income households (out of 36 cities) included those. Additionally, through secondary research, it was uncovered highest student populations regarding universities and colleges are:
- Western University (London)
- University of Toronto (Toronto)
- McMaster University (Hamilton)
- University of Waterloo (Waterloo)
- Sheridan College (Mississauga)
These five locations are where we would first launch the app, expanding throughout Canada and globally as we scale.
UX Research
Based on the preliminary research conducted, we created three separate personas to encapsulate our target demographics. These personas included a student, a grocery store owner, and a restaurant owner – in order to explore our target users’ pain points, frustrations, likes and dislikes, and motivations. We then defined features for each of these personas that would be required for our final prototype.
We also created user journey maps and user flow diagrams to explore the process one would embark on while using the app, based on their personas.
Color & Typography
COLOUR: The primary and secondary colour scheme was chosen to evoke the sentiment of welcoming as well as environmental consciousness. These sentiments relate to our mission of providing food to community members in need, as well as reducing food waste. To encourage appetite, red was incorporated as an accent tone.
TYPE: Inter is a easy-to-read, web-friendly sans serif font that we picked to be used throughout the application. It is friendly and professional, aligning with Last Call’s mission to be accessible to everyone. Due to the multiple weights of the font possesses, it was not necessary to use a secondary font for headings, rather change to a heavier weight instead.