How would you design a "Google Refrigerator"?

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How would you design a "Google Refrigerator"?

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Kaushik · Answer 1 · 2021-03-10T17:46:36+0000

Clarification Questions

What do we mean by Refrigerator - a electrical machine that keeps food cold and from spoiling
What do we mean by Google Refrigerator - is it that Google is creating the refrigerator? - yes
Are we building this for any particular geography - depending on the latitude, the requirements from a refrigerator could be different - the temperatures could be different, the food and eating habits of the users could be different? - Let's assume the US

The Situation

Refrigerators are an invention of the older generation, invented in the 50s to keep the food edible. With all the technological improvements that have been made in the past few decades, refrigerators have remained still the same boxes for people to store food.

For this exercise, we want to keep in mind the technology Google has at its disposal and make a refrigerator that could solve today's generation's problems.

User Segments

There are various types of users who use refrigerators, each one having its own needs. Some of them include:

Households - a family of 4-5 who wants to store and preserve food
Restaurants - usually have larger requirements of storage and also want to refrigerator
Departmental Stores -they store food for longer durations till it gets sold

I understand the Household segment better, so I will focus on this segment of users

User Journey and Pain Points

Purchasing the Items
1. Don't know what items to purchase
2. Don't know when is the right time to purchase
3. Don't know how much to purchase that can be efficiently stored
Storing the Items
1. Don't know where to store the items - liquids, groceries, processed food, frozen food, condiments and others
2. Don't know if the stored items are safe to consume
3. Don't know if items that have partly consumed items are still edible
Retrieving the Items
1. Have to remove multiple items from the fridge to get to the one that is required
2. Don't know if there is a certain item remaining in the fridge or if it is over
3. Don't know what food is good to eat or how to use it

Main Problem Themes among the Pain Points

Layout and physical space-related
Food Information related information
Purchasing and stocking related

Given that Google's mission is to organize all the world's information and make it available for everyone, I will focus on problem number 2 - Food information-related challenges.

Solutions

Google Moonshot - If I were to make the ultimate Google refrigerator, I want the fridge to be turned into a device that not only stores and preserves food but also prepares and services nutritious food that can be consumed directly out of the fridge.
Food Scanner - Fridges could be retrofitted with a device that automatically scans the item as it is being placed in the fridge and as it is being removed. Based on that we could maintain the information about everything in the fridge and let the users figure out what is there in the fridge right from a companion mobile app. Further, we could build integrations with Google assistant to answer quick questions based on the food present, the app could also be improved to include shopping options that will help move the needle on Google Shopping.
1. Impact - High
2. Effort - Medium
Recipe Maker - Based on the ingredients available in the fridge the app could suggest the users about possible recipes to cook.
1. Impact - Medium
2. Effort - Medium
Nutrition tracker - Health and nutrition are top of mind for every user right now, and obesity is rising, using the information of the food available in the fridge, the app could help build healthy eating habits among the users, to suggest good food.
1. Impact - High
2. Effort - High

Based on the prioritization, I would go ahead with building a Food Scanner that can be retrofitted with existing fridges.

Implementation - Short Answer

The solution has two components:

Software
Hardware

The hardware would sync with the software to provide the latest information about the status of the fridge.

Summary

After considering various user segments and their pain points, we decided to focus on converting the fridges into smart ones by attaching a smart device that organizes all the information of the fridge in one place and provides this to the user.

Answer 2

Possible persona:

bachelors - living in shared apartments
working couples
family (working couple with 3 kids)
Elderly

I would like to brainstorm "Family" as my target customer unless you want me to discuss something else.

Persona in detail:

Family of 4 - 2 working adults, 2 school going kids
have a nanny
Health is one of their priority
want to eat fresh food daily
only 2 people cook - mom and nanny
breakfast - egg, milk, cereal, bread, coffee
lunch is cooked only on weekends (kids eat at school and parents eat at the office)
dinner is cooked every day in the evening

Features:

Here are some of the features that come to my mind when I think of this fridge

reminder
check for expiry/ freshness
remotely check
Moonshot: Smart suggest

Assumption:

a family who has google home is buying this fridge. which means, google already knows how many people are there in the family and most likely it also knows to food preference of each member.

Let's now discuss the features in detail:

Reminder

Based on daily consumption, the fridge will be able to figure out what items are consumed daily and in what quantity. accordingly, Fridge will add these items to your grocery list . to add items to the grocery list, the fridge will consider 2 factors:
1. Amount of food left in the fridge and daily consumption
2. your shopping day - Say, you shop every Wednesday, (fridge would know this because that's when you restock the fridge), your grocery list will be ready in Google Keep accordingly
Seasonal reminders: Fridge will give seasonal reminders like "fresh cherries are available in farmer's market next to your house, enjoy them with vanilla bean ice cream in the freezer."
Special event's reminder:example: "It's your daughter's birthday tomorrow, order chocolate cake for her". Moonshot: Fridge places the order from a bakery close to your house.

Freshness

Fridge keeps a track of expiration date of all the items and freshness of produce and notifies you before in item is about to expire or go bad

Remote check

Fridge keeps a list of items along with the quantity and expiry date, which you can access any time from anywhere

Moonshot:

Let me take a few moonshots:

Suppose I go grocery shopping every Wednesday and the fridge keeps my list ready accordingly. Suppose I go and meet a friend in a coffee shop on Saturday close to the grocery store I normally go. Fridge then sends me a notification like "you are running low on milk, you are 0.5 miles away from the grocery store, buy it on your way back"
The fridge should be able to suggest recipes every evening based on the family preferences and ingredients available in the fridge.

to summarize, my fridge is designed to make your life easy at the same time enabling you to eat healthy and fresh.

chetancvd · Answer 3 · 2019-08-15T09:50:15+0000

A Google product design question like this requires an organized break down...

What is Refrigerator

Place to store food and liquid items to preserve by cooling so they are not wasted
Place to freeze - to make ice or ice cream
Overall helping families and businesses to cook and store food

Objectives of Google

To make fridge more informative and engaging
Connect to Internet/IoT to make on demand and remote usage
Integrate with Google Nest to improve platform appeal

Who are the customers

Individuals and Families
Businesses such as restaurant

We'll focus on individuals and families are it is bigger market and more relvant to objectives of Google

What are the pain points of individuals and families

Difficult to keep track of finished/unfinished items to buy again
forget to keep items or remove at certain time
cannot manage fridge remotely or on demand
have to open fridge to see whats inside
no dedicated place to keep medicines separately
interaction - 80% usage revolves around fridge and 20% around freezer and people have to bend down to use fridge

Items in any fridge

Veg - Vegetables and Fruits and cooked food
Non Veg - Eggs and Meat and cooked food
Drinks - Water, Alcoholic and non alocohic beverages, shakes, juices etc
Solids - Ice and Icrecreams
Medicines

Relevant Features and Solution for Each Pain Point

Pain Points	User Experience Improvement	Why	Efforts 1(Low) 2(Medium) 3(High)	User Reach	Impact	Confidence in assumptions	RICE Score	Priority
Keep track of items	High	sync with grocery list and grocery apps	High : 3	100%	High : 3	100%	1003100/3 = 10,000	2
Forget to put stuff	Medium	Reminders and Timers	Medium : 2	50%	Low : 1	20%	50120/2 = 1,000	5 (will not implement)
Remote management	High	Connected to Internet/ IoT On demand usage	High : 3	50%	High : 3	80%	100380/3 = 8,000	3
See without opening	High	Cameras inside and screen on front to see	Medium : 2	100%	High : 3	50%	100350/2= 7,500	4
Separate medicine cabinet	Low	not sure if it will get utilized. need spce and inside door limited to few bottles	High : 3	10%	Low : 1	20%	10120/3 = 66.66	6 (will not implement)
Interaction - freezer vs fridge	High	no need to bend down	Easy : 1	100%	High : 3	100%	1003100/1 = 30,000	1

Summary

Easy to use without bending
Track items to buy (inventory planning)
Remote management - IoT
See without opening

Sholanki · Answer 4 · 2019-08-12T10:09:44+0000

Clarifying Questions: What do you mean by google refrigerator? Like a cooling divide that Google made? Should I consider any business goal other than designing the product?

Interviewer: I think Google wants to enter into Home improvement segment, after acquiring Nest, You can consider new market to entry.

Understood, The market is very saturated and highly competitive in household segment by companies such as LG, Whirlpool. So the barriers to entry will be very high and Google needs to standout in terms of offering this refrigerator by giving innovative solution.

I want to start from Customer Segment and then Personas and Analyze personas to design the Features of the product, then prioritize and layout success metrics, does that sounds good?

Customer Segmentation 1) Grocery Business 2) Restaurants 3) Households.

Household market is very saturated and believe every household has a refrigerator and the upgrade is not that frequent. So I would like to not focus on this segment for personas.

Lets consider

1) Grocery Business

Important aspects to consider/personas:

1) most of the Grocery stores do home delivery these days /use Prime Now etc. for delivery, this requires efficiently selecting fresh items from refrigerator

2)Cares about power saving when there is no inventory cost optimization

3) Large refrigerators, very hard to understand where there is space

4)Inventory management needs human effort/bandwidth

2) Restaurants

1)Similar like above

2) Ability to understand freshness if a major concern and needs human effort

3) make food on the go, even ice cream, instant cooling is taken care by liquid nitrogen in a default setting(which has some side effects on human hands- blisters, redness etc.)

4)Ability to generated reports to align with Food industry and Hygiene is a manual effort

Proposed design elements:

Features: 1)Capture number of item and inventory management with auto scanner bar code inside fridge 2) Works like vending machine with Last in First out order for Grocery Delivery service to optimize waste 3) power off or low when no inventory available-Inventory detection 4)Freshness report using Machine learning technology 5) Instant freezing technique which doesn’t needs liquid nitrogen 6) Ability to dismantled refrigerator segments to optimize space.

Prioritization 1) 2) 3 4) applicable to both segments, due to larger opportunity sizing, will tag these as high priorities

5) 6) Could be medium priority as more applicable to segment 2 only.

Next steps 1) Pricing and Market strategy 2) Success metrics define.

KSM · Answer 5 · 2023-08-08T15:07:31+0000

How would you design a "Google Refrigerator" ?

Thank you for the question. Before I jump into details, I would like to get through some clarification questions.

Clarification questions

1/ When we say “Google Refrigerator” what does it mean? Does it store some? Why “Google” - open to you

2/ Is it a physical device or a service? Open to u

3/ Is it a consumer or an enterprise product?open to u

4/ What is the goal of this product? Adoption

Thank you. If i have more clarification question, I will come to back clarifications section. Now I wanna get into assumptions that we make.

1/ This is a service with google intelligence that can we add to new consumer refrigerators

2/ US based market

Now I will walk u thru the structure -

1/ Potential users

2/ Select 1 type of user

3/ List their journey and painpoints

4/ Identify potential solutions for the painpoints

5/ Prioritize the solutions (building a roadmap)

6/ Measure success based on the goal

7/ If time being -> GTM and user experience

Now getting into details -

1/ Potential users

a/ consumers at home that need to keep food cold

b/ schools that need to keep food cold

c/ hospitals that need to keep blood/organs cold

d/ research facilities that need to keep specimens cold

e/ transportation trucks that need to keep goods cold

2/ Select 1 type of user

I will select ‘a’ because this is a bigger market

3/ List their journey and painpoints

Today this user base uses refrigerator to store food. There are new refrigerators that have some cool capabilities such as see through glass, smart panels to see videos, photos, writing shopping list and so on.

Buy raw/processed food -> P1-Not sure when to buy what food (e.g. milk cheese bread just springs on us, lol)

Store it in the fridge -> P2-Not sure if there is space in the fridge

Use the food to cook meals -> P3-Not sure what to cook based on what is available

Track when supply is low and buy that again -> P1-Manual process and can be missed

Discard spoilt food -> P4-Wastage

4/ Identify potential solutions for the painpoints

Pain points	Potential solutions	RICE	Priority
P1	S1 - a digital notepad that helps write what food to buy	R H 3 I M 3 C 80% E M 3 Total - 2.4	P2
P1	S2 - Tell “ok google” the grocery shopping list and link to local grocery stores	R H 5 I H 5 C 80% E H 5 Total 4	P1
P1	S3 - Have a smart camera to note what food is being used and track its supply to finish and reorder	R H 5 I H 5 C 50% E H 5 Total 2.5	P2
P2	S1 - In built vacuum seal in the fridge	R M 3 I M 3 C 50% E H 5 Total .9	P3
	S2 - “Ok google” telling us what items to prioritize when buying grocery based on space and health	R H 5 I H 5 C 50% E H 5 Total 2.5	P2
P3	S1 - have a interface that takes in grocery items and lists food options with cooking instructions	R H I H C 80% E M Total 4	P1
	S2 - Based on what is left in the fridge, prep the food plan for the week with health into consideration	R H I H C 50% E H Total 2.5	P2
P4	S1 - Track in “ok google” expiry date and notify	R H I H C 80% E L Total	P1
	S2 - via Smart camera track change in food texture	R H I M C 50% E H Total	P2

5/ Prioritize the solutions (building a roadmap) -> done above

6/ Measure success based on the goal

Overall metric - # of active users per day

Based on feature

Using shopping list service
- # of users accessing this service per day/week/month
- # of items added to the service per user per day/week/month
- # of items ordered using this service per user per day/week/month
Using Cooking service
- # of users accessing this service per day/week/month
- # of recipes accessed to the service per user per day/week/month
- # of recipes added to the service per user per day/week/month
- # of recipes liked in the service per user per day/week/month
Using expiry service
- # of users accessing this service per day/week/month
- # of food items’ expiry date tracked per user per day/week/month
- # of food items’ expiry date reminded per user per day/week/month

Pooja Sharma · Answer 6 · 2022-04-18T21:12:11+0000

Hello guys, this is my first answer here. I will really appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

---------------------------------

Clarifying questions

Any specific goal in mind?

Interviewer - No. You decide.

I think by google refrigerator we mean a smart refrigerator which can solve some unique user

requirements which a normal refrigerator can’t solve. So I am thinking about keeping user adoption and engagement as the objective.

Is it okay to assume that we can focus on only the software aspects first because of the time constraints.

Interviewer - Yes, go ahead.

Okay. Just reiterating our goal which is to make a smart Google refrigerator which will solve some unique user requirements which a normal refrigerator can’t

User segments

Now broadly there are two kinds of users for refrigerators

Individuals
Businesses

For now I want to focus on individuals first because I believe we can solve some really interesting needs there. And it seems like a bigger market too.

User segments within individuals

Young working professionals
Family with toddlers/kids
Elderly people

Prioritisation - I want to focus on the family with toddlers and kids as I believe their pain points are bigger as compared to the others. And thus we can create a bigger impact with this first.

Family with toddlers and kids

Description of user persona:

Family of 5 with husband, wife, two toddlers and one 8 year old kid.

Pain points / Needs

Till when the food/milk will be safe - Because of time constraint food is usually prepared in advance. Some ingredients are cooked partially and kept in the fridge for later use. Milk needs to be stored for toddlers/babies. Kids can be fussy and therefore there are leftovers frequently.
Tracking of nutrients in the food - With kids it’s hard to keep track of how much nutrients they are getting. If kids are fussy eaters then this becomes an even bigger problem. Kids sometimes have too much sugar because of all the ice creams and chocolates in the fridge
Veggies and other food items shopping planning - when and how much fresh vegetables should be purchased
Difficult to find good recipes for kids

Solutions

Recognise what food goes inside the fridge. Put a date by when it should be consumed. Then set reminders about what food is near expiry date and needs to be consumed quickly
Recognise nutrients in the food and keep a track of what is being eaten by the family
Track the veggies and suggest when they should be bought and how much. Keep on learning dynamically about the veggies and consumption pattern of the family and recommend stuff based on that.
Google already has information about the users. Based on their preferences, suggest different recipes based on what is available in the fridge.
Integrate google assistant and let the fridge interact with the user

Prioritisation: Impact (how big of a requirement it is)

Solution 1 seems to be solving the biggest problem for the user segment picked. I would start with that. Solution 2 also seems partially overlapping with the first one so I would pick these two.

Trade offs - Based on the eating habits of the family, we might end up suggesting those things that the family and never recommend what the family should eat.

Metric to see engagement

Num of food items recognised on daily/weekly level
Actual veggies and quantity bought and put inside the fridge versus veggies and quantity suggested by the fridge

Pooja Sharma · Answer 7 · 2022-04-18T21:12:03+0000

Hello guys, this is my first answer here. I would really appreciate feedback.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarifying questions

Any specific goal in mind?

Interviewer - No. You decide.

I think by google refrigerator we mean a smart refrigerator which can solve some unique user

requirements which a normal refrigerator can’t solve. So I am thinking about keeping user adoption and engagement as the objective.

Is it okay to assume that we can focus on only the software aspects first because of the time constraints.

Interviewer - Yes, go ahead.

Okay. Just reiterating our goa which is to make a smart Google refrigerator which will solve some unique user requirements which a normal refrigerator can’t

User segments

Now broadly there are two kinds of users for refrigerators

Individuals
Businesses

For now I want to focus on individuals first because I believe we can solve some really interesting needs there. And it seems like a bigger market too.

User segments within individuals

Young working professionals
Family with toddlers/kids
Elderly people

Prioritisation - I want to focus on the family with toddlers and kids as I believe their pain points are bigger as compared to the others. And thus we can create a bigger impact with this first.

Family with toddlers and kids

Description of user persona:

Family of 5 with husband, wife, two toddlers and one 8 year old kid.

Pain points / Needs

Till when the food/milk will be safe - Because of time constraint food is usually prepared in advance. Some ingredients are cooked partially and kept in the fridge for later use. Milk needs to be stored for toddlers/babies. Kids can be fussy and therefore there are leftovers frequently.
Tracking of nutrients in the food - With kids it’s hard to keep track of how much nutrients they are getting. If kids are fussy eaters then this becomes an even bigger problem. Kids sometimes have too much sugar because of all the ice creams and chocolates in the fridge
Veggies and other food items shopping planning - when and how much fresh vegetables should be purchased
Difficult to find good recipes for kids

Solutions

Recognise what food goes inside the fridge. Put a date by when it should be consumed. Then set reminders about what food is near expiry date and needs to be consumed quickly
Recognise nutrients in the food and keep a track of what is being eaten by the family
Track the veggies and suggest when they should be bought and how much. Keep on learning dynamically about the veggies and consumption pattern of the family and recommend stuff based on that.
Google already has information about the users. Based on their preferences, suggest different recipes based on what is available in the fridge.
Integrate google assistant and let the fridge interact with the user

Prioritisation: Impact (how big of a requirement it is)

Solution 1 seems to be solving the biggest problem for the user segment picked. I would start with that. Solution 2 also seems partially overlapping with the first one so I would pick these two.

Trade offs - Based on the eating habits of the family, we might end up suggesting those things that the family and never recommend what the family should eat.

Metric to see engagement

Num of food items recognised on daily/weekly level
Actual veggies and quantity bought and put inside the fridge versus veggies and quantity suggested by the fridge

Baran Atmanoglu · Answer 8 · 2022-03-07T23:23:48+0000

M: What do you mean by a Google Refrigerator? Will it be used in Google campuses only or be sold in retail to householders?

I: Will be sold publicly.

Users:

People who invested in Smart Home. They have Nest or similar smart home products, as well as Google Home assistant.

Use Cases:

I need to check what’s left in the fridge. P1
I need to know when I did buy eggs. P2
I need to know if the fridge is working properly or open to any malfunctioning. P2
I need to easily locate what I am looking for. P2
I need to order items that I am running short in the fridge. P1
I need to make sure everything is fresh in the fridge. P1

A Google refrigerator would be in the Google Smart Home product line. I would prioritize the first and last use case to start with.

Solutions:

There will be camera sensors tracking inside of the fridge and the user will ask either to Google about what’s inside the fridge or by using the screen.

Feature 1:

The Google Smart Refrigerator would be a device that can be connected to Google Home and be interacted with Google Assistant.
It can also have a smart display itself to check for the items in the fridge.

Pros

The first solution would be easier to implement because we already have Voice assistant capabilities and Google Home connection to smart devices. A Smart display would be redundant.

Cons

Voice interaction would be noisy. But this is built to be a smart device and our targeted users are the families who already have Smart Home systems.

Feature 2:

Sensors will tell what needs to be replaced and prepare a Grocery list and send it to Google Keep.
Or will put it on a cart on your favorite online grocery shopping tool.

Pros

The first one will be easier to implement.
The 2nd one can be a bit harder to build. There is Alexa&Amazon as a competition. Google can have a partnership with Instacard. I presume people are still hesitating to let their smart devices to the shopping themselves.

Feature 3:

Expiration Date control
Google Fridge can scan the expiration date by the barcodes or image processing and let the users know what to dispose of for the boxed or canned goods.

To summarize, after clarifying the concept of a Google Fridge, I first defined a user group and listed a couple of use cases. After prioritizing the use cases, I proposed alternative solutions for each use case and evaluated them, and made a final decision.

Rosa2021 · Answer 9 · 2021-07-24T01:05:04+0000

Clarifications:

Are there any contraints that should be considered ?

What is the business goal of launching such a product ?

Is there any particular market segment we are interested in ?

Assmuptions:

Since it is product launched by Google, I am assuming no resource contraints for developing this product.

Refrigerator:

- A day to day product used to store food, deli, frozen foods

- Used in many places such as homes, schools, businesses etc.

- Many established competitors in this market with varied offerings (low end to high end)

User Segments:

For ths product exercise I will focus on home market as it will give opportunity to enter home market. User segments I will consider are:

- Low income households (<$60000 per year)

- Medium income households ($60000-$150000 per year)

- High income households ($150000+ per year)

Prioritizing User Segments:

I will prioritize High income households as Google refrigerator will be a differentiated product packed with advanced features. High income households will serve as early adopters of the product and will be a good initial target market. My buyer persona for this product is working professionals within the high income group.

Pain Points:

- One of the biggest pain points today is lack of service information about the refrigerator. There is no visibility for me as a user to know when should i service my refrigerator.

- There is lack of information about things like how to change filter, what settings are optimal for deli, freezer etc.

- As a user I want information about recipes for which I need to either go to youtube or other channels to find information.

- As a user I want to know which items are depleted and which i need to replenish

- Refrigetors today come with fixed size and only way to extend is buy additional refrigetors.

- When something breaks down, users struggle to find technicians with expertise to help and fix things.

Solutions:

1) Refrigerator will have a display and will be equiped with software that gives insights into refrigertor health, filter status, service due alerts etc. (Effort = Low, Value = High, Impact = High)

2) Touch enabled display that has integrated youtube functionality to search for recipes. (Effort = Low, Value = High, Impact = High)

3) Preloaded videos of things like how to change filters, clean the refrigetor etc. (Effort = Low, Value = High, Impact = High)

4) HW will have IoT sensors that will display things like current temp, weight sensors for things like milk, yogurt, vegetable section to indicate that you are running low on food items. (Effort = Medium, Value = High, Impact = High)

5) A modular refrigetor, something like stackable compartments of various sizes that can be individually programmed to function as freezer (frozen items) or for deli, vegetables milk etc. This can allow for families to start with smaller refrigerator and add more with the growing family (Effort = High, Value = Medium, Impact = Medium)

6) User should be able to use the display and ask for service technician help. Google should provide a list of technicians for repair, maintenance etc. (Effort = Low, Value = High, Impact = High)

Prioritizing Solutions:

Since Google needs to truly enter the market with differentiated product offering, I would prioritize solutions 1,2,3,4 and 6.

Metrics:

Primary Metrics: Units sold

Secondary: product returns, NPS

stashbag · Answer 10 · 2021-07-09T22:58:04+0000

Clarification

Why are we building this? —> To improve the current fridge technology which hasn’t improved in years
What our are goals --> Adoption and growth.

Problem space

Current refrigerators haven’t seen a major upgrade in years
Most of them have been incremental and changes in compartments
There are some smart fridges but not really deep smart tech
There is an opportunity to 10x the customer experience when it comes to improve the hardware

Mission / Goals

Google mission is to organize that worlds information and make it accessible
Product mission: Make the refrigerator more information
Business Goal: Drive adoption / sales of the refrigerators

Lets look at some of the user segments

Segments

People

People who use the fridge extensively and buy a lot of groceries and items to stock in the fridge
People who dont have a big use for the fridge and have limited grocery buys

Businesses

Restaurants that need massive storage in fridge for different items commercial
Offices that use fridges for their employees and storing certain items

From the above segment, lets choose on which is the biggest in size. Using that I am going to focus on people and more specifically people who use the fridge extensively.

Pain Points

I want to know when I am running low on stock of certain items so that I can replenish but this is difficult
I want to know when items have gone bad so that I can discard them proactively
I want to know what is available in my fridge so that I can do meal planning but I cannot do that without looking inside
Unpacking groceries in the fridge is a pain, I wish someone would do it for me
I want to use everything in my fridge and want to be proposed recipes

From the above pain points lets see which one we want to solve for based on severity, based on frequency.

Lets eliminate pain point #4 as not a lot of people will be having that problem and it is not very severe. From the above, most of them center around knowing what is in the fridge and knowing the quality / quantity. I think we can solve for these through our product. Lets brain storm solutions.

Solutions

Manually enter items in web app and load into fridge
Image recognition of items through cameras during loading
Auto loading done by fridge

From the above, I am going to focus on #2. I am choosing the solution based on impact to the consumer and cost of building. We can easily use machine learning and cameras to solve the item loading/scanning parts. Doing scans manually is time consuming and auto loading is going to be bulky.

High level user flow

Users loads the item in the fridge
The item is auto scanned, identified and tagged based on what it detected by the cameras
When stored, the item's weight / date are recorded
There will be a dedicated app through which users can see the items loaded, the quantity and their expiry date.
User sent notifications when things are running low o rreaching expiry date

In the future we can integrate with grocery ordering services and share health / nutrition information of the products in the fridge. We can also, look at the remaining contents and propose recipes.

productmanager123 · Answer 11 · 2021-06-20T21:59:04+0000

Clarifications:

What does Google refrigerator mean? Assuming its still a refrigerator. You can cool items, adjust temperature, a freezer , it still runs on electric power from an outlet, and its meant for households.

What is googlyness about the fridge? Lets assume, that its a smart fridge. But what does Smart mean? Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible to everyone. How does that translate to fridges? Is the expectation that it will answer questions?

OK. Lets assume you want to build a “smart” rfridgeator -- and I should define what smart means taking into consideration Google’s overall strategy.

The key questions I would like first answer are :

Why is google entering this market?

Lets assume the decision is made and there are clear reasons. But the biggest reason is to address the customer problem.

Who is google targeting? What is the target set of customers?

Lets assume that you are targeting an avg consumer. Lets assume that we are focusing on the US market.

Now lets look at the needs of a customer

Why do I use the fridge?

1/ Keeps things from rotting -- number 1 reason.

2/ Chills certain things I want to consume in cold -- ice cream, cold drinks, beer, water etc.

Now lets look how a customer uses a fridge in their day and to day life and what aspects can we improve with a new fridge

	Need And impact	Solution	Cost
Keep things from rotting: 1/ I want to make sure that things are not rotting in the fridge. For e.g, cooked food in fridge rots after a few days. Or becomes less healthy, even if its not rotting. Prompt me to eat that food fast or prompt me to throw it away. Same with fruit and vegetabels. 2/ Control temperature and ari flow to ensure we extend the life of food -- different temp and different air flow for different kinds of food.	High Will benefit many people.	We can ask customers to keep certain type of foods in certain locations in the fridge - control temperature and air control that way. Or we can ask customers to keep things in transparent containers - so that the fridge can “look” and know the type of food and control temp. Use computer vision Will need a way to control air flow and temp in different sections of the fridge -- will need air vents etc to maintain the temperature differential. If things are rotting, prompt me - send me phone notification. Beep. Or have a LCD screen where the rotting item is shown	Medium - High. Phase 1: Develop tech to compartmentalize temp and air flow. So, we can atleast put markers and tell users where to put what foods. Step 2: THrough computer vision find out whats rotting. If there a way to “smell” to find out if the food is rotten. Step 3: Simple notifications or expose the food on LCD screen on fridge.
Keep things cold: 1/ Ice - make it come faster 2/ Ice cream -- make it faster 3/ Different temperature of different beverages - dont want certain things to become too cold		Core technology of differential temp and air flow.
I also want to know when things are out of stock and order them: 1/ Milk, eggs are in fridge -- prompt me that they are running out of stock. Or order them directly.		Through computer vision count milk cartons, eggs and other perishables - veggies etc. Setup a grocery list for me. If i set pre-orders, then go ahead and order online	Needs computer vision technology. Integration with online retailers.
Power consumption - reduce
Environmental impact - Dont know if fridge emits any greenhouse gases.
Without opening tell whats inside.

Will prioritize differential temp and airflow settings since thats common denominator to all technology, after that computer vision to “see” whats in the fridge. After that build rotting prediction or ordering technology.

Abhinav Chitre · Answer 12 · 2020-06-23T07:54:02+0000

Design a smart refrigerator for Google

Clarifying Questions :

What is smart refrigerator?

Smart Refrigerator is something that has intelligence and can use data to take decisions.

Is a product extension to the NEST Line? Or a new product line of smart appliances?

Product Line Extension to NEST

Target Market?

US or Europe since people have other products from smart product line and have the money to afford the product.

Constraints?

No constraint

Goal : Maximum sales or something else?

Upto you

Hardware + Software or only software - Hardware also

With an app or without an app? - upto you to decide

Goal :

To sell as many refrigerators as possible

North star Metric :

% of households adopting this smart refrigerator

% of NEST households adopting this product

USERS

Tech savvy professionals

Families

Elderly people

Lets look at families as the main user segment since families have to do a lot of meal planning and stock their refrigerators with a lot of stuff to ensure there is no shortage of necessary groceries. Total addressable market would be much bigger

Painpoints

They want energy to be conserved. - Low

Replenishment is an important pain point. Sometimes they go to the grocery store and they are not aware of what is there and what is not there.

They need to remember things to buy when something is not there. - High

They have to do meal planning based on whatever is available. - High

When they make things such as Jelly, Custard, Curd, icecream, mousse they have to manually check the consistency of the product to make sure it’s done. - Medium

They need to be aware when things get rotten - Medium

They also need to take notes about medicines, food items, meal planning, grocery - Medium

They want to chill certain items faster than others. - Low

Quite often when the refrigerator is full with items, They have to search for items in the fridge for longer.. - Medium

We have prioritized based on which are most time consuming, difficult and frequent

Solutions

Camera inside the refrigerator which would automatically identify the items stocked in the fridge
1. using an app can tell you which items are available vs which are not..based on a regular grocery list …
2. also shows pictures of each compartment in the fridge to make it more clear
3. sensors to identify when the item is rotten and provide notifications on the app.
4. At the end of the week, it would automatically place an order on amazon fresh or any linked grocery services such as bigbasket etc.

A screen on the front to take notes and scanner to scan and put items in the fridge so that it records the items when stocked as well as expiry. Similarly when the item is removed , you can scan the item or key in on the screen to indicate it is consumed.
1. You can see what items are available on the screen and what are nearing expiry.
2. Track consumption to prepare grocery shopping lists well in advance and send via email at the end of each week.
3. Separate section in the fridge to make items such as icecream
4. Show recipes that can be made based on items available in the fridge screen.

Tradeoffs -

With 1st solution - Image recognition and all would require expensive hardware and software - cameras , process images and high end sensors to detect when items are rotten. It will make the refrigerator pretty expensive.

With 2nd solution - manually you need to scan the items and put them in the fridge.

I would go with solution 2 as it seems much more feasible and realistic as idea 1 would require signficant image processing and intelligence to read labels, sensors for knowing when items are rotten would be quite expensive etc.

Metrics to measure success-

Feedback on the product

Number of units sold

Number of households adopting the product.

prashantso · Answer 13 · 2019-09-05T17:44:24+0000

How would you design a google refrigerator ?

In General a referigerator is used to keep things cool so to increase the shelf life of different items.

I am assuming here that by “Google Refregerator” i mean some innovative product in term of features/capabilities which google is going to produce which is currently not present in the market.

Let me list down the list of users which can use google refrigerator

Mothers
House Helps
Children
Restaurant workers
Pharmacists

Let us take the Restaurant workers as our focus users.

Use cases / Pain points

Unable to find space to put new food item in the refrigerator (which leads to food items getting spoiled early)
A food item which is in refrigertor getting rotten if not used in permissible time
Unaware of insects or other rodents which some how reside in the refrigerator there by contaminating / damaging food item
At times, electricity fails and food get rotten
Fridge maintain one tempreature throughout, although different food items need different conditions to be fixed
Its cumbersome to find and take out food items at times

Prioritising

Out of all the use cases, (1),(2),(4) are more important that other because food is getting spoiled, which has a dollar cost to the restaurant owner, firstly its increasing the cost of the restaurant and moreover if spoiled food is cooked, it leads to the bad customer experienece thereby losing customer, As there is s dollar cost associated with these use cases , it becomes important to solve for these first

Solution

Solutions for Use Case (1)
- Refridgerater has movable compartments, user can manually make room for any food item
- Refridgerater has a scanner which will scan the food, and tell the user where it could be accomodated
- Refrigerater hsa a scaneer which scans the food, and automatically makes space for the food item
Solution for use case (2)
- Refrigerater monitors the food items present inside and notifies the user via sms that food is about to get spoiled and unfit for consumption
- Refrigerater monitors the food items present inside and when someone opens the refrigerator, then voice command infirms user that food is about to get spoiled and unfit for consumption
- Refrigerator automatically places the food item to the top of the fridge to get the attention of the user
Solution for Use Case (3)
- Automatically shifts food to a colder compartment (based on which food will get spoiled earlier)
- Refrigerator has a battery inside it to manage power failure for some time
- Alerts User via SMS to take some action

Out of above solution - i will choose (based on innovation factor and user experience)

Refrigerater hsa a scaneer which scans the food, and automatically makes space for the food item Refrigerater monitors the food items present inside and when someone opens the refrigerator, then voice command infirms user that food is about to get spoiled and unfit for consumption
Refrigerator has a battery inside it to manage power failure for some time