Go Green With Saveor

Case Study

Saveor

With a growing concern in mind, Saveor is a team passionate about the environment who decided to create a solution to eliminate food waste specifically within colleges, and provide alternative and affordable options to students. Saveor was created in 2022 as a way to create awareness among college students about food waste and provide them with a way to take action while saving money and lowering their climate change footprint - a smartphone app that links college students with on-campus and off-campus restaurants and retailers that have untouched surplus food for a lower price.

Task

Originating as a final exam project, Saveor was a project birthed by myself and 3 of my peers in an effort to reduce college food waste and promote green eating habits.

Our assignment was vague: find a problem and solve it digitally.

I was part of a team of students from the University of Rochester with a shared concern in mind: food waste on college campuses. We created an app to address this issue by connecting students to local restaurants and college dining halls that have untouched surplus food for a lower price.

Research

I researched multiple potential issues in society that I believed to be feasible to tackle using technology:

Potential Problems to Research:

Sleeping Disorder:

Loss of sleep/Insomnia
Jet Lag
Overworked schedule leading up to few hours of sleep

Communication Barrier

Translation Problem between languages
A community to learn the language/network with friends from around the world

Pregnancy:

Protocols, rules and advices for pregnant woman

Normal vs. possibly concerning side effects of pregnancy
Access to immediate communication with a doctor in case of emergencies

Work-Life Balance/Concentration on school work

Creating schedules
Suggestions to optimize schedule

Food Waste (Within the university/campus)

Connect consumers (students) to restaurants having leftover foods

LinkedIn for Creatives (Behance + LinkedIn)

Social media app to share creative work
Networking within the creative community
Opportunity sharing (internships, programs)
Maybe we can add a space for creatives to sell their work?

Fast Fashion

Combination of different online thrift stores’
Normal Shopping App

College Transition
Communicate with current college students/alumni

Potential Problems to Research:

Sleeping Disorder:

Loss of sleep/Insomnia
Jet Lag
Overworked schedule leading up to few hours of sleep

Communication Barrier

Translation Problem between languages
A community to learn the language/network with friends from around the world

Pregnancy:

Protocols, rules and advices for pregnant woman

Normal vs. possibly concerning side effects of pregnancy
Access to immediate communication with a doctor in case of emergencies

Work-Life Balance/Concentration on school work

Creating schedules
Suggestions to optimize schedule

Food Waste (Within the university/campus)

Connect consumers (students) to restaurants having leftover foods

LinkedIn for Creatives (Behance + LinkedIn)

Social media app to share creative work
Networking within the creative community
Opportunity sharing (internships, programs)
Maybe we can add a space for creatives to sell their work?

Fast Fashion

Combination of different online thrift stores’
Normal Shopping App

College Transition
Communicate with current college students/alumni

After deciding on food waste, we began the research process:

$$$

Budget

Based on other food delivery apps (UberEats, Postmates, DoorDash)
$35k Customer app (production + maintenance)
$35k Merchant app (production + maintenance)
$1k-$5K for apps

Process

Throughout the development of Saveor, we met several times a week outside of class to work on our logo, prototype, and website together.

Brainstorm

During our first meeting, we came up with about 30 possible ideas. We then chose our top 3 and voted on which idea had the most potential

Sketches

After deciding to address food waste in our platform, we began sketching our prototyping process and received feedback on what information we could include in our website/mobile application.

Prototyping & Website

I worked on the prototype of the mobile application and logo using Figma and Illustrator as well as designing a bit of the website using Wix.

Finalizing

While finalizing our website and prototype, we worked together to prepare for our presentation and deciding what information each person will share.

Figma

Logo

I created the logo in Photoshop with inspiration from Japanese bento boxes

The tie stands for unity
The box stands for protection
The tongue sticking out stands for yummy

After identifying our app’s characteristics, we created Saveor

Even in the word itself, it can be split into multiple words: Saver, Savor, or "Save or"

Benefits

Why does Saveor matter? What can it do for users? Why should people download it?

Environment

By eliminating food waste, also reduces methane emissions from landfills and this lowers individuals' carbon footprint. Also, it conserves energy and resources, preventing pollution involved in the growing, manufacturing, transporting, selling of food and hauling the food waste, and putting it in the landfill.