Exploring how venture design, behavioral science, and AI can help reduce household food waste — one decision at a time.
When we talk about food waste, the conversation often focuses on awareness. Yet most people already know wasting food is a problem.
Food disappears into the back of the fridge. Expiration dates are forgotten. Meal decisions are made under time pressure. Grocery purchases and daily consumption become disconnected.
The more I explored the problem, the more I realized this is not primarily a sustainability issue.
It's a systems design issue.
My interest in food waste began in 2021. What started as curiosity gradually became a long-term exploration.
Over the years, I tested multiple directions, studied emerging technologies, analyzed competitors, and followed the evolution of food-tech solutions around the world.
One pattern repeatedly stood out: many solutions focused on helping people buy food. Very few focused on helping them manage it after purchase.
That observation eventually became the foundation of Optura.
Rather than immediately building a product, I focused on understanding the broader ecosystem surrounding household food waste.
Research included:
This work revealed that waste is not created by a single actor. It emerges from the interaction between households, retailers, technology, incentives, and timing.
As the venture evolved, I became increasingly interested in understanding how food waste is approached across different markets.
Spain emerged as a particularly interesting environment. Moving to Barcelona allowed me to continue exploring the problem within a broader European context while conducting market research and engaging with local stakeholders.
As Optura evolved, I realized that solving a systems-level challenge required capabilities beyond traditional product and service design.
Questions around venture creation, business models, innovation strategy, and ecosystem design became just as important as the product itself.
To strengthen those capabilities, I joined the BeVisioneers Fellowship and later moved to Barcelona to pursue a Master's in Business Design at Elisava.
Both experiences became extensions of the venture — helping me challenge assumptions, refine opportunities, and develop a broader perspective on how meaningful change is created.
"Households don't need another shopping list app. They need support in the moments where waste actually happens."
— Core insight, Optura venture research
Most existing solutions focus on planning.
The larger opportunity appears after the purchase — inside the home, inside daily routines, inside small decisions that determine whether food gets consumed or discarded.
This insight became the strategic foundation of Optura.
Optura explores how AI, behavioral design, and ecosystem partnerships could work together to reduce household waste.
The objective is not simply to create another sustainability app. The objective is to align households, retailers, and technology around the same outcome — less waste, more value.
Rather than asking users to manually manage their inventory, Optura explored how AI can reduce friction and support decision-making at critical moments.
The product direction emerged directly from the research findings and focused on four key behavioral challenges:
AI-assisted receipt scanning explored how food could enter the system with minimal effort from users. Rather than manual input, the hypothesis was that scanning a grocery receipt could automatically populate a household inventory.
Inventory tracking focused on helping households understand what they already have before making new purchasing decisions. The core design challenge was making expiry risk legible at a glance — without creating anxiety.
Recipe recommendations were designed to prioritize ingredients at risk of becoming waste rather than simply suggesting meals. The design hypothesis: if the right recipe appears at the right moment, the decision to cook becomes easier than the decision to discard.
Points, streaks, and progress mechanisms explored how long-term habits could be encouraged through positive reinforcement. The hypothesis was that making waste reduction tangible — in euros saved, kilograms avoided — would sustain engagement beyond novelty.
The screens presented here reflect the original product direction explored through the first MVP. Since then, the platform has entered a rebuilding phase while the venture continues evolving through market research, business model exploration, and ecosystem validation in Spain.
The product is still being shaped by ongoing learning. This case study focuses on the venture design process rather than a finished product.
The original MVP validated key assumptions around inventory awareness, intervention timing, and behavior-change mechanisms.
The platform is currently being rebuilt with a stronger technical foundation. Ongoing research in Barcelona is helping refine:
Optura remains an active exploration rather than a finished company.
And that is precisely what makes it one of the most valuable learning experiences of my career.
Optura fundamentally changed how I think about innovation.
It taught me that products rarely solve problems on their own. Meaningful change happens when products, business models, incentives, policies, and human behavior align around the same outcome.
More importantly, it taught me that ventures themselves can be designed. And that some of the most valuable discoveries happen long before a product reaches the market.
"Ece didn't just build a startup. She spent years understanding a complex problem, designing a venture around it, and evolving her own capabilities along the way."