Personal Project
2026
Creating a food rescuing app
I designed a food rescue experience with a team of four that connects surplus food with budget-conscious users, making it easier to discover affordable rescue deals while encouraging sustainable choices through rewards, mystery boxes, and real-time offers.
Overview
Making food rescue feel worth choosing
Every day, perfectly edible food goes unsold because of excess production, closing-time leftovers, short shelf life, and limited redistribution systems. At the same time, students and young professionals are looking for affordable food options.
Crumbs was designed around this disconnect:
What if the food that gets wasted could become the food someone was looking for?
Problem
Good food was being wasted while people still looked for affordable meals
Cafes, bakeries, and restaurants often discard edible food because of excess production, unsold inventory, closing-time leftovers, and short shelf life. At the same time, students and young consumers are actively looking for budget-friendly food options.
Challenge
Food was being wasted while affordable food was still difficult to access
How might we make surplus food feel desirable?
The challenge wasn't simply to create a marketplace for discounted leftovers. We wanted to make food rescue feel affordable, exciting, and rewarding enough to become part of everyday food choices. This direction emerged through our early ideation around affordability, sustainability, student needs, repeated usage, and emotional engagement.
Research
Understanding what makes people choose food
We explored how people make food purchasing decisions, how they perceive sustainability, what motivates repeat usage, and whether they would consider surplus food when quality and trust were clear.
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Wall of Information
Survey Findings
Insights
Cheap food alone wasn't enough
Our research showed that affordability was a strong motivator, but users still needed food to look fresh and trustworthy. Limited-time deals could create urgency, while rewards and visible sustainability impact could make the experience more engaging and meaningful.
Define
Turning research into design principles
The findings gave us a clearer direction: Crumbs needed to make savings obvious, build trust around surplus food, create excitement through discovery, and give users a reason to return. Sustainability had to feel like a natural part of the experience rather than an additional responsibility.
Users
Two sides, one food rescue ecosystem
Crumbs needed to work for both the people looking for affordable food and the businesses trying to sell their surplus. Students and young professionals wanted convenient savings, while businesses needed a quick way to turn unsold food into revenue.
Competitor Analysis
Existing solutions solved part of the problem
We compared Crumbs with Too Good To Go, Swiggy, Zomato, and Flashfood to understand how existing platforms approach food rescue, affordability, discovery, rewards, and sustainability. While competitors already solve parts of the problem, the research revealed an opportunity to bring these motivations together around a more student-focused rescue experience.
Ideation
Exploring different ways to make rescue engaging
We explored discount-based rescue, sustainability tracking, mystery boxes, campus offers, and gamification before bringing the strongest ideas together. SCAMPER helped us push these directions further and explore how they could change the way users interact with surplus food.
Design Direction
From "leftovers" to "rescue drops"
One of the key conceptual decisions was to change how surplus food was framed. Instead of presenting it as food that was simply left over, Crumbs turns it into a limited opportunity to discover, save, and rescue something good.
Final Design
A food rescue experience built around affordability and impact
The final concept brings together real-time discovery, discounted surplus food, student offers, mystery boxes, rewards, and sustainability tracking. The aim was to make rescuing food feel simple enough for everyday use while giving users a reason to feel good about the choice.
