Narrative & Future State Storyboard for Meal Organizing App

Narrative:

1. Emily is a very busy graduate student who is financially and environmentally conscious. She is stressed by the idea of meal-prep because she gets overwhelmed when she is at the grocery store and doesn’t like to eat the same thing for multiple meals in a row. She is also stressed by how much money she is spending on take-out and how much plastic she wastes with each meal.

2. Emily starts using an app that a graduate-student friend recommended to her that will help her save money on food and reduce her plastic consumption.

Emily plans to go to the grocery store and cook on the weekend when she has the most time.

3. Emily thinks about dishes she wants to make for the week. She opens her app and starts planning. She adds her meals: for breakfast she will have yogurt with granola and fruit and for lunch/dinner roasted vegetables with couscous and pasta with sausage. She will get some take-out meals from spots near school.

4. When she is ready to go to the grocery store she opens her app and finds a grocery list based on her planned meals. She adds to/edits the list as needed.

5. Emily goes to the grocery store and picks up her ingredients.

6. & 7. She scans her receipts with her phone starts cooking.

8. When she is finished cooking she notes how many meals she can get out of each dish. Her app calculates how much each serving costs her.

9. She uses her app to drag and drop her meals into the week. She sees where there are holes in the schedule and plans to get takeout those days. Emily is relieved that her food is figured out for the week.

10. She refers to her app schedule throughout the week to see what she should pack or buy that day.

If it is a take-out day she notes the cost of the meal in her app.

11. At the end of the week she receives analytics on how much she spent for each meal and how much plastic she saved/used.

Every week that she uses the app she gets more insight about her personal spending and plastic-consumption habits. Based on this information she can start to understand what types of stressors make her spend more money and use more plastic.

Future State Storyboard: