Value Checker
A Tool for Smarter, Waste-Conscious Shopping
A streamlined mobile utility that removes the cognitive load of price comparison, empowering budget-conscious shoppers to choose less wasteful options by instantly showing them the financial benefit.
My Role: UX Designer
2025
Understanding the Problem
The Challenge
Despite a widespread desire to reduce waste, consumers are often blocked by an 'attitude-behaviour gap,' where practical barriers like cost uncertainty, inconvenience, and the cognitive effort of in-store calculations prevent them from making sustainable choices.
The Business Goal
To create a high-impact utility that tangibly helps users reduce their reliance on single-use packaging by aligning sustainable choices with their immediate personal financial goals.
The User Problem
Budget-conscious shoppers feel frustrated by the mental math required to determine if buying in bulk is actually cheaper, causing them to default to familiar, pre-packaged items despite the potential cost savings and environmental benefit.
The Designing Starts
Discovery & Insight
Probe research with real shoppers revealed a critical insight: the primary barrier to reducing waste isn't a lack of environmental awareness, but the immediate friction of cost uncertainty and cognitive load. The desire to 'go green' is easily overridden by the primary drivers of Cost, Quality, and Convenience.
The Strategy & Key Decision
My strategy was to bypass abstract 'save the planet' messaging and instead address the user's most powerful motivation: saving money. The key decision was to design a hyper-focused utility that does one thing perfectly: instantly calculate and compare the value of bulk vs. packaged goods, making the financially superior choice obvious and effortless.
The Solution
The final solution is a clean, intuitive value-checker application. It uses a simple interface where the user inputs the price and quantity for both packaged and bulk options. The app immediately declares the cheaper choice with clear, unambiguous visual feedback, highlighting the exact percentage saved and offering neutral, non-judgmental context on the environmental benefits.
Takeaway
Impact
This solution is engineered to deliver direct, tangible value and drive meaningful behavior change.
Lesson Learned
This project reinforced that to solve large-scale social problems, the solution must be grounded in the user's immediate, personal reality; financial incentives and radical simplicity are far more effective catalysts for behavior change than abstract ethical appeals.
© 2025
Duan Jacobs
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