CookEaz

This individual project was completed as a part of General Assembly’s UX Design course. The process started with writing a problem using ‘How might we…’ .

Problem Statement

I suspect that young working people with a busy schedule who want to put home cooking into practice, struggle to do that because it’s a mental and physical burden to manage cooking and buying groceries, or they don’t know how to cook.

Interview

Participants were finalized after asking screening questions

Do you prefer preparing meals at home?
Do you find it challenging to time-manage home cooking and buying groceries with your work schedule?
Do you care about balanced and nutritious diet?
How many times did you cook last week and how many meals do you wish to prepare at home?
How many people do you cook for?

Total 6-people were interviewed; 2- American citizens, 4- Working and living in united states but born and brought up in other countries.

Interview finds

Common struggle – “Thinking of what meal to cook especially when I am hungry is annoying, and then when it’s decided, sometimes I don’t have all the ingredients available.”
People with a different ethnic background always shop groceries from multiple stores which consumes time, especially when stores are not nearby.
Prefer 20-40 min cooking time. However, day-to-day meal recipes for their staple diet can consume more time. Pre cut vegetables, having things ready to put together to cook would help.

Some quotes from participants
“I love cooking and like to go with its flow. Love the process.”
“When there is food is on the plate that I made, it makes me happy.”

Updated Problem Statement based on interview finds

Home cooked meals are healthy and economical. However, people with a busy schedule who want to put home cooking into practice, struggle to follow it, because they feel exhausted by the amount of mental energy and efforts they need to put into thinking about what meals to cook that require 20-40 mins time, prep for the meal, grocery shop from all the different stores to buy all the ingredients for meals.

Affinity Mapping

4 Interviewers data was mapped under following points.
Goals Behavior Pain Points Values

Notes with similar context were grouped together. Based on that grouped information, user persona is created.

User Persona

RIYA JOSHI

Age– 29
Job – Software Engineer
Status – Married

She works as a Software Engineer (work hours typically 9am-6pm), and currently lives in Boston with her husband and enjoys eating home cooked food. Typically she tries to cook meals at night for dinner and lunch the next day.

Goals

Cook a meal daily that take 20-40 mins to cook, and cook for four days a week
To not waste groceries bought
To have a balanced diet
Would like to explore cooking different cuisine recipes other that her staple food

Pain Points

Prepping/chopping for meals is time consuming and boring than actual cooking/mixing
Thinking of what meal to cook out of the ingredients, especially when hungry
Visiting multiple stores to buy things needed
Forgetting what groceries have been bought and food being wasted

Feeling/Behavior

Prefers to cook at home to eat fresh meals and because it’s cost effective.
Tries to keep the diet balanced
Her staple diet is mostly meals that she grew up eating

Opportunity

Creating an app that in which user can pre-plan their meals for week/s and shop for groceries according to their plan.

Competitive Analysis

Feature Prioritization

Now

During setting up a profile user would choose which cuisines they like, allergies, and ingredients they dislike.
Displaying recipes in categories based on the user profile, and filters to sift through recipes.
Creating a meal plan for selected week after user selects recipes.
Making a grocery list for the meal plan.
Purchase pre-prepped ingredients
Keep the grocery order ready at one store which they choose for pick-up, or order at home.

Next

Discover recipes based on ingredients they have
Display nutrition content for entire week once plan is built.

Later

Letting users add their own recipes
Explore recipes on social media and add those to their list

Primary User Flow

Click on the image to open the user flow in new tab

Open Card Sort

Lo-Fi testing

Filter tab in collapsed mode was perceived as filter for categories instead of filters for user preferences for time, no of ingredients etc. So majority users didn’t click on it and proceeded to next. This was mainly because recipes were grouped according to the cuisine and displayed under that name.

Asking them to add day and time for each recipe chosen was adding more efforts and time to complete the primary flow.