In today’s fast-paced world, many of us struggle to juggle daily tasks, leaving little room for peace of mind. That’s why in this Workshop we decided to tackle one of the most common stress points: grocery shopping. Our goal was to find a solution that not only simplifies the planning and shopping itself but also blends seamlessly into everyday routines.
Identifying and Defining the Problem
We started by focusing on a key pain point for busy individuals—managing household chores. For that we created the following persona.
On the basis of this Empathy we created the following problem definition to get a clear overview of the concrete problems.
Because this is a very broad problem to tackle and there are already many technologies existing to help people with household chores, we moved on to the second phase of the Design Thinking Process.
Searching for solutions
We started this phase by trying to focus on more specific pain points for busy individuals. We soon realised that there are already a lot of Smart Home appliances existing to support people in doing their household chores (e.g. robots, voice assistants etc.). So we thought about an area where we thought help is much needed – managing groceries. Whether it’s keeping track of what’s running low in the fridge or forgetting items on the shopping list, the process of grocery shopping often adds to stress rather than relieving it.
The above described thought process is reflected in the documentation of our Disney Method :
Planning and Prototyping of the technical solution
After we looked back at the results of our Disney Method, we decided to develop a prototype for a grocery list web app. The idea is that you have a scanner which you can attach to the fridge.
Imagine this: you’re running low on milk, juice, or any other product. Instead of mentally noting it or scrambling to add it to a list, you simply scan the item’s barcode using a small scanner attached to your fridge. The product is automatically added to your digital grocery list in our app. No more missing items or last-minute store runs.
Our prototype focuses on reducing the mental load of keeping track of groceries. The app syncs seamlessly with the scanner, ensuring that all items are captured and organized without any extra effort. It’s designed to fit into your routine without disruption—scan, add, done.
How It Helps
By integrating technology into a routine task, our smart fridge scanner reduces cognitive load and saves time, allowing users to focus on what truly matters. It’s intuitive, user-friendly, and, most importantly, tailored to stressed individuals who want to simplify their lives without sacrificing convenience.
Looking Ahead
We’re already thinking of ways to expand the system. In the future, the app could allow users to order everything directly from the list, making grocery shopping a fully automated task.
But for the start we focused on a basic prototype, so for the MVP we said that we should be able to have these basic functions :
- User registration and login
- Scanner logic: Scanner scans products and sends the barcode to the Backend
- As soon as a product is scanned it gets added to the personal grocery list
- Basic frontend -> show login and display added products + mock Order button
You can find all the important information regarding the technical part in this repo: https://github.com/lauraboro/Design-Thinking-Hackathon
Business Canvas Model
Below is an overview of the Business Model Canvas that guided our project development:
Group: Noemi Klimpel, Dominik Rusz, Laura Borowski (IT3l)