A lightweight system to make surplus food visible within local communities.
Timeline:
2026 – Ongoing
Currently in early-stage exploration & pilot validation
Involvement:
Product Strategy, UX/UI Design, Prototyping, User Research, Community Validation, System Thinking, MVP Definition, Trust & Safety Design
Goal:
To design a low-friction platform that enables individuals and small food businesses to share surplus food within their local communities. The challenge is to balance accessibility and trust, making it easy enough for anyone to contribute, while ensuring users feel safe and confident engaging with the platform.
Progress & Outcomes:
• Defined a lightweight “visibility layer” (vs marketplace)
• Designed MVP flows for onboarding, posting, discovery
• Initiated validation via community outreach (FB, surveys)
• Identified risks: trust, abuse, supply-demand density
• Preparing pilot test in a local neighbourhood
Introduction
The problem
Surplus food exists daily, but there is no simple way to make it visible.
Small food businesses and home-based sellers often end the day with unsold food. While the intention to avoid waste is there, most of it still gets thrown away.
Not because people want to throw it away, but because there is no lightweight way to let nearby people know it’s available.
Existing solutions tend to be logistics-heavy, limited to larger vendors, or require too much effort for everyday use. At the same time, social and cultural barriers make both offering and asking for food feel uncomfortable for most people.
Why this matters?
As a student, I had to be mindful about how I spent on food. It was not a luxury, it was something I planned carefully.
I remember coming across a discounted bagel that did not sell that day. It was much cheaper than usual, and it felt like a small reward after a long week. It ended up being one of the most memorable meals I had at the time.
That moment stayed with me. It made me realise how meaningful surplus food can be when it reaches the right person, at the right time.
Opportunity framing
What if we do not build a marketplace?
Most existing solutions approach this as a marketplace problem. That introduces pricing pressure, expectations, and additional friction for both sellers and users.
Food sharing in this context needs to be fast, low effort, and without pressure.
Instead of building a full platform, I explored the idea of a lightweight visibility layer. A simple way for people to signal that surplus food exists, so others nearby can act on it.
The focus shifts from transactions to awareness.
Design Process
Design principles
To guide the product direction, I defined a few core principles:
Key product decisions
No marketplace model
Rather than turning this into a buying and selling platform, I avoided a marketplace structure. This removes pricing pressure and reduces hesitation to participate. It allows sharing to feel casual and immediate.
Location Based Discovery
Food sharing only works when it is relevant to your surroundings.
The experience is centred around proximity. Users can quickly see what is available nearby, without needing to search or filter heavily.
A list-first approach was prioritised, with location as the primary signal.
Trust and Accountability
Open community systems come with risk.
Instead of strict verification from the start, I explored lightweight ways to build trust. This includes basic user identity, clear responsibility messaging, and visibility into who is posting.
The goal is to create a sense of accountability without adding too much friction.
Anti Abuse Thinking
To prevent misuse, several guardrails were considered:
• Listings expire after a short duration
• Contributors are identifiable at a basic level
• Users can report suspicious or unsafe listings
These decisions aim to balance openness with safety.
Core User Flows
The experience is designed around a few simple flows:
Onboarding
New users are introduced to the purpose of the platform, community expectations, and location access in a clear and simple way.
Posting surplus food
A contributor takes a photo, adds basic details, and publishes the listing within seconds.
Discovering nearby food
Users can browse what is available around them based on proximity. The focus is on quick scanning and decision making.
MVP Strategy
Adopting a lean MVP mindset allowed the design process to address real-world constraints while focusing on essential user features first.
User-Centered Interface Design
Phase 1: Exploring the Core Experience
Focus was on defining the core flows and reducing friction. The goal was not visual polish, but validating what matters.
Phase 1.5: Refining for Clarity and Speed
After defining the core flows, I focused on simplifying interactions and improving scan-ability, especially for time-sensitive decisions like food pickup.
Design Evolution & Iteration
Testing identified opportunities to streamline the user’s mental model. I focused on Spatial Efficiency (Viewport & Layout), Visual Harmony (Color & Iconography), Design Scalability (System & Branding), ensuring the interface feels intuitive rather than overwhelming as features scale.
Prototype Walkthrough
Validation & Path Forward
Validation
Early validation was done through community outreach and conversations with potential users. To see if ShareLah was a real need or just a “nice idea,” I went where the community lives: Facebook Groups and WhatsApp. I didn’t just look at data; I looked at conversations:
Instagram/WhatsApp Conversations
These conversations (in Malay) captures the raw sentiment of local sellers and residents in Kota Damansara. To protect participant privacy, names and identifiable details have been changed. However, their roles and insights remain authentic to the research.
Facebook Group
I analyzed feedback from small food sellers and neighborhood residents. The “proof” was in the tension:
- The Sellers: “I feel bad throwing this out, but I don’t have time to manage a complex app.” (Validation of the Low-Friction principle).
- The Residents: “I’d love to help, but how do I know the food is still good?”, “What if there are scammers?” (Validation of the Trust & Safety priority).
Initial responses showed strong interest from both sides: sellers are eager to reduce waste, while users are keen on discovering accessible, surplus food nearby.
More importantly, these raw interactions surfaced critical concerns regarding trust, food safety, and usability, which have become the core pillars of my design iterations.
Current Status: I am currently synthesizing data from an ongoing Google Forms survey shared across local community groups. These additional insights will further refine the MVP’s safety protocols and community guidelines as I move toward the pilot phase.
Challenges and Open Questions
Real-world design is messy. When people encounter a new system, their behavior often deviates from the ‘ideal’ path. This learning curve has been my greatest research tool: surfacing questions that allow me to explore edge cases and build a more resilient community framework.
At its heart, ShareLah isn’t just about logistics, it’s about a simple, meaningful exchange. The core of this design revolves around two neighbors engaging in an act of mutual benefit, using food surplus as the bridge to build a more resourceful community.
Reflection
Working on ShareLah has fundamentally shifted my perspective on product design. It reinforced a core truth: real-world problems are rarely solved by adding more features, but by reducing friction and respecting human behavior.
Designing this platform required me to think far beyond the screen. I had to design for trust, culture, and the messy reality of timing. But more than the technical challenges, this project was personal.
I’d like to think that if ShareLah is successful, more “bagel moments” will happen. I want to give everyone the chance to enjoy that unique feeling I had as a student. The small, unexpected joy of obtaining something you might not often get to enjoy, while knowing you’ve saved it from going to waste.
Ultimately, this project taught me that good design is about simplifying the problem to make room for human connection. If the technology can get out of the way, it allows a simple, surplus meal to become a meaningful moment for someone else.
Jim's Portfolio 
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