Smart Fridge - Reduce food waste with intelligent inventory tracking

I hate throwing out food.

But inevitably, it happens. I'll open the fridge and discover an abandoned carrot in the corner of the fridge, left shriveled and forgotten. This prompts the question:

Why is it so easy to lose track of what’s in our fridge—especially when it costs us money and waste?

As a part of my Design for Digital Systems course in the CMU School of Design, my teammate and I set out to build a smart fridge system that would track your produce, keep track of its freshness, and recommend recipes to help people use what they already have before it goes bad.

Our goal: Make it easier to cook, shop smarter, and waste less.

Problem: Food Goes to Waste Because We Forget What We Have

People want to eat what they buy—but they forget what’s in the fridge or don’t know how long it’s good for.

Groceries go bad quietly. Fridge rot is invisible until it smells. And even when we try to plan meals, we often don’t remember what we already have, or we need inspiration on new recipes to try.

Our Vision: A Fridge That Keeps Track For You

Within one month, we set out to develop a smart fridge prototype that:

• Recognizes new produce added to your fridge via image recognition

• Tracks shelf life and freshness of each item in stock

• Recommends recipes tailored to use your aging ingredients

Understanding People’s Habits Around Food, Shopping, and Cooking

To define the problem space, we examined user behavior in three key contexts:

1. At home — forgetting what’s already in the fridge

2. At the store — buying duplicates due to uncertainty

3. While cooking — skipping meals that require perishables on hand

People want help remembering what they bought, and when.

• Most don't track expiration dates, especially for fresh product (e.g. an unpackaged apple) —and are often unsure if something is still good.

• Messy fridges lead to more food waste - if you can't easily see or find an item, it can get lost in the fridge and forgotten about (out of sight, out of mind)

• A visual reminder of “what’s in my fridge” would change both shopping and cooking habits.

• They’re willing and want to try new recipes, but sometimes it can be challenging to think of something that will use up all your random old produce.

Designing Smarter Ways to Interact With Your Fridge Contents

We wireframed early concepts in Figma, exploring ways to visualize fridge contents and reduce friction in the cooking process.

We explored 3 major directions:

We chose to combine expiry-first and visual-first to balance utility and intuitiveness. Visual-first allows users to easily navigate what is in their fridge, by organizing the items in an evenly spaced, scrollable shelf that correlates with the actual shelf. This allows them to easily see everything they have in stock, even if it is messy inside.

If any item is tapped, it will show the item, how much is in stock, and how much time they have left for it before it is questionable to eat.

Building the Physical Prototype

To bring the experience to life, we constructed a physical mini-fridge prototype.

• Laser-cut acrylic frame with hinged doors

• Print-in-place 3D printed hinges

• Custom Machined Wooden Door with built in screen display

• Webcam mounted inside to scan items

• Laptop connected to run local scripts and image recognition

• Teachable Machine model trained on common produce (bananas, bell peppers, tomatoes, etc.)

We also designed a connected iPad UI that displays:

• Current inventory

• Expiration warnings

• Recipe recommendations