Design process

User-centered design

• Discovery

  Competitor analysis
  Audience definition
  

• Concepting

  User flows
  Wireframes
  Design
  

• Prototyping/User testing

  Prototyping
  User Testing
  Review
  

• Competitors Analysis

  Forks Over Knives and Kitchen Stories are two popular platforms that have been successfully on the market for quite a long time. Analyzing these competitors allows me to understand what features and functionalities they already offer to identify opportunities for differentiation, and to understand better the cooking market.

• Key objective

  “to empower people to live healthier lives by changing the way the world understands nutrition”. They provide “the tools and resources to make a plant-based lifestyle easy and enjoyable.”
  

• More about

  The platform offers a wide range of products to promote the idea of a healthy life: cooking courses, a meal planner, books, films a line of food products, a recipe app, and a magazine with health topics. The company offers 600+ whole-food plant-based recipes from over 50 leading chefs, simple step-by-step instructions, and the ability to add recipes to the built-in shopping list.

• SWOT Analysis

• S

  strong branding
  good UI with creative elements
  the engage users a lot by offering a free guide, recipes related to the holidays, suggesting starting planning etc.
  a lot of different products (meal planer, courses, recipes, articles etc.)

• W

  small variety of filters on the recipes page
  no photos/video of cooking process
  saving function of a recipe was not found

• O

  make the presentation of a recipe on the recipe page more informative (e.g. add the rating or time for cooking etc.)
  to add an additional metric (not cups, spoon) and give users a choice

• T

  the trend towards healthy eating can decline
  competitors are increasingly presenting their recipes in a more varied way (adding videos, the ability to increase the serving number etc.) so users will over time be less interested in preparing recipes from this site without these additional functions

• Key objective

  “to inspire, enable and delight aspirational home cooks in their everyday cooking, making them feel at ease in the kitchen.” The brand believes that “the ability to cook confidently for yourself and others leads to a life full of wholesome and enjoyable moments.”
  

• More about

  The Kitchen Stories positions itself as a family, they value their employees, they can often be seen on the web, on YouTube. They are also putting a lot of emphasis on their new app (which has a very high rating in the Apple Store and Google Play), recently released a book with the best recipes and launched branded spices.

• SWOT Analysis

• S

  strong branding with good UI
  cards with recipes are good presented, they contain a lot of useful information (cooking time etc.), it is possible to like (save) them
  a lot of different filters and the ability to sort the recipes
  fotos are provided and additional features (serving by ingredients)

• W

  there are some annoying and confusing things: the filter function looks like a CTA button, aggressive app advertising and not only from the company etc.
  the web app cannot be called a very user friendly
  the web app cannot be called a very user friendly

• O

  to make more negative space or structure the information in another way because sometimes the page looks overloaded and this makes feel tired

• T

  such a large amount of advertising can scare users away and users will choose brands without it

Result

• Boredom leads to the search for new recipes

  “Sometimes I have time and want to do something interesting.”

• Looking for inspiration in such apps

  “Inspiration is very important to me.”

• Good structured, simple app without complications

  “I would like not to be disturbed by unnecessary information and notifications. Unfortunately, I have so little time.”

• Easy recipes without any complexity

  “I don’t like overload and clarification either, just a recipe is better.”

Results

• Confusing naming

  Users could not understand the naming of some elements - rename them.

• Problem with understanding the level of difficulty on the containers

  All users didn’t get what the three lines on the cards meant - change the design of the level of difficulty

• Pure design of the search screen

  Some users visited unexpected search screen without a specific recipe to find something interesting - the search screen must be improved.

• Challenges

  • Due to a lack of experience, it was difficult to conduct interviews; it was not always possible to ask clarifying questions (spontaneously) in order to better understand what the user wanted to say to get more information.
  • The web app contains a lot of different information which is why it was challenging to organize it in a user-friendly, intuitive manner so that the design doesn’t look cluttered and overwhelming.

• What I learned

  • I learned how to create responsive web app for different screen sizes and devices using breakpoints.
  • I practiced creating screens with a lot of information (e.g. recipe screen).
  • I learned how to design a web app taking into account the interests of 3 user personas.
  • I learned how to create a product in which inspiration plays a big role.

• Next steps

  • I conducted a usability test with only 3 participants, which is of course very little to evaluate the effectiveness of the web application, that is, it is necessary to continue testing the application to gather feedback for improvement. I did not test the application on people with disabilities so it is necessary to attract such people to the test to ensure that the app is usable for all users, regardless of their abilities or disabilities.
  • Due to limited time, I had the opportunity to design not all screens, so in the future it is necessary to continue to develop the design, paying special attention to the "Let’s get inspired" and "Meal planner" screens, since these pages may be of particular interest to users and their value will affect their overall satisfaction with the product.