2019
KindBox
Interactive Design
Overview
Kind Café is a zero-waste vegan eatery located in Vancouver. Our project focused on extending its sustainability mission beyond the store, helping university students adopt waste-reducing habits through thoughtful product and service design.
My Role
User research, ideation, visual design, prototyping (physical and digital)
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, sewing machine and tool kits
Team
Junyi Shi, Mingxuan Yuan, Licheng Gu, Mary Bazir, Rachel Bae
Design Process
1. User Research
There are common insights we have found through interviews and surveys:
-
Customers misunderstand the meaning of "zero-waste".
-
The café’s BYOC (Bring Your Own Container) policy often causes surprise or inconvenience.
-
Customers struggle with unfamiliar ingredients and time-consuming wait times.
-
Most students lack the knowledge or motivation to begin a zero-waste lifestyle.
2. Target audience
The image shown below is persona
Based on in-store traffic and a customer age breakdown provided by the café owner, we found that 71% of visitors were university-aged students from nearby campuses like UBC, Emily Carr, and Langara. The solution needed to be youth-focused, simple, and integrated into students’ fast-paced routines.
3. Pain Points
To uncover where customers struggle in their café experience, we combined three approaches:
-
Casual interviews with customers and the café owner
-
First-hand observation by experiencing the café as customers ourselves
-
A simple journey map to visualize pain points across the ordering process
The findings showed a pattern of friction at three key moments:
-
Initial pain point: Students often felt discouraged by unfamiliar ingredient names on the menu, which created hesitation at the decision stage.
-
Major pain point: Long wait times, both in line and after ordering, frustrated many customers, especially those on tight school schedules.
-
End pain point: The Bring Your Own Container (BYOC) policy was experienced as inconvenient or unexpected. Many students found carrying jars impractical.
This map helped us prioritize problems worth solving and frame design opportunities for the next stage.
4. Solutions
To turn our research insights into design opportunities, we ran multiple ideation exercises, including Crazy 8’s, “How Might We” prompts, and team sketch sessions. My initial concept was inspired by parcel locker systems, where users can retrieve packages on their own time. I applied this model to meal pick-up: students would pre-order meals and collect them from dedicated lockers located across nearby campuses, or opt to pick up directly at the café.
This evolved into KindBox, a pre-order meal program tailored for university students. It helps students save time, eat more balanced meals, and reduce single-use waste. Meals are prepared in advance and packed in reusable containers. By offering flexible pick-up windows, student discounts, and a low-commitment return system, KindBox lowers the barrier to joining a zero-waste routine.
5. Validity: Why would KindBox be successful?
“We are considering working with online delivery apps such as DoorDash or Uber Eats. The concern is that there is no sustainable way to take-out orders. Now, KindBox is just a brilliant way to solve this problem.--- Samantha Emerman (the owner of Kind Cafe)”
The solution was designed to align with both student pain points and business goals. It also supports the café owner's vision of spreading sustainable habits beyond the physical store without increasing in-store operations.
It reduces delivery waste, shortens wait time, and encourages sustainable behaviour.
Key features include:
-
Exclusive discounts for student members
-
Ingredient education for non-vegans
-
Tracking your zero-waste impact
-
One-time deposit and return-based reuse model
Final Design
KindBox Physical Kit
To encourage real-world zero-waste behaviour, we created a physical kit that simulates the Kind Café experience on campus. It includes a reusable food container, cup, utensils, and napkin, all designed for portability and everyday use. We tested the form factor with students and refined the box shape for backpack compatibility and ease of return.
The prototype also served as a tool for soft onboarding. Instead of pushing strict zero-waste rules, it offered students a low-pressure challenge to build new habits over time.
KindBox APP
To support smooth meal ordering and promote program engagement, we designed a companion app tailored to student routines.
We mapped the user flow and defined key screens, then built interactive prototypes in Figma and tested them with 4 student users. Feedback focused on menu clarity and pickup flow, which led to:
The app gives students easy access to meal planning while enabling the café to send updates or highlight promotions. It avoids physical waste and fits seamlessly into students’ mobile habits.
1. Onboarding: A step-by-step “How It Works” overlay for first-time users
2. Signing Up & Logging In: Exclusive 10% discount for university students joining the program.
3. Browsing the menu: Details providing information about uncommon plant-based ingredients.
4. Ordering: A one-time deposit for joining the program. Covers the cost of materials.
5. Profile & Impact: Live figures to record how participating in the program benefits the Earth.
KindBox Experience Walkthrough
A quick walkthrough showing how students interact with KindBox from ordering meals in the app to picking them up and returning the kit.
Presentation Slides
To support our final presentation, I designed a branded slide deck that visually aligned with Kind Café’s identity. The layout combined soft, plant-based tones with modern typography and light illustration, echoing the café’s casual, youthful feel.
If you'd like to explore the full journey behind our solution from research to concept to implementation, you can view the presentation slides for more context and visual detail.
Reflection
We faced early challenges with limited communication and scheduling conflicts with the café owner, which made it difficult to validate ideas in real time. To work around this, I initiated online research on zero-waste practices, observed in-store behaviour as a customer, and conducted informal interviews with students and café visitors. These inputs helped us build a clearer picture of user needs, even with minimal direct stakeholder feedback.
Our early concepts were functional but lacked connection to user habits. It wasn’t until we combined real-world observation with structured ideation methods like Crazy 8s and HMW sessions that we found a direction that was both realistic and aligned with Kind Café’s values.
This project taught me how to design around uncertainty and seek insight through multiple channels. It also reinforced how systems design can quietly support sustainable change when grounded in real habits.
More projects
