UX Designer
Me Chef
App designed for ease of Cooking and Shopping
The design case study on the mobile application MeChef brings together the fondness for cooking, maintaining health and buying groceries needed for users on daily basis with exact quantities.
Introduction
After i graduated i left my home for job and started living with friends in a shared living space.
Life took a new turn with a lot to do in my hand. With new office i had less time for cooking. eating out regularly would burn hole in the pocket. Learning to cook was only option left.
As a fresher my motto was to eat fresh, save more and waste less.I was looking for smart options for my meals to be stress free thats when i came up with this idea.
Type : Individual Project
Project Duration : 4 Weeks
Nature : Conceptual
My Role : UX Designer
The Challenge
Multiple Factors affect people to take up cooking - Interest, time, patience and continuous efforts. Youngsters end up ordering food delivery which affect their Health. They lack any integrated tool to manage the food flow in kitchen.
Goal
A mobile application that manages the complete food flow in the users’ homes. Plans your meal ,calculates nutritional Value.
One stop solution that provides users to track incoming grocery in kitchen, tailored recipe suggestions to decide upon hence encouraging low wastage of food with exact quantities of the ingredients packed and delivered at doorstep.
User Research
In conducting this research I conducted interviews with 14 individuals with an age range of 20–30 years living in India to ask them about their experiences with cooking
Where these user's are not good at cooking but want to be able to cook for themselves with the skills they have now.
The information was distilled as below:
From talking to potential users of a cooking app, we were able to learn about the pain points ,opportunity and mental model of the user cooking at home and find the main problems they were experiencing.
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Ease of cooking & finding ingredients: Most of the people fitting the persona believe that if they could cook with what they already have or if the ingredients are carefully listed or simply if they can order them online with the exact quantity needed that helps a lot. Secondly most of them liked to work on recipes which had a smaller time span and it becomes easier if they can predict the no. of steps.
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Religious belief,Dietary restrictions, medical conditions & allergies: Most of the individuals have certain restrictions based on Religion,allergies, diet & medical conditions so it becomes obvious to ask prior and give them option to modify search accordingly.
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Rating : Before attempting for a particular receipe people like to see how others did and this boosts confidence among users and this builds interaction model.
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Meal Planning: Meal planning makes life easier and knowing what items needs to be procured before meal preparation saves a lot of time.
User Research - Pain Points and Findings
Persona
Below persona are created to represent the collection of individuals we interviewed during our research phase. A persona allows us to keep our target audience in mind throughout the design phase.
Based on the results of the user interview, getting the findings, namely:
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Find Recipe on Apps with available ingredients
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Don’t know nutritional level of recipe
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No meal planning feature
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Many option recipes
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Sometimes no video tutorials
User Journey Map
To understand a product or service from a user’s perspective, I use a user journey map. This user journey map describes the visualization of the steps the user takes to reach his destination.
Name : Monali
Goals : Find the desired recipe on the mobile application and select it to be used as a guide in making the dish. Also shop for the required ingredients.
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User Story - Requirement
User Stories
Requirements
As a user i want to find receipe where i can procure only the ingredeints i require for cooking
As a user i want to find receipe of different cuisines
Add Selection by cuisine
As a user i want to find receipe by meal type
Add Selection by meal type
As a user i want to find receipes based on deitary preferences,allergies,my cooking skills.
Incorporate three section to get the users dietary needs, allergies and cooking skills.
As a user i want to get receipe recommendations as per my meal preferences
After Dietary preferences, allergies and cooking skills are set - display recommendation based on it.
As a user i want to find receipe with available ingredients and procure the rest
Add a method for user to search using available ingredients.
As a user i want to add ingredients with specific measurement to shopping cart.
Add a method for user to ingredients by searching and adding it to shopping list from receipe.
As a user i want to find receipes based on Time duration
Add Provision for user to see receipe based on time duration
As a user i want to see nutritional value of every receipe
Display exact nutritional value based on the ingredients
As a user i want to find the exact quantity of ingredients requires as per the serving portion or number of people consuming it
Add Provision for user to select number of people and display exact quantity of required ingredients
As a user i want hassle free shopping at my doorstep
Select receipe, Add ingredients to shopping list
and shop
Mind Mapping
Below mind mapping is created to help organize a collection of information connected to a single topic and structure it in a systematic, meaningful way
Content Strategy
After the Persona, User Journey map, i spent some time to form the information architecture of the app. The summary of the personas, user stories helped me get clarity on overall look and feel. Below is the initial site map for the app.
Low-Fi Wireframe
Usability Test
I am conduct usability test with 5 Participants with think aloud method:
Scenario
1. Find a recipe for making butter chicken.
2. Get ingredients to make butter chicken for 6 Adults
3. Make a shopping list of unavailable ingredients
Goals
1. Find how to cook butter chicken.
2. Find how to customise recipe for Number of servings
3. Find unavailable ingredients at home to order for butter chicken
and then the results are as below:
Based on Usability Testing i made changes to the design.
High Fidelity Wireframe - All Screens
Final designs on mobile. From left to right.
My Take - Aways
Challenge
Working on an individual concept project with a time constraint was a challenge in itself. With limited time in hand - I did just the right amount of research to make an app which would impact the users daily lives. The problem chosen is a part of people’s life today in one way or the other.
My Learnings
Time constraint taught me to work in a certain amount of time by taking my self made deadlines seriously. I completed the project in the set amount of time. User feedback and iterations made the app concept impactful. Users already wanted an app like MeChef in their lives.
Whats next?
Collecting more and more feedbacks, exploring use cases and brainstorm ideas of any other features that gets highlighted from the feedbacks.
Thank you for your time :)
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