🚨 Problem Statement & Visions For Solution

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Problem Statement

How can people who have busy schedules cook or prep home-cooked meals if…

• they do not have enough time to cook everyday or
• if they do not have a fixed schedule? </aside>

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To help people with this struggle, our team suggested that we can create a mobile application that:

• Help users meal plan flexibly according to their schedule.
• Keep track of their groceries, meals, and recipes anywhere and anytime.
• Provide both personalized and diverse recipes for exploration. </aside>

📝 Project Summary

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My Role and Contribution

• Conducted user experience interview and analyzed the results using affinity diagram.
• Created low-fidelity wireframes.
• Created interactive mid-fidelity prototypes for usability testing using Figma for usability testing.
• Iterated mid-fidelity prototypes and created interactive high-fidelity prototypes based on usability testing results and for consistency across screens.
• Created slides and presented our project to the rest of the class and the industry experts. </aside>

🔍 Project Process | Stage 1: Research

📚 Step 1: Background Research — Research questions relevant to problem statement and/or design details.

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Q: What are the steps people normally go through before, when, and/or after meal preparation?

A: Shop for Groceries → Cut and Prep Ingredients → Cook the Food → Enjoy the Meal → Clean the Environment

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Q: What are the biggest factors people have when deciding what to eat?

A: Budget, time availability, cultural or family background, and personal preference.

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Q: What are the challenges people face when meal prepping?

A: Insufficient time, inflexible schedule, and meal prep is boring

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Q: How does meal planning impact individual’s grocery shopping habits?

A: Meal planning requires more groceries at once and required people to plan ahead of time of what ingredients they need throughout the week.

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Q: What roles does cultural or family background play in influencing cooking habits?

A: The choices of food, cuisine, or ingredients they have access to

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💬 Step 2: Exploratory Interview — Conduct interview with targeting audience

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Research Questions:

• How long would the average person spend on cooking?
• Do people generally prefer easy meals or really nice meals?
• What are the primary barriers that prevent people from cooking at home despite a desire to do so?
• How much time do people typically have for meal preparation, and what is their acceptable cooking duration?
• What influence do cultural backgrounds and dietary restrictions have on meal planning and preparation?
• Do individuals already use any tools or strategies to simplify meal planning, and what are their pain points with these methods?
• How long would someone spend on cooking/food preparation? (How much time are people willing to devote to cooking?) </aside>

🟨 Step 3: Affinity Diagram — Analyze participant’s responses

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Affinity Diagram

A method of organizing and analyzing qualitative research data (like interview responses) by grouping similar items together into categories and themes to identify patterns and insights⁠.

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Main Findings:

• Current meal prep services and options are expensive and fail to meet users' needs.
• People seek convenient meal options but prefer affordable, healthy, home cooked meals.
• Meal prep and cooking are really time consuming.
• People like variety.
• People struggle to choose and memorize recipes. </aside>

👤 Step 4: User Persona — Help understand and empathize potential audience.

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User Persona

A user persona is a detailed fictional representation of a target user, based on research data, that helps designers understand and empathize with the intended users of a product. In UX design, it typically includes demographics, behaviors, needs, and pain points to guide design decisions.

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Let’s Meet Sarah! Our User Persona.

Sarah is a busy event manager that sometimes she has to work on the weekends too.

Recently, Sarah noticed a significant decline in her health condition; she constantly feel fatigue at work, which impacts her work productivity.

She found out that it was due to her habits of eating take-out foods most of the time.

Sarah wants to start cooking her own food BUT..

• She does not have a fixed schedule of when she can cook.
• She does not have enough time to cook everyday. </aside>

🗺️ Step 5: As-Is User Journey Map — Help empathize target audience’s struggles.

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As-Is User Journey Map

A detailed visualization that maps out a user's current experience with a product or service, documenting their actions, thoughts, and pain points at each step to help designers better understand and empathize with user frustrations and challenges.

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