Fridgee

Project Description

An app to help keep inventories for community fridges accurate and help fridge volunteers.

Problem

This project was created by me and Aaron Guhin for an Adobe Creative Jam. The prompt of the Jam was to create a prototype of a mobile app that would address an issue related to food security. We needed to both find an issue and design an app that wouldn’t seem obvious. We decided to design for community fridges because they are interesting. But we didn’t know much about them.

Insights

We conducted research into community fridges to gain a deeper understanding. Our observational research led us to discover that, although there were attempts to provide fridge inventories on websites, they were incredibly inaccurate. In order to make these inventories valuable, there needed to be a way to keep track of what went into the fridges and what went out of the fridges, but it would have to be done in a way that wouldn’t undermine the spirit of the community fridge concept.

Solutions

Fridgee is an app prototype that allows volunteers, donors, and donees to participate in the process of keeping fridge contents up to date. These users would use the app to unlock the fridge and then use a simple interface to indicate what they added or removed. It features a minimal sign-up process, a way to find fridges, language options, a way to report issues, and a way for volunteers to schedule their visits.