💼 Role(s): Software Developer, UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher 🛠️ Languages and Tools: React Native, Javascript, Firebase, Figma 🗓️ Timeline: January - March 2021 👥 Team: Allie Dong, Amanda Yu, Tara Rao-Pandit, Tong Yin Han, and Zoey Wei
SplitPeas is a mobile application that I designed and built alongside four other UW students to help university students reduce stress around grocery shopping. SplitPeas offers students a convenient, reliable and time-efficient way to split grocery trips and bills between roommates. The project was completed as a part of the Tech Under Twenty Cup 2021, over a three month period. In our group I helped design the figma prototype , code the MVP as well as conduct user research.
Problem statement
Busy university students need a convenient, reliable and time-efficient way to organize and split grocery trips and bills between themselves. The draining schedule of the average student makes it difficult to buy groceries, and the large quantities, high costs and fast-approaching expiry dates only worsen this problem.
Context
The main problem we aimed to tackle with this project was university students not having enough time. Visualized to the left is a slide from the University of Waterloo’s preparation webinar for first-year engineering students. As seen in the chart, taking out time for classes, homework and other activities, students are left with only 28 hours to squeeze in recreation, leisure and errands including grocery shopping.
It is easily seen how a time-consuming task such as grocery shopping can be pushed way down the list of priorities. Without this essential lifestyle habit built, students can be setting themselves up for unhealthy lifestyles in the future. So being overwhelmed with lectures, homework, extra-curricular, and more, instead of grocery shopping, they frequently order takeout, eat instant food, or skip meals. When they do find the time to go grocery shopping, they are often forced to buy in bulk, which means quantity over variety and the food ends up expiring before being used.
This links back to the problem statement of giving university students a quick and reliable way to get groceries while also contributing to building a better local community. By having group grocery bills we encouraged a sense of community among university students that relies on roommates helping each other out and taking turns going grocery shopping. By including coupons for local grocery stores, we were helping students save money while also promoting small businesses that might have been impacted by the pandemic. Finally, by including an expiry date tracker we were trying to help reduce food wastage.
User persona
Meet Emma. Emma is a second year University student who lives with three roommates. She is overwhelmed with lectures, homework, extra-curriculars, and adulting. While she tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle, more often than not, she doesn’t have enough time to go grocery shopping and instead frequently orders takeout, eats ramen, or skips meals. When she does find the time to go grocery shopping, she often has to buy in bulk and the food ends up expiring before she even cooks it.
