Role
I led design strategy to kickstart Trash Panda's subscription features with:
• User Research
• Wireframes
• Interaction Design
• Usability Testing
• Branding
Platform
• Mobile iOS
• Mobile Android OS
Team
Product Manager
Creative Director
Product Designer
Visual Designer
UX Copywriter
Marketing Team
Project Highlights
Outcome
600%
Free-trial to paid subscription conversions.
0.3
Average increase in stars across Google Play and Apple App Store ratings.
$50,000
of earnings after one quarter.
Overview
Problem
Trash Panda is a free mobile app that helps grocery shoppers identify harmful ingredients in food products through barcode scanning. After a year of launch, the app grew a substantial user base and needed to start earning revenue to support its users.
Solution
Trying to keep Trash Panda's main barcode scanning experience free, I designed new features that would provide users with additional resources to find healthier food through an affordable subscription.
FEATURE
PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
FEATURE
CUSTOMIZING FLAGGED INGREDIENTS
RESEARCH
Identifying pain points through user surveys and app reviews
FINDING 1
Users want us to tell them what they can replace their unhealthy snacks with.
Although Trash Panda allowed users to identify questionable or harmful ingredients in foods, the app did not provide any alternative recommendations. Users simply wanted to be told what they should buy.
FINDING 2
Users have unique dietary restricts and need the ability to customize their flagged ingredients.
A popular critique expressed how the app only labeled results as "potentially harmful, questionable", and "good". Users wanted to be able to customize these labels to include allergies.
SURVEY RESULTS FROM 63 USERS
APPLE APP STORE REVIEWS
FEATURE
Helping users effortlessly explore and discover healthy food choices through curated product suggestions
User Pain Point
Users express that finding a replacement to their favorite unhealthy snack is difficult and time-consuming.
Restructuring the app's hierarchy to introduce a tab dedicated to browsing
THE LIST TAB
The purpose of this tab was to allow users to access curated lists of Trash Panda approved products. This allowed us to group product recommendation together and offer more value as a paid product over single recommendations.
UI CONSTRAINTS
We were still going through a branding revamp during the creation of this feature. This challenged our ability to ship consistent UI with purposeful color choices.
PREVIOUS APP HIERARCHY
PROPOSED APP HIEARCHY
Challenges with the Lists Tab's first iteration - from browsing difficulties, to excessive colors
BROWSING DIFFICULTIES
The previous iteration of this design generated significant design debt from the lack of solid foundations.
TOO MUCH TO FOCUS ON
We were still going through a branding revamp during the creation of this feature. This challenged our ability to ship consistent UI and resulted in a misuse of colors. As a result, the interface's visual design suffered making users unable to focus on a single element.
Using wireflows to present improvements, and trading off user-testing to invest in a solid design system
ORGANIZING LISTS TO MAKE BROWSING EASIER
As the number of lists continued to grow, we needed to improve the browsing experience of the List tab.
I presented wireflows to product and engineering team to get their feedback and work through technical constraints.
TRADE OFFS
To promote efficiency across the team, I opted to address the growing design debt that the previous iteration created, and traded off user testing time to build a solid design system with the help of another product designer on my team.
Since there was less time for to do user testing, I validated the feature's designs by conducting user tests with folks within the company.
The Final Iteration - An improved browsing experience and visual interface
IMPROVED NAVIGATION
We grouped lists into categories to enhance the browsing experience of the Lists Tab. This approach allowed us to strike a balance between facilitating user task completion and ensuring engineering feasibility.
A SOLID DESIGN SYSTEM
We simplified the color usage in our design system components by opting for a neutral grayscale palette. Through a meticulous audit of our previous design, we discovered that our vibrant UI overshadowed product images. This new adoption of neutral colors ensures that product images can shine within the UI, providing a visually enhanced user experience.
BROWSING PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
FEATURE
Enabling users to identify ingredients based on their allergens or dietary restrictions through customizable settings
User Pain Point
Users expressed the need to customize their flagged ingredients to identify foods that fall under certain allergy or dietary restrictions.
Auditing the app's user journey to discover where we should implement user customization
OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN ONBOARDING
We can make new users aware of the this feature and how it'll help them on their health journey.
OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN THE HOME TAB
We can remind users that this feature is available to users and give them access to the subscription sign up page.
OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN PRODUCT INFO
A family may have different dietary needs. Therefor we should allow users to change their settings while viewing a product.
OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN USER SETTINGS
This is where users should intuitively change any app settings.
The final iteration
HOW IT WORKS
After subscribing to premium, users can go to their settings to select which ingredients they want to flag. At the moment, we are only offering users their most requested ingredient types, but we plan to expand in the future.
How the customization feature affects the app's Search experience
SHOWING IMPRACTICAL SEARCH RESULTS
Customizing flagged ingredients received positive responses from our users. However, it inadvertently led to congestion on the search results page, displaying items that users wanted to avoid.
ALLOWING USERS TO FILTER OUT INGREDIENTS
To remedy this, I implemented filtering options, allowing users to exclude unwanted search results and enhance their browsing experience.
Results
CELEBRATING LISTS
At the end of 2023, we had announced Lists as one of our users' most frequented features. Since the release of lists, we've gotten requests for various curations related to holidays, budget, and lifestyle.
TRASH PANDA WRAPPED
GROWING INTEREST IN TRASH PANDA PREMIUM
Over the course of one year, we were able to build 2 subscription features which generated a interests in Trash Panda premium. Around September of 2023, we released the ingredients customization feature, causing a spike in new trial sign ups.
