ReciPea
ROLE: Researcher, UI Design
Tools: Figma, Otter.ai
Duration: 80 hours
"Cooking is an expression of who you are. When you learn to cook, you learn to tell your own story through food." – Marcus Samuelsson
Rising awareness of environmental, health, and ethical concerns associated with animal-based diets has led to a significant increase in plant-based eating. I am passionate about finding unique ways to help people learn a new skill. I had 80 hours to identify the target audience for a vegan cooking app, discover their goals and pain points, define a common problem and address it with a solution.
The Problem
How might we create a learning platform that helps busy parents and partnered individuals quickly and easily prepare plant-based meals so that they can align their family’s diverse dietary needs with their own health and ethical values?
The Solution
An approachable app that uses gamification to teach plant-based culinary skills to those who new as well as those who are familiar to living a plant-based lifestyle.
Through research and testing I found
Personal values and community support aid in adopting a plant-based lifestyle.
Challenges include the need for novelty and time constraints.
an effective platform would give quick access to new, engaging recipes with step-by-step learning.
Discover
Competitive Analysis
User Interviews
Define
Affinity Map
POV & HMW
Feature Roadmap
Develop
Task Flows
Wireframing
Moodboard & Branding
UI Kit
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Deliver
Iterations
Competitive Analysis
I conducted competitive analysis with four popular vegan cooking apps to understand which features and functionalities they offer to users. Happy Cow, Forks Over Knives, Oh She Glows and Food Monster.
I learned that the market is saturated with blogs whose SEO optimization make it tricky for the user to quickly find what they need. Many have turned to google and chat GPT to sidestep the constant scrolling and ads.
All of this can be overwhelming to a new user who may just want to try something new. There are no completely free options that offer tutorials and gamified engagement. The UI of most of these is cumbersome to navigate, making it difficult to sort and filter options.
I was surprised to learn that there was much opportunity to make something simple, fun and engaging for both the novice cook and the experienced vegan. This exercise gave me much needed context towards crafting effective questions for my user interviews. The answers they would provide would lead me closer to a product that could gain an edge in the marketplace.
User Interviews
I put out a call to people who shop at my local co-op and a couple of online plant based forums. I conducted 7 interviews with a diverse range of people who either had experience living a plant-based lifestyle or were curious to learn more about it.
I wanted to learn what motivated them to choose cooking plant-based meals as well as their experiences with app based learning in general. My intent was to find novel and effective ways to teach the skill of cooking to a user within the constraints of an app.
Two common issues emerged from my participants: finding time to cook and having variety in their meal plans. Surprisingly, most of my users didn’t need extrinsic motivation to pursue a plant-based lifestyle. Animal cruelty, the environment and health were aspects that aligned plant-based cooking with their personal values.
Our Users
Who are they?
Individuals aged 21 to 45 who are a mix of experienced and novice vegans
Animal cruelty and ethics are their main motivation
Novelty in meal planning as well as time are two main needs
Why do we care?
Market demand for plant-based options has been steadily increasing
Very few apps on the market offer gamified learning for vegan cooking
Opportunity to galvanize loyalty from those who are making an identity shift
Affinity Mapping
My affinity map revealed another insight: friends and family play a large role in influencing our user’s decision to stay motivated and engaged with a plant-based lifestyle.
However, the vegan community is not a monolith, it is composed of individuals who carry a diverse set of needs. A solution that serves these needs will have to be easy to follow, informative and somewhat adaptable to specific uses.
We can cater to their desire for practical, budget-friendly and time-efficient cooking while supporting their need to learn the basics and inspire some variety in their menus.
The gamification elements most respond to are streaks, completing levels and accomplishing tasks that support their personal values.
The Problem
This led to the formulation of my “Point of View Statement”:
Busy parents and partnered individuals need to learn how to cook quick and easy plant-based recipes because they want to align their family’s diverse tastes with their own ethical and health values.
From this statement my “How Might We” question was born:
"How might we create a learning platform that helps busy parents and partnered individuals quickly and easily prepare plant-based meals so that they can align their family’s diverse dietary needs with their own health and ethical values?”
Now that I had my problem defined, I returned to my affinity map where I had grouped suggestions of vegan recipe app feature ideas from my user interviews. This feedback helped me generate and prioritize features for my feature roadmap.
Feature Roadmap
I love the Arthur Ashe quote, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
Often when I embark on developing a new product, there are so many directions I can go. Defining my problem and starting with what my users would want in an app gives me a place to begin.
The feature roadmap helped me table the ideas that might not be feasible to develop in the eighty hours I have to deliver this product. I am then able to focus on the features that will best address our user’s needs and pain points. From this roadmap I discovered that step-by-step guides and a basic recipe database were features I could address with my task flow.
Task Flow
All of my users mentioned that the task of finding and learning a new recipe in their busy schedules was challenging. I studied how my competitors solved this issue, taking screenshots and cherry-picking the parts that worked.
Most apps just list the ingredients of a recipe along with a numbered list of instructions to create the meal. Some of my users depend on video demonstration while others prefer to scan the steps of a recipe while they cook.
I split the difference, offering my users the option to scan a photo tutorial of the recipe with the option of accessing a clip of the video demonstrating the particular step in the process. I created the following task flow.
Having it laid out in such a fashion provided a focus toward specific screens I would develop for my prototype.
Low & Mid-Fidelity Wireframing
I based my sketches off of the screens that contained delightful design patterns I had cherry-picked for my task flow research.
This caused me to rethink my task flow steps. Often I go back and forth between low fidelity wireframing and my task flow as I distill it down to the steps that will most effectively meet the needs of our user.
I love creating the lofi wireframe along with my task flow because, as I share this with others, the image can quickly convey the idea of my task flow. It’s a quick way to gain valuable feedback to help me improve my product as well as orient me toward what to tackle next.
Based on the feedback I received, I was able to identify which screens I would need to build and simplify the information I supplied on each screen. I arrived at a flow that remained faithful to the needs of my users while offering an experience that stands out among existing apps in the marketplace.
Moodboard & Branding
Stepping away from my mid-fidelity wireframe and task flow, I continued to collect design patterns I liked in the cooking and education app space. I looked at recommendations made by my users as well as products on the marketplace. I turned to Pinterest to find color palettes and typefaces that were accessible and appealing. I wanted this platform to be fun and light-hearted, inviting novices as well as experienced cooks for an experience that was simple and engaging. I fell in love with the idea of a hand-drawn vegetable mascot, like a sweet pea.
I workshopped several names and landed on the name ReciPea which pointed me toward my mascot, a sweet pea that praised our users and encouraged them to keep trying.
Originally I envisioned having the pea mascot with my logo but it proved too complicated to scale, so I decided to move the pea to another part of my design flow.
Referencing what my users valued and needed in my affinity map, I created brand values for ReciPea: Sustainability, Accessibility and Joy. These values would guide me toward the color palette I would create for my UI Kit.
UI Kit
What’s great about having a mid-fidelity wireframe already developed is that I can use it as a style tile to test out my color palette. I chose the typeface Nunito Sans because it’s friendly, approachable, modern, clean and easy to scan. The google font is versatile, with a large family of weights and fonts.
I tweaked the hue value of my secondary and accent colors to create a palette that balanced out the wireframe elements. My intent was to put the user at ease and guide them gently through the steps of a new recipe. I tested the colors with an accessibility plugin to make sure that my user interface would be inclusive to users with diverse needs.
The icons and buttons all had to match and convey a sense of ease and inviting playfulness.
Prototyping
Returning to my wireframe I applied all of the elements of my UI Kit and logo. Along the way I tested it for accessibility and made necessary adjustments to my palette and icon choices. I changed the placement of some of my icons to make the information less cramped and easier to find.
With my high fidelity wireframes ready, I was able to create a prototype in figma of the flow I wanted to test with my users. I set to work on my usability test, creating a scenario that echoed a number of experiences shared in my user interviews.
Usability Testing
To test the functionality of my flow I conducted 7 moderated usability tests with a mix of participants I had interviewed earlier and new ones who fit my target user base.
I created a scenario where a user needed to find, open and scan through a photo tutorial of a breakfast that their seven-year-old would like that takes less than 15 minutes to make. I hypothesized that 3 minutes would be the average time to complete this task. I wanted to see if the icons made sense to my users. I also wanted to see if they would find any alternate paths while completing the goal.
I monitored their interaction with the prototype and had them share their thought process out loud as they navigated the task.
User feedback was positive and they were able to find and complete the flow well under three minutes. I captured all of the feedback and behavior and sorted it on a venn diagram of what was successful and what required more attention. I was able to identify simple fixes and prioritize the revisions I could employ in the remaining time I had on this project.
Iterations
After placing all of the feedback on a prioritization matrix, I made the following iterations to the design:
Clearer labels: All of the users expressed some level of confusion over what my icons meant and it became clear to me that adding labels would be the most feasible fix I could make to the design.
Buttons and dock hierarchy: Most of the users hesitated over which button to choose (Watch video or scan photo tutorial) I realized I had placed two primary buttons next to each other, which was slowing them down. Many users stated that they were used to the profile dock icon being on the far right. After switching the profile with my bookmark icon, I realized it created a better balance to my dock icons.
Clarify total steps of recipe: Half of my users stopped when they reached the main screen of my recipe. One commented that they wished they had a clear idea of how many steps were involved with the recipe. I added text that conveyed the number of steps the user would experience, which would help them decide if the recipe was a good fit.
Next Steps
More user testing would be in order to evaluate the effectiveness of my changes. I would also like to refine the search and filter process with card sorting to help discern the best order of categories presented to our users.
Ultimately, the goal is to enhance user satisfaction and decrease the amount of time spent hesitating in certain areas of the flow.
Many of my participants were intrigued by the idea of accessing video clips within a photo tutorial. My findings have indicated that I am on the right path to deliver a minimum viable product that will address our user’s needs and stand out in the current marketplace.