Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Food is a vital part in human survival. Yet an estimated 820 million people were \nundernourished in 2018, as reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture \nOrganization (FAO). This makes the impact of food waste that more impactful. Not \nonly does wasting food account for the inability to feed a growing world population, \nbut also strains the planet due to the environmental and economic impact it bears. \nCompanies in the HORECA sector (hospitality, restaurant, and catering) are the third \nlargest food waste generator and, more importantly, is characterized as a sector with \nan overall low sense of awareness when it comes to food waste reduction technologies \nand challenges of minimizing food waste. This research draws on a tech startup that \nprovides an innovative solution to HORECA firms in order to solve the food waste \nchallenge. This exploratory research aims to determine how well the front end of such \na food waste monitoring technology is understood by its users, which are often \nmanagers and chefs. Semi-structured interviews on the current level of data \nunderstanding were conducted with five active users of the system, which composed \nof four managers and one chef. Additionally, a between-subject questionnaire (N = \n65) was used in determining what effect the type and content of a dashboard has on \nthe users’ understanding. Both the old and new version of the food waste dashboard \nwere used in order to see whether the new iteration would perform better. Our \nanalysis showed that the users of the food waste dashboard had a good level of data \nunderstanding and were able to make data driven decisions on the basis of that data. \nThe results further indicated that the new dashboard did not significantly increase the \nlevel of perceived understanding, perceived usability, and perceived aesthetics. The \ndashboard elements that contributed the most to the interpretation of the data were \nthe textual elements, such as the food categories table and the texts that present the \nuser with a small written out summary or recommendation of the data. In terms of\npreferred text structure, we can conclude that participants seem to prefer a general \noverview of the data, and to see a combination of both monetary as well as kilograms \ninformation. We conclude that users of this dashboard have a sufficient \nunderstanding of the data, and implementing textual elements in a food waste \ndashboard increases not only the understanding of the user, but also of the entire \nkitchen staff, as textual data was found to be most often utilized by the users. Further \nresearch is needed however, on the possible implementations of larger and more \ndiverse textual presentations.
Author: B.L. Moonen
Language: English
Subfield: Food Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3196738697