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Food and Drink

🎧 kanak

MESSIN

A conceptual app with the main goal of minimising food waste in the IIT PATNA Mess.

Collaborative Project :
Medha Singh, Kanak Ramteke

The Challenge

How can we reduce food wastage on IIT Campus using a design solution.

In Order to have a better understanding of the situation, we thought of having a contextual inquiry with our mess workers as well as the students.

Insights and Pain points of the Mess Staff:

1. Every day, 150 kg of food is wasted.
2. Unable to comprehend the pupils' dietary habits and preferred foods
3. Cultural dietary differences can contribute to food waste.
4. Since many students do not eat in the mess, there is a lot of food that is left over in addition to the food that students squander.

Insights and Pain points of the Students:

1. Food is too monotonous.
2. They don’t want to have mess food every day.
3. They don’t like all the food items that are served, so ultimately they leave the ones they don't like.
4. Few of them generally have their lunch or dinner in the last minute of the hour, and so if they get engrossed in some particular work or club tasks, they forget to have their food and hence have to depend on the night canteens or restaurants in the campus.

5. Many times students stay in their departments for lab work or practice in the Gymkhana, and the work continues till late nights. So it becomes quite difficult and tiring at the same time coming to the mess from Gymkhana to have dinner and again going back, hence a few students prefer skipping out food and depend on night canteens.

6. Few wake up late and quickly rush for class, they don’t get the time to go to mess for having breakfast. For a few students, it's a regular practice of not having breakfast in the mess.

7. Many students prefer weekly parties outside the campus on a regular basis.

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To have a better understanding of the situation, we called the CHS employees, who informed us that every day, approximately 4-5 barrels of 300kg capacity each are nearly full with waste food.

Journey Map

Designing Solution

Our goal was to design an app in which students could:

  1. Modify the foods they wanted to consume or cancel their meal.

  2. Have a complaint mechanism in place, where students can immediately communicate their problems to the wardens of the individual halls, as most students are unable to attend meetings, and just a few students do attend. As a result, this would provide a better understanding of what alternative improvements could be considered.

  3. If a student chooses a meal but fails to attend the mess or does not choose a meal, he or she will be fined.

Wireframes and Instruction Architecture

Functionalities and Screens

1. Home Screen

  1. When you enter the home screen, you will see Today's Meals in a slider window, which includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. They must choose between veg and non-veg options and can view the menu. Users can also view the menu for the future week.

  2. Then, on the next screen, there are meals and a cancel option with a countdown. This timer basically tells how much time you have left to cancel your meal. If you do not cancel the dinner before the time limit expires, food will be prepared for you whether you like it or not.

  3. Users can also add certain items from their meal

The Idea

  1. Users can select whether or not to eat in the mess, ensuring that food is not wasted to some extent.

  2. Furthermore, the monetary fine will deter consumers from wasting food.

2. Complaints and Profile

  1. The second major feature is a complaint box, where students may express their questions, ideas, or complains about hostel or mess meals and email them straight to the hostel warden.

  2. Users will be able to see the fine they have accumulated on a weekly basis on their profile page. 

  3. Students can also view their detailed graph, which will include all of the day's wise decisions in mess.

  4. Students can also view the due date for paying the fine. The notification can also be found on the notifications area on the home screen.

Style Guide and Next Steps

Next Steps:

  • Planning to survey students for what will be the appropriate monetary fine 

  • Develop the interface even further by making it more interactive and user friendly by quick user testing.

Food Photography
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