'What's in your fridge?' is the project that aims to support students' hectic food journeys. For all students, the semester is like riding a roller coaster with ups and downs. Their busy schedules may cause them to become food insecure, which could have an impact on their health and academic performance.
This project was created as a part of the Sociable Designer studio in the Master of Design Innovation and Technology at RMIT with Tiptanya Polpak and Wansi Yan under the supervision of Areli Avendano Franco. I handled on being a UX/UI Designer & Motion Graphic Designer.
Food security is when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (World Food Summit 1966). It means that food insecurity is the situation where people lack physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food, not being able to meet their dietary needs and food preferences.
The City of Melbourne conducted an online survey from 2018 until 2021 called the City of Melbourne Community Indicator Survey (COMSIS). The survey also revealed that the majority of food-insecure adults in Melbourne are young adults (51.8%) and students (43.5%).
Figure 1: Negative impacts of food insecurity in international students, 2024, Margaritha Jessica
There are several ways students do to cope with food insecurity, which the most prominent ones are reducing or skipping meals, working extra hours to cover expenses, and choosing less-nutritional food. While it is normalised to do those coping mechanisms, some might not realise how bad it can affect them.
Food insecurity might cause poor physical and mental health of students, which would lead into them being absent from classes. All the impacts would be interrelated with them having lower grades and withdrawing from courses which would also lead into a poor physical and mental health. To cover their food expenses, they would have to work and be absent from classes. This would lead them to high likely be exploited in workplaces.
Figure 2: Design opportunity from the food insecurity experiencing scale, 2024, Margaritha & Tiptanya
Food insecurity has four phases in its’ experiencing scale (Figure 2), from being food secure with no problems getting food to severe food insecure with no food for a day or more. We believe there are opportunities for improvement in the process of being food secure and preventing them from going mild food insecure.
To get to know more about the problems, needs, and desires of students, we conducted in-depth interviews with several students and surveys that were filled in by 45 students in Melbourne, both local and international students.
Figure 3: Survey result, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya, and Wansi
They stated that they don't have time to have proper meals due to busy school and work schedules.
Most students know or had to learn how to cook because they know that cooking helps a lot to save money in Melbourne.
Food prices in Melbourne are expensive and most students have limited free time, hence those are the prominent problems of getting food.
From our observations, surveys, and interview, we realised that both local and international students share the same problems, with affordability and time being the core problem of retrieving food. We decided to shift our focus to students in Melbourne who are busy with school and work, are prone to food insecurity, and are stressed with assignments.
Figure 4 : User Audience, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya
With two core problems identified, affordability stood out more a s more students agreed about the high food prices in Melbourne. However, there were some setbacks in thinking about the affordability aspect
Based on our interviews and surveys, it shows that students can still be able to afford food regularly even though they know the prices are high.
It revolves around the economy which the government is majorly dealing with. To face economic problems, there are many stakeholders, such as investments, global trade, and many more.
Food relief services exist on campus, such as Compass Cupboard, RUSU free food events, and many more. In Melbourne, they are widely available, such as Foodbank, SecondBite, and OzHarvest.
These considerations made us decide to shift our focus from affordability into the second core problem for students in getting food, which is time.
Figure 5 : Factors of time in food insecurity, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya, and Wansi
Several time factors contribute to food insecurity (Figure 5), such as physical or emotional, cooking, and unchangeable schedules. With physical or emotional, sometimes students are too focused on doing their assignments and wouldn’t want to break their focus to get something to eat. After finishing their assignments, they would be too tired to cook and would end up skipping meals or buying takeaways.
Based on the interviews and surveys we did, most students don’t have problems with their cooking skills. However, time does play a part in the cooking process. The most common thing happening is that cooking takes a lot of time which would waste someone’s time when they are already busy. There are also unchangeable schedules such as class and work schedules, which we can’t control.
Figure 6 : User Audience, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya
After knowing the pain points of time, we started to brainstorm of the possible ideas around time (Figure 6). There are 3 different categories, which are physical items, community, and support.
From all of these ideas, we started thinking that one idea connects to the other idea. If it’s for students’ needs, especially through-out the semester, they might need different services based on what stage they are in.
Based on the categories of ideas we had, the themes led us to think about meal planning.
According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, meal planning is a great way to keep track of having homemade healthy meals. There are many types of meal planning, however, it depends on the food preferences, cooking ability, schedules, and personal goals.
Figure 7 : Reasons of choosing meal planning, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya, and Wansi
There are many benefits of meal planning. Students can spare some time to cook in bulk for a couple of days’ meals while being able to track the ingredients and portions they make. At the same time, meal planning helps to save money from buying quick takeaway meals amidst busy schedules. It reduces stress and avoids rushed decisions about what to eat.
Even though meal planning has been a well-known method, students lack knowledge of it, making them resort to buying takeaways and skipping meals. This creates an opportunity for us to give more knowledge and help students build the habit of meal planning.
Figure 8: Student’s experience throughout the semester, 2024, Margaritha Jessica
To know which points can we implement our service, we drew a graph (Figure 8) of students’ emotional experiences throughout the semester. At the start of the semester, students are still having a great time coming back to campus. As it goes to the end, they go through ups and downs which would lead them to be stressed with tons of assignments at the end of the semester.
Aligning it with the experience, we aim to have a phase to raise awareness starting from the beginning of the semester. As the semester goes on, there will be a knowledge-giving phase. It serves as the process for students to build the habit of meal planning. As it reaches the end, there would be a reminder phase in which we would remind students to utilise the habit they’ve learnt beforehand.
Figure 8: Student’s experience throughout the semester, 2024, Margaritha Jessica
With our chosen concept, we try to align each service we want to provide with what is needed throughout the weeks of the semester.
We looked into activation campaigns world-wide and in Australia. One of the examples that caught our attention the most is the R UOK? campaign. They had interactive installations on World Suicide Prevention Day. It aimed to help people learn more about how to converse with someone who is struggling.
R UOK’s installation also inspired us to get users engaged in our service. We would have installations with a personalised quiz to let people reflect on their food-related journey. The installation would be available throughout the semester for students to interact with on campus.
Figure 9: R U OK? interactive panel, 2020, JCDecaux
Having workshops would help students physically learn how to do it and the tools required, such as having enough containers. In the workshops, students would also be given toolkits with more information about schedules, tips and tricks, seasoning and food samples, and containers.
Hence as a solution, we would have an interactive workshop with different contents to support students and be physically engaged in meal planning activity. The workshop would be available once a week with different topics, from week 1 until week 10. Since students would start to get busy by the end of week 10, we felt it would be ineffective to have workshops running until the end of the semester.
Figure 10: Toolkit prototype, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya and Wansi
Social media is a great way to give out knowledge in a quick, interactive, and fun way. These days, people use social media such as Instagram and TikTok to give out and receive knowledge, wrapped as an easy to digest posts.
When people are burnt out from assignments, they usually open their social media quickly. The social media would be used to post quick additional information about meal planning and remind people through posts and stories.
In this last phase, we would have an Instagram account to engage with people, remind them to eat or do their meal planning as well as build a community. We decided to stop the workshop at week 10 and move on with the reminders on Instagram starting from week 11 until the end of the semester.
Figure 11: Social Business Model Canvas, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya and Wansi
This framework helped us to identify the feasibility, desirability, and viability of the service. To spread our service, we have channels such as opening a booth during orientation week, being active on social media, having our installation, workshop day, and advertisement partnerships.
Our value is to support students’ well-being and food journey throughout the semester by giving them cooking and meal planning skill development, peer-to-peer support, and building the habit of meal planning which can be useful for them until the end of the semester, possibly continuously.
Figure 12: Stakeholders map, 2024, Margaritha, Tiptanya and Wansi
To zoom in more on who would help us run this service, we mapped out our stakeholders (Figure 12). Since this service would start in RMIT, we aim to have RMIT’s support to run this service. We aim to partner with RUSU since they already have projects around food relief, which are the RUSU free food and compass cupboard. As a touchpoint, we can have booths or information being shared through RUSU events or social media.
We would run this service for students and by students, hence students would be able to take part in volunteering for workshops and other events. e put Culinary experts to our stakeholders to assist us in forming materials for workshops.
For funding, We would have the support of StudyMelbourne, which is a government institution for student experience in Melbourne. We might have support from Queen Victoria Market and Good & fugly to supply food products to be used in the cooking workshops.
To make sure our service would be applicable to different ranges of users, we decided to create journey maps of various backgrounds of students.
Patrick is new to Melbourne.He’s excited to explore about what’s availableon campus and saw the installation duringorientation week. Hence, the first touchpointPatrick would have is the installation.
Mia has a semi-busy life. While being burnt out from assignments, she came across our social media. She took an interest in meal planning and decided to join further activities. Hence, the first touch pointMia would have is social media.
Alexa works full-time. While walking to class, she spotted our fridge-installation and decided to search our social media. Hence, the touch point for Alexa is that she saw the installation and was curious about it.
With the help of creating different persona backgrounds, we understood which touchpoints might be important to make our design inclusive.
Initially, our installation would only be screens spreading around the campus. However after further ideations, we decided to have an installation with an open kitchen design, letting students feel immersed as if it’s their own kitchen. The fridge would have a personalised quiz to make users reflect on their eating and cooking behaviours.
The space would have real-looking kitchen tools which can be opened. Inside, there would be tips and tricks around meal planning or how to utilise the tool itself. On the side of the fridge, there would be various recipes for users to take.
We went around the RMIT campus to search for a possible location. In the end, we settled with the area near the RMIT Connect in Building 10, which has a high traffic of people passing by every day.
Figure 15: Installation in building 10, 2024, Wansi Yan
Having mascots is a great way to make a service memorable. We decided to have a mascot which would be the ‘meal fairy’ or ‘fridge protecting fairy’, leading students in their quiz journey. Our goal was to create a gender-neutral fairy that would be able to capture the attention of everyone, not leaning towards specific genders.
Our concept of Mimi, our fairy, starts from it being round with fairy wings. We had user tests to know how people think when they saw Mimi, and the feedback we got was that Mimi’s visual look doesn’t relate to its ‘job’ being the meal or fridge fairy. Hence, we went through several iterations to reach our current version of Mimi.
Figure 16: The creation of Mimi, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
Initially, we had characters to be compatible with the keywords of each quiz result; orange for organised, banana for balanced, eggplant for efficient, and strawberry for spontaneous. However, t final characters that we chose for the results were orange for organised, pear for balanced, cabbage for efficient, and strawberry for spontaneous.
Figure 17: Final characters, 2024, Tiptanya Polpak
For the personalised quiz, we started with creating the flow of questions and answers. We want to have a friendly and fun story-like approach, understand the user’s situation, and not keep them doing the quiz for too long which might lead to a higher bounce rate. The questions would let users reflect on their food behaviour, and possibly have the motivation to change for the better at the end of the quiz.
After some ideation, we come up with 4 sets of questions and answers. The choices they make throughout the quiz will lead them to different results, which rank from being quite food secure or having the motivation to be more secure, until the lowest rank with no knowledge and no motivation to be more food secure.
Figure 16: Personalised quiz flow, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
Moving on to visualise our quiz, we decided to do it on a 49-inch sized screen which is a medium and accessible size for people to interact with. We started from the paper prototype to see and ideate the visual concept we were aiming for.
The quiz would start with the user answering each question, and on the last question, users would have to touch the screen to reveal their results, showing their fridge condition and show their respective characters. Users can share their results to their email and have the option to consent to receive promotional emails, such as workshop announcements. Alternatively, users can scan a QR code to receive their results on their phone.
Figure 17: Quiz paper prototype, 2024, Tiptanya Polpak
Figure 18: Quiz wireframe, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
Figure 19:Quiz Flow Prototype, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
Figure 20:Quiz High Fidelity Prototype, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
Our workshops would act as a medium for students to get more meal-planning knowledge by doing hands-on activities. Each week, we have different topics of workshops, ranging from advice sessions, meal planning cooking sessions for beginners and intermediates, and nutritionist sessions.
We decided to create a system of drop-in attendance. There would be a staff standing on our installation on the workshop day. If people are curious, the staff would offer them to join the workshop that is currently running. There would be signage in front of the building to lead students to the workshop location.
Figure 21: Workshop poster, 2024, Tiptanya Polpak
Figure 22: Workshop signages, 2024, Tiptanya Polpak
Figure 23: Workshop signages, 2024, Tiptanya Polpak
The social media we’re going to use mainly is Instagram. Through our account, we would post various content such as tips and tricks, quick recipes, workshop announcements, and most importantly, reminding students to eat and use their knowledge by the end of the semester.
To build a community and engage with students, we would post Q&A and other interactive media on our Instagram stories. As we partner with RMIT, RUSU, and RMIT Kirrip, we would have their help to promote our Instagram by possibly reposting content from our account to reach a broader student audience.
Figure 24: Instagram Mockup, 2024, Margaritha and Tiptanya
After polishing our service, we did user testing for students and sent out our quiz to 16 people to try. With our testing, we got insights that some users were interested in getting to know more about the service after doing the quiz, they wanted to know if the social media and workshops are real and would be keen to join.
Users were having fun doing the quiz and curious to see their results. Some also stated how they liked how the quiz questions and answers understand their current situation.
Out of the 16 students that have tried the quiz, we got the result of 3 oranges, 2 pears,10 cabbages, and 1 strawberry. The amountof 10 as cabbage, the third rank, shows howmost students still struggle to manage theirtime to get food.
Figure 25: Testing installation prototype, 2024, Amanda Rahmadhani
Figure 26: User testing, 2024, Margaritha Jessica
Figure 27: User testing, 2024, Amanda Rahmadhani
This project is still far from perfect and we realise there are some points with opportunities to be improved. From the feedback we got based on the user testing, it would be really good to extend the length of the quiz as some users stated that they would love to have more questions to answer. We would also want to add personalised recommendations based on each character’s results, as well as adding more micro-interactions such as audio and animations.
We intended to use human-centred design, however, there was a time where we just assumed things and did interviews with organisations. We didn’t realise that talking to users are the most important thing to get to know about their experience. Hence, we realised this risk and mitigated it by doing interviews and surveys.
In overall, this project has supported me in becoming a stronger UX Designer, putting insights from real users and existing providers to create a more solid outcome.
