BACKGROUND
Have you ever stood in front of your fridge or pantry looking and thinking of what to cook? Well, many people have.
Pantry is a mobile app that would help any level cook search for recipes based on ingredients that they have on hand. This will save them time.
TIMELINE
2 Week Sprint
ROLE
UX/ UI Designer, UX Researcher
TOOLS
Pen & Paper, Miro, Figma, Draw.io, Photoshop
▹ DISCOVER
THE RESEARCH:
I wanted to find out what and how someone would look for recipes. I wanted to know what motivated them to cook.
METHODOLOGY
Utilized different methodologies to acquire the needed data to find pain points from our users. The task flow is presented below to clearly see what the user goes through. User interviews were the follow-up to get a deeper dive into their pain points, and whether the pain points were validated or invalidated.
TASK FLOW ANALYSIS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The task flow analysis showed that the user had many different ways you are able to acquire recipes, from cookbooks to the internet.
The users were not able to search for ingredients that they currently have.
Users would have to scroll to the bottom of the app to get instructions and recipes
Instructions were incomplete or unclear.
▹ DEFINE
What's the problem?
I found that the users had many pain points with looking for recipes. Whether it was scrolling all the way to the bottom of the website to find the recipe, the instructions were not clear, and searching for recipes was not so simple. The biggest takeaway was that users don't usually plan ahead of time when cooking or they just want to cook with what they have on hand as soon as possible.
"I want to cook with ingredients that I already have at home and I don't want to waste time staring in my fridge."
▹ DESIGN
IDEATION:
From simple sketch wireframes to mid-fidelity prototypes. I wanted to give a simple and pleasing aesthetic that would still get the job done. From bare-bones to details.
⇢
USABILITY TESTING
There were 10 participants and the tasks were:
Search for recipes by imputing ingredients you have on hand.
Is the user able to reach the goal of getting the recipe?
Did the user know how to search for the recipes?
Pick a recipe to cook.
How did the user determine which recipe to cook?
Were the search results accurate?
How would you save a recipe? Where would you go to recall that favorite recipe?
Was the user able to save a recipe?
Were the icons clear and self-explanatory?
THE INSIGHTS:
There were some UI changes that needed to be made as a result of the usability testing.
▹ DELIVER
OUTCOME:
- The simplistic aesthetic and color make it a welcoming and calming app.
- The Usability test provided lots of insights as to what would make this app more usable and valuable to users.
- Easy recipe searches that incorporate what you already have in a home were the key to designing this app.
- An additional layer to their searchability, doing so gives the user the freedom to be more adventurous in their cooking.
- Percentages to the recipe give the user the highest probability of what they are able to cook based on their on-hand ingredients.
PROTOTYPE
Video walk-through of PANTRY's Hi-Fidelity prototype.
Screen Recording 2021-03-28 at 13.59.56.movSee the full clickable prototype on Figma here
WHAT'S NEXT?
RECOMMENDATION
Expanding on the community page to enable the users to share and add tips and tricks that they have with cooking.
Have the ability to request or add recipes from their favorite chefs or just ideas to share.
Integrate nutritional information for those users who are concerned with their health.
REFLECTION
What did I learn? 🤔
I enjoyed working on this project because it was something that I can or many people relate to, which was also the challenge. How do I take myself away from the project because I am not my user? How can I get to the root cause of the problem without being biased? These questions took up a lot of time at the start of my project. I didn't know where to start.
This project was a two-week sprint that encompassed 75 percent research and 25 percent design because learning was more important than speculating. I decided to focus on my interviews and deduced information that I gathered, in which a solution presented itself. I learned that research is critical because, without the research, Pantry would not be the app that I created today.
