Design Challenge: Design a solution for a problem which may arise in the future in New York City.
Role: Product Designer
Tools: Figma
Duration: 4 weeks
Product Design | Limiting Emissions in Big Cities.
Discover
Context
During an exchange semester at Parsons, I was challenged to identify a potential future problem in New York and design a solution. Applying design thinking, I explored urban emissions through the lens of food waste and proposed a digital solution to address it.
Discover – Used speculative thinking, future wheels, and world-building to explore how climate change, population growth, and resource scarcity could reshape urban life.
Define – I synthesised insights from these scenarios to identify key emerging challenges and connected them to present-day issues.
Develop – Brainstormed and iterated on solutions to address the city’s future needs.
Deliver – Refined the chosen concept into a high-fidelity mockup, ensuring it was both feasible and aligned with current and future urban realities.
Futures Wheel
My futures wheel explored the ripple effects of expanding farmland and deforestation, helping to anticipate their potential social, environmental, and economic impacts on future urban life.
By 2070, the devastating impacts of climate change are undeniable. Rising sea levels have displaced millions, triggering mass migration to cities like New York and London, while smaller coastal communities have been abandoned due to flooding and bushfires. Urbanization has surged, prompting heavy investment in climate-adaptive infrastructure.
However, skyrocketing energy costs—driven by ongoing wars and taxes on unsustainable energy sources—have made basic necessities like heating and cooking unaffordable for lower-income groups. As traditional farming declines with the spread of arid land, vertical farming has risen in its place. Yet, high transportation costs from fuel taxes have driven food prices even higher, pushing many to the brink of food insecurity.
This sharp rise in food costs has led to widespread affordability issues, sparking public unrest and growing distrust in government institutions. Amid this instability, communities have become increasingly open to unconventional solutions, driven more by desperation than innovation. Despite advancements in agriculture, significant food waste persists, further exacerbating the climate crisis and highlighting the urgent need for more sustainable, community-led systems.
World Building
Futures Wheel - Key Themes
A few key themes emerged in my Futures Wheel that shaped the imagined future I developed during the world-building exercise: rising food prices causing widespread affordability issues, growing public unrest and distrust in government institutions, and a heightened openness to unconventional solutions driven by desperation.
Additional Online Research
Since the problems I identified are rooted in present-day issues, I conducted additional online research to ensure my proposed solution for New York City’s future remains relevant today. I found that in New York City, approximately 1.2 billion pounds (545,000 tons) of food are discarded each year, with the majority originating from households and food service providers. Based on EPA estimates, each metric ton of food waste sent to landfill generates roughly 0.54 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions due to methane released during anaerobic decomposition. Applying this factor, NYC’s annual food waste contributes an estimated 266,000 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions, comparable to the yearly emissions of over 58,000 passenger vehicles. Even partial diversion of food waste could significantly reduce these emissions. For example, diverting just 25% of the city's food waste from landfill to composting or anaerobic digestion would prevent approximately 66,000 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually.
Define
Future Needs
Through my futures wheel and worldbuilding workshops, I identified three key needs of my future NYC residents:
Affordable Food Access: Low income residents are unable to afford necessities.
Food Waste Reduction: Food waste continues to cause environmental strain.
Local Solutions: High transportation costs mean that residents require a solution that is within walking distance.
Develop
Idea 1 | Divert food waste to community gardens.
Description: An app that reduces food waste by redirecting it to community gardens instead of landfills. Users drop off compost at designated bins, scan a QR code, and track their contributions to earn discounts on locally-grown produce.
Pros: Lowers food costs for New York residents while reducing landfill emissions from household food waste.
Cons: Limited availability of community gardens selling produce, potential concerns about urban pollution affecting crops, and future climate and energy challenges making cultivation less viable in 2070.
Idea 2 | Track behaviours and suggest improvements.
Description: A tool that tracks food waste by requiring users to scan receipts weekly and log discarded items. It provides a visual breakdown of waste patterns and shopping suggestions based on past habits.
Pros: Helps users save money by purchasing only what they need.
Cons: Requires consistent user effort and attention to be effective.
Idea 3 | Allow grocers to sell items approaching expiration at discounted prices.
Description: A platform that lets grocers sell aging products at discounted prices instead of discarding them, making food more affordable for the community. Prices decrease as items get closer to expiration, increasing accessibility.
Pros: Lowers food costs for low-income New York residents while reducing grocery store food waste and landfill emissions.
Cons: Relies on grocery store participation, which may be challenging due to the lack of strong financial incentives for grocers.
Idea 4 | Connect small businesses with surplus food to individuals in need.
Description: A platform where small businesses, like restaurants and cafés, list discounted food that would otherwise be discarded. Users can browse a city map to find deals, with darker red dots indicating areas with higher food availability.
Pros: Increases access to affordable food within walking distance while reducing landfill waste. Also helps small businesses profit from surplus stock.
Cons: Uneven distribution of food businesses in low-income areas may limit accessibility, though this could change with the city's $10 million initiative by 2070.
Idea 5 | Encourage households to list surplus food at low cost.
Description: A platform where households list surplus food at low cost, making food more accessible to those in need while fostering community connections.
Pros: Expands food accessibility and strengthens community relationships.
Cons: Surplus food may be unevenly distributed, with wealthier areas having more excess than lower-income areas. However, the platform could help bridge this gap by leveraging the proximity of affluent neighborhoods to underserved communities. Rising wealth inequality in the U.S. may further impact this dynamic by 2070.
Mid-fidelity Prototyping
After presenting my low-fidelity prototypes to classmates and incorporating their feedback, I refined my strongest ideas into a single concept: a mobile app designed to reduce food waste by allowing users to sell leftovers or host paid dinner events. The app encourages community connection through food sharing while providing a financial incentive to minimise waste. I developed a clickable prototype to test user interactions through think-aloud sessions and gather feedback on the app’s usability and overall experience.
Think Aloud Feedback
After conducting five think-aloud sessions, it became clear that the app’s interactions were well received and the overall navigation was easy to follow. This was expected, given the app’s structure was inspired by familiar platforms like DoorDash, Uber, and Airbnb, and tested with younger users who were already accustomed to similar flows.
However, participants didn’t find the app particularly exciting and felt the information could have been better laid out—even though they were able to find what they needed. They also wanted to feel a stronger sense of who was selling the food before reaching out. In response, my final iteration focused on a high-fidelity prototype that added polish and energy through engaging UX copy, clearer information architecture, improved navigation buttons, and more detailed seller profiles, including number of reviews, to build trust and increase user confidence.
I began by ideating and developing low-fidelity prototypes for various solutions. Recognizing the transactional nature of the United States, I aimed to incentivise sustainable living through monetary rewards systems. My solution was designed to be both impactful and enduring, taking into account future societal constraints, particularly the heightened economic and environmental instability I envisioned for 2070.
Deliver
Introducing Kibb!
Kibb is a mobile app that reduces food waste through local, community-driven food sharing. Users can either:
Share their leftovers for a small price
Host a dinner party
Or find affordable, home-cooked meals nearby
Inspired by the communal spirit of a kibbutz, Kibb fosters local connections while helping users live more sustainably.
As climate change affects our daily lives, Kibb makes it easy and enjoyable to reduce waste, cut food costs, and lower emissions by sourcing food locally.
More than a food-sharing platform, Kibb builds stronger communities through social interaction and makes sustainable living accessible—and fun—for everyone.
Navigation & UX
The app’s navigation centers around two primary actions: “Get Food” and “Get Money.” This bold, incentive-driven UX copy explicitly encourages users to take action based on their goals and directly calls them to fulfil their needs.
To maximise screen space, especially during food discovery, the bottom navigation was removed. Instead, all navigation elements were moved to the top of the screen, allowing more room for viewing the meal list or map.
Profile and messaging pages remain easily accessible via secondary navigation options.
Get food.
Meal options can be quickly narrowed down using Quick Filters, based on the user’s past preferences. A broader range of filters is available through the filter icon for more control.
Each meal listing displays essential details at a glance:
Price
Distance
Photos
User reviews
If interested, users can message the meal poster directly to coordinate pickup time and location.
While viewing a meal, users see a profile preview of the poster, showing:
Name
Profile photo
Review count
Overall rating
This fosters trust and a sense of familiarity, helping users feel more comfortable before initiating contact.
Finding Food Prototype
Get Money
Kibb helps users turn extra food into extra income. Whether it’s selling individual meals (e.g., $2 per bowl) or hosting dinner gatherings (e.g., $8 per person), users can easily share food with their community.
Posting is quick and simple: just fill out a short form and upload a few photos. The form asks only for essential details, keeping the process fast and user-friendly. Clear UX copy and progress indicators guide users through each step, making it easy to complete a listing.
To protect privacy, exact locations are hidden from public view, only an approximate location is shown on the map to help buyers browse nearby options. Exact details can be shared later via in-app chat, similar to platforms like Facebook Marketplace.
Selling Food Prototype
Future Steps
This project gave me the opportunity to explore a meaningful solution to food waste. If I had more time, I would have liked to incorporate additional gamification features to strengthen the app’s incentivisation. One core idea was a “Money Made” and “Money Saved” feature, allowing users to track how much they’ve earned or saved through the app. Highlighting this impact could have increased engagement and motivation.
I also would have liked to conduct further user testing, especially observing how strangers interact through the prototype and exchange food in real-life scenarios. This would have helped uncover opportunities to improve the experience—particularly around safety, trust, and overall enjoyment.
Furthermore, I did not have enough time to prototype the entire app. I still had ideas like reviews and barcode scanning ingredients which I showed in the prototypebut did not fully show a flow / how it would look.