Summary
My Roles and Responsibilities
UX Designer, Researcher, Content Developer, UI Designer, Visual Designer
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Deliverables
User Research, Competitive Research, User Personas, User Stories, User Flows,
Wireframes, Branding, Usability Testing, Hi-Fidelity Prototypes
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Tools
Google Forms, Figma, Adobe Photoshop
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Team
UX Design mentor - Polly Lee
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Timeline
4-week education project, no budget contraints
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Harvest Chef is a recipe companion that uses machine learning (ML) to recommend tailored meals based on the user's dietary preferences and on the foods in the user's fridge. The purpose of this project is to provide the cooks in the family with a more personalized cooking experience and meet the dietary needs of everyone in the family.
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THE PROBLEM
Leanne a local pet groomer has seen and heard it all from pet parents who are frustrated with grooming services at pet salons, their pets are being traumatized, kept in cages too long, and handled in an unloving way. Leanne wants to solve this problem with a mobile grooming business for pet parents and their pets to give them a better pet grooming experience.
Audience
Pet parents, between the ages of 35-44 years old, with additional income to spend on their pets, and pet parents who handle all of the pet grooming needs in the family.
My Role
Problem
We've all been there where....we are too tired to cook, we have no time to go to the grocery store, we cook the same meals from week to week, and we don't try new recipes as the old ones are much easier to use because we've been using them for years.
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And the list goes on and on.....
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To address this problem, I created a recipe app that helps the cooks in the family find a variety of meals based on their dietary preferences, cook meals based on what's in their fridge, and cook meals that are quick and simple.
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Target Audience
Gender: Female
Age: 35-55 years old
Annual Income: $40,000-$90,000
Attitudes: health-conscious, not intimidated by cooking, wants to cook healthier meals.
Challenges: not enough time to cook, struggles with pre-planning meals, feels guilty wasting food that doesn't get used before it goes bad.
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Solution
Key takeaways from my research revealed that users don't have time to search through endless recipes only to realize they don't have all the ingredients to make the recipe. Users want simple, quick and healthy meals that's personalized to them and all the different tastes and dietary preferences of those in their household.
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Harvest Chef solves this problem with personalized recipes which saves time and eliminates the need to cook separate meals for those with dietary needs.
PROCESS
Discovery and Research
For this 4-week education project, I planned and conducted user interviews with 5 people who cook for themselves and their families. To dive deeper into their cooking habits, I created a survey with 26 people who cook and asked questions about what they would like to see in a recipe app that would make cooking easy for them.
Key Findings
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Simple and easy - cooks need recipes with simple prep and short cook times.
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Dietary requirements - cooks take into account tastes and dietary needs of everyone in the household when searching for a recipe.
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Save time - cooks need to use the food in their fridge to save time.
User Survey Results
81%
Cook meals to save time
54%
Dietary requirements are important to them
96%
Want recipes that are quick and simple
Competitive Analysis
In order to learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the other recipe apps on the market, I completed a competitive analysis on 3 recipe apps. Evaluations of the apps focused on the simple exploration for recipes, easy and user-friendly structure, and the overall aesthetics and design style of the app.
Whisk - recipe saver, meal planner, and grocery list app
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Create a personal cookbook from any website/app, substitute ingredients.
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Recipes can be turned into a shareable shopping list.
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Customized dietary preferences.
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No way to scan what's in the fridge.
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No videos of anyone making the recipes, only pictures of recipes.
Yummly - smart cooking app that's all about the user
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Selection of easy to follow recipes, table ready in 30 minutes or less.
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Personalized recommendations based on your preferences.
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Reduce food waste from ingredient recognition by scanning food in your fridge.
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Can only use certain features such as a meal-planner with a paid subscription.
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Photos are large with no white space between photos.
SideChef - recipes, meal-planner, grocery shopping app
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Daily recipes tailored to your personal preferences.
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Easily create a grocery list, only shop for ingredients directly from Walmart.
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User-friendly, easy to use recipes, easy to learn how to cook.
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Too many premium recipes.
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From a usability standpoint it's content overload for the user.
Persona
To better understand the users of the recipe app, I created 2 personas that would give me a better understanding of their cooking habits and frustrations.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
User Stories
I created user stories to reflect the data from the user research, user interviews, and the pain points of the cooks in family that would be using the app. This was a helpful exercise to flesh out the 4 main issues my designs needed to solve.
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Users need the ability to use what they already have in the fridge to save them time.
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Recipes need to be personalized based on the users dietary preferences.
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Users need to save their favorite recipes.
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Ability to add/remove ingredients to a shopping cart for ease with grocery shopping.
User Flow
Creating the user flow helped me to better understand Maria's step-by-step actions as she's going through the process of searching for recipes, creating a profile based on her dietary needs, and finding a recipe using the ingredients that she has in her fridge.
Sketches
For this phase of the process, I sketched each iteration using pen and paper and added elements that were necessary based on the user stories.
Digital Wireframe
To establish the placement of the UI elements, I created low-fidelity wireframes in Figma. Based on the user research and survey, I had a few ideas that I wanted to explore and include in the design to address the users problems.
Usability Testing
I conducted several rounds of user testing with 3 cooks in-person for 20 minutes. Users were given a task-based scenario using the hi-fidelity prototype in Figma. Feedback gained from the users showed the problem areas in each screen and what I needed to improve upon.
Create Profile Screen
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After receiving feedback this was a UI design issue. In the before screen I needed to change the radio buttons as you can only choose one preference with radio buttons.
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Changed the buttons to a more scan-able button.
Microphone Screen
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This particular screen went through several iterations as users were frustrated and confused with the "search" field on the fridge pic. Removed "search" field added "my fridge."
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In the after testing microphone screen, I added a "microphone" as the participants had trouble transitioning from the "recipe" screen once they clicked on the microphone.
Key Takeaways
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Overall, I received positive feedback from the testing. All the participants in the testing thought the app was simple and easy to navigate from screen to screen after I made a few adjustments.
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The participants in the testing thought the microphone feature to search items in the fridge was a nice addition as this will save them time finding a recipe.
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One user suggested adding an option to use the app hands-free and they wanted to see videos which I agree would be excellent features in future versions of this app.
Next Steps
Based on what I learned from the in-person interviews with the 3 participants, I propose the following next steps in future iterations of this project.
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Add a hands-free feature to keep the users from touching the screen.
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Add a notification to alert the user when an item in the fridge about to expire.
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Add a social connection to help users see what their friends/family is cooking and to share recipes.
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Add videos to recipes as the cooks want to see "how a recipe is made."
BRAND DEVELOPMENT
Brand Characteristics
Based on the target audience for this recipe app, I wanted to visually influence the users perception of the app by conveying a sense of simplicity, health-consciousness, and ease of use through the boldness of the color choices.
I tested the colors using WebAIM to ensure the colors met the accessibility standards. I chose sans-serif font to maintain a simple and easy look and feel to make sure the fonts placed on the colors were easy to read and see.
PROTOTYPE
Conclusion
If I had more time and resources to devote to this project, I would like to dive deeper into the machine learning aspect and further personalize the recipes based on the users eating and grocery shopping habits.
Lessons Learned
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Research is essential - to any project as its the foundation of the design strategy. Conducting the essential research for this recipe app helped me to better understand the users and their needs and informed my design decisions as I moved through the process.
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Keep designs simple - if your website/app requires too much work on the part of the user or causes any frustration they will look somewhere else for a better experience.
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User feedback is valuable - conducting user testing and evaluating the users feedback helped me to discover and eliminate the pain points in my design that I otherwise would not have known.