Too Good To Go
Timeline
Jan 2023 · 4 weeks
Role
Researcher & UI Designer
Type
Course Project
Collaborator
Weiwei Chen
Po-Kai Chiu, Natalia Naranjo Barrera
Zwe Nyi San, Haiming Wang
Context
A professor's challenge: pick any app, fix what's broken. Our team of 6 chose Too Good To Go — and took it seriously. Over 4 weeks, we ran real user research, tested with real participants, and redesigned the experience from the ground up.
The product
Meet the Waste Hero App
Too Good To Go is a marketplace app that lets restaurants, bakeries, and cafés sell their unsold food at the end of the day as surprise bags at a steep discount. It's a win-win: businesses reduce waste, customers get cheap meals, and the environment benefits.
Find nearby restaurants and cafés with surplus food
Pay a discounted price, contents are a mystery!
They fill it with whatever's left at the end of the day
Head over during the pickup window and rescue your meal
Challenge at Hand
Discovery
From Gut Feeling to Evidence
Before redesigning anything, we started with ourselves. As active TGTG users, we’d lived the frustrations firsthand — and as designers, we had the language to articulate them. Our assumptions weren’t guesses. They were informed observations, seen through both a user and a designer’s lens.
Desk Research
To pressure-test our assumptions, we scanned App Store reviews and Trustpilot to hear what real users were already saying. The pattern was clear, people weren’t leaving because they stopped caring about food waste. They were leaving because the app kept getting in their way.
Interview
To go beyond what users say and understand what they actually do, we ran two rounds of primary research. First, a survey with 20 participants gave us a broad view of user demographics, motivations, and feature engagement.
Then, we conducted moderated interviews with 5 users, walking them through real tasks in the app while we observed where they hesitated, made errors, or expressed frustration. The tasks were designed to mirror the real user journey — from searching a new location to completing a pickup — so we could surface friction at every touchpoint, not just the obvious ones.
Define
From Data to People
With research complete, we synthesized findings across both primary and secondary sources, clustering patterns into three core problem areas:
Finding/Browsing Stores
The search experience didn't match how users think. Searching "pizza" should show every store offering pizza — but the app only returns results by store name. On the map, no store logos meant clicking every single pin just to know what you were looking at.
Surprise Bag Detail Page
This was the biggest trust bottleneck. No allergy info, no reviews, no way to gauge vendor quality. Users defaulted to only buying from stores they already knew — the surprise should feel exciting, not anxiety-inducing.
Location Challenge
The app was built around your current location, which left users completely lost when browsing a different neighborhood or city. And once a bag was reserved, navigation broke down entirely — a static map image forced users to jump to Google Maps mid-flow.
Persona
During our research phase we noticed that there are 2 main archetype of users with different motivation using TGTG. To create a mutual understanding & developing a deeper empathy with the users we defined two archetype:
Backstory 25-year-old international student in Toronto studying Business Administration (Marketing and Entrepreneurship), living with a roommate, single, and always hunting for new restaurants.
Resources He is a tech-savvy novice at meal planning. He’s comfortable with Instacart, Skip, and YouTube, but he has little time, a tight budget, and an overwhelming number of food and grocery choices in a pricey city.
Emotions He feels stressed and a little overwhelmed when deciding what to eat or where to shop, Money worries make him second-guess every purchase.
Goals He wants to eat fresh, quality meals on a budget, find quick ready-to-eat or easy-to-cook options, and spend less time deciding.
Scenario After a long week of classes, Wade opens the app between lectures and sees budget-friendly meal suggestions already filtered to his price range. He picks two easy-to-cook dinners, adds the groceries to a single order, and has them delivered the same evening. He spends under his weekly budget and still eats something fresh, with time left to try a new restaurant on Saturday.
Backstory a 34-year-old sales manager at a New York start-up, married with a 7-year-old son, who cooks for her family every day and tries to live sustainably.
Resources She is an experienced home cook and highly tech literate, and she knows what she values. Her obstacles are a packed schedule, limited convenient and affordable options nearby, and a family with differing tastes.
Emotions She feels guilty about food waste and single-use plastics, and feeding her family well matters deeply to her.
Goals She wants convenient, affordable, sustainable meals that fit her family’s dietary preferences, and healthy food the whole family will enjoy.
Scenario On a busy Tuesday, Cameron uses the app to find a plant-forward dinner plan with low-waste packaging and customizable portions. Her husband and son each tweak their own dishes, and the groceries arrive in reusable containers. Dinner is on the table in 30 minutes, nobody complains, and she skips the plastic and the leftovers.
There's more behind the scenes: empathy maps, user journeys, competitive analysis and more… Explore the Full Process
How Might We…
enhance the map and search functionalities to improve store identification and product discovery for users? -Stores
improve the app's location and map features to facilitate easier navigation and store location across different area? -Location
Provide comprehensive surprise bag detail page to improve truest and decision making. -Surprise Bag
Ideation
Sketching Solutions
After finding the main themes of user’s problem, understanding our persona archetype, and reviewing how our competitors are addressing the same user needs, we facilitate a brainstorming & ideation session to develop solutions that address both the business objectives & our user needs.
Testing
The we made prototype from these wireframes and test it with 5 users.
“The information about the surprise bag is both detailed and still keeps a sense of mystery.”
“Seeing the distance on the map really helps me decide which store to choose. “
“I wish I could see those filter in my discover page as well”
“Pick-up date filter can be really useful! ”
“The map feature is much more useful now!”
“I love ‘more from this store’ section “
Final Design
Prototype
Key Takeaway
Real validation hits differently. Weeks after our redesign, TGTG added store logos to the map — one of our core suggestions. Research-backed decisions hold up.
Neutrality in research is a skill. Showing empathy toward a frustrated user subtly steered the conversation. The way you ask shapes what you hear.
Trust is a design problem. In marketplace apps, confidence to try something new is built through details — reviews, transparency, clear information.
Six designers is a coordination challenge. The best ideas came when we had clear frameworks for deciding together, not just diverging and hoping it clicked.
