A Cup of Sugar was conceived in response to my finding myself often having too much of one pantry item and not enough of another. I had also come to the realization that I did not know any of my neighbors. The broader goal of the project was to create a project that dealt with "communities", and I sought to do so through food.

Asking neighbors for a cup of sugar occurs often in media portrayals of neighborhoods, but the act of doing so can be awkward, especially when one does not know their neighbors. Therefore, A Cup of Sugar is designed to help provide context and purpose for people interacting with their neighbors and, hopefully, relieving the tension and awkwardness that would otherwise occur.

In addition to sketches and storyboards, wireframes of different interface ideas were considered. The premise of A Cup of Sugar was that people could post items in their pantry that they're willing to share, and people could also posts requests for items that they needed.

Feedback gathered from the wireframes went into the creation of a paper prototype, which was used for another round of feedback. Functionality and suggested norms were tweaked so that, in order to posts requests, users would have to opt-in to receiving push notifications when requests are added to the system. The home stream was designed to be chronological and filterable.