Overview

When you look at a typical morning montage in a movie, you often see the main character snoozing their alarm, grabbing the paper in their robe, and pouring themselves a cup of coffee. Our mornings might be quite different from a movie but there is one thing we have in common--with every cup of coffee comes waste. Coffee waste. 

Did you know there’s other ways to reuse used coffee grounds? The used coffee grounds can be used for neutralizing odors, exfoliating skin, fertilizing the garden and many more. 

CoFertilize is a mobile application to connect you with your local coffee shop to collect their used coffee grounds to use as fertilizer for your garden. The goal of CoFertilize is to reduce and reuse used coffee grounds while fertilizing your garden with no cost.

People Problem

“As a coffee addict, I find myself either making or buying coffee everyday. Because I drink so much coffee there’s a lot of waste that comes with it and it makes me feel sad for the environment. I want a product that helps me reduce and reuse some of the coffee waste that I create everyday.”

Brainstorming broad and bold ideas:

I started by exploring these questions: 

1. What nutrients does a coffee ground have that plants need?

2. Do people really use this for fertilizer?

3. Are coffee shops willing to give out coffee ground for low cost or free?

4. Why don’t gardeners use free fertilizer such as used coffee grounds?

User Interview

I interviewed two baristas, one gardener and one environmental science professor. Here are a few key points from my user interviews: 

1. Barista said, “99% of the time customers don’t ask for it (used coffee grounds).”

2. Barista said, “If customers asked for it (used coffee grounds), I wouldn’t know how to give it to the customers.”

3. Gardener said, “I don’t have time to do the extra research on used coffee grounds for my garden. It’s more convenient for me to use the same fertilizer for my garden.” 

4. Environmental science professor emailed, “The main nutrients plants need are nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus… both soil and weather/climate are very important for plant growth.”

These user interviews helped me understand the individuals perspectives in regard to the local coffee shop giving their used coffee grounds to gardeners. It also educated me on what nutrients plants need and important factors for plant growth.

Coffee Shop Observation

I was curious to see if there was a constant flow of customers when it wasn’t peak coffee hours. During my 2 hours and 12 minutes of observations I found out:

• 148 customers walked in 

• 152 cups of coffee were served 

• 16 out of 148 customers ordered more than 1 drink 

• 5 out of 152 cups of coffee were served in reusable cups

This observation surprised me with the amount of people walking, but mostly the number of cups of coffee being served. It brought to my attention that during morning coffee rushes, there must be more than 152 cups of coffee being served. 

Testing for Nutrients

Considering some plants require acidic soil and the main nutrients that plants need are the same as the nutrients found coffee grounds. I wanted to test the pH, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus level from the different type of coffee grounds I collected. To have a better understanding of which coffee blend will work better with what plant. 

I was able to find all the pH levels for the coffee grounds I collected from a local coffee shop. The fresh coffee grounds seemed to have been more acidic than the used coffee grounds. While trying to measure the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus levels I ran into unexpected difficulty. The coffee stained the water and it was impossible to measure the levels. I’m still researching other ways to measure these three nutrients.

Narrowing and combining ideas:

After collecting and organizing the user interview data. Some of the common trends I found were: 

• Users are unaware that coffee grounds can be used as fertilizer 

• Users didn’t know how to give the coffee grounds 

• Users didn’t know how to ask for the coffee grounds 

• Users are unsure which plants can be fertilized with coffee grounds 

Who is the User?

CoFertilize users are coffee shops and gardeners who can partner up to reuse the used coffee grounds. The coffee shops will have the used coffee grounds for gardeners to use as fertilizer. By connecting the gardeners with their local coffee shop, it would be convenient for the gardener to get the used coffee grounds.

I started to place all the important features for the user together to create an ideal CoFertilize user. By creating personas, it will help me envision the user flow.

CoFertilize Users

Wireframes

In this stage, I started designing this idea by drawing a rough sketch with some paper and pencil. I wanted to create a simple wireframe that was easy to understand and explain to others.

Low Fidelity Design

I used Sketch to design and display the flow that I was envisioning for this app. While designing I had to remind myself that I wanted to reduce waste by using used coffee grounds. So, for my next iteration the plan was to give the consumers the only option to use used coffee grounds.

Usability Testing

During my usability testing, I asked my participants to walk me through CoFertilize by explaining what they would do on each screen. Then I was given feedback from the participants.

Some of the trending issues were:

1. unclear on how to navigate through CoFertilize

2. wants to only use the used coffee grounds

3. working during the coffee shop hours

Some of the potential solutions were:

1. creating a tutorial to walk the user through CoFertilize

2. giving the user the only option to use the used coffee grounds from the coffee shop

3. adding in a delivery option for the user

High Fidelity Design

Onboarding

After the splash screen there will be a tutorial on how to use CoFertilize. 

1. CAPTURE a photo of your plant & LOCATE a local coffee shop with the coffee grounds you need

2. PICKUP the coffee grounds or if you don’t have to time then DELIVERY is an option too

3. HELP THE ENVIRONMENT by reusing and reducing waste

My Garden

Capture a photo of your plant and add it to your garden. Then locate the coffee grounds you need from a local coffee shop. Keep track of how well your plant is doing with the recommended coffee grounds by updating your plants history.

CoFertilize

You are given the options to either pickup or have the coffee grounds delivered. There’s no delivery charge, but it’s highly recommended to give your coffee runner a tip. When picking up your coffee grounds from the coffee shop, there might be some special instructions so look out for it.

Coffee Shop

If the coffee shop have too many orders, they might not have enough used coffee grounds for everyone. The coffee shop is given the option to choose the date and time this order can be picked up or delivered. The new order will be added to the calendar as a reminder and way to keep track of orders.

Order Update

In order to help coffee shops stay organized, they’ll need to keep track of orders that are completed. Just a simple click of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ indicating the order was completed by being picked up, delivered or neither.

Coffee Shop Profile

Coffee shop can keep their profiles updated for customers to know how many bag(s) of used coffee grounds they’re able to receive from this shop. The coffee shop can also decide whether they want to offer pick ups only, delivery only or both.

Takeaways

This project was challenging because I had to do extensive research that I’ve never done for my other projects. Although it was tough, there were a lot of learning opportunities and once again reminded me to be flexible. Some future steps for CoFertilize were: 

1. Understanding and exploring the OCR technology, but also creating an ability to manually enter in the plant

2. Actively looking for an engineer partner to make CoFertilize a reality