"When cooking, you’re a part of the meal process from start to finish — the grocery store to the plate. It makes you far more in tune with the food you’re putting into your system."
The Challenge
Savr is an app that has a large variety of recipes and a growing community of active at home chefs. Savr users have no problems finding the recipes they desire, but they run into trouble throughout the cooking process.
Savr has been getting some negative comments from their users when cooking more difficult recipes. Savr users love the meals, but they are having a difficult time when following new and more complicated recipes.
Objectives & Goals
Help users follow instructions while preparing new recipes.
Instruct users of new cooking techniques while preparing recipes to save them time in the future.
Streamline the process of following a recipe to save time for the user.
My Role
I acted as the main UX Designer during this five-day Google Ventures design sprint. The design challenge was provided by Springboard and BitesizeUX.
I utilized many design tools throughout the sprint. I used Sketch for creating the screens, Invision for turning my screens into a working prototype, Adobe, and Miro.
Day 1 - Research
User Interviews
“Tell us about your experience cooking a new recipe for the first time.”
User Persona
Nick 29 years old Los Angeles, CA
Nick cooks about three nights a week- usually for himself, but sometimes his girlfriend joins.
Most of the time, he enjoys cooking and trying new recipes. He thinks following a recipe is the best way to learn some of the most basic cooking techniques.
Nick likes tweaking or improving certain recipes, but he doesn't feel comfortable improvising until he has cooked it "by the book" once.
Frustrations
If a dish doesn't come out as expected, he doesn't really know where he went wrong, and he feels disappointed in the meal, and that he didn't really learn anything for next time.
Nick gets stressed out trying to refer back to his phone every time a new technique or step is introduced.
Sometimes Nick is unsure that he's "on the right track" halfway through preparing the meal.
Nick isn't always clear on "what's next" and how he can prep a few steps ahead. This often leads to mistakes, or a lot of time wasted.
Goals
Follow a recipe easily and confidently, so his dish comes out as expected.
Nick wants trying new recipes to be enjoyable and challenging - not stressful and chaotic.
User Journey Map
User
Chooses what meal to make
Follows steps to prepare meal
Cooks or bakes the meal
Serves meal
Eats meal
Day 2 - Sketching
I reviewed a small handful of industry-leading cooking apps to get better general idea for the flow are features that are currently being used.
Competitor Analysis
Kitchen Stories
Chef-created recipes with guided steps that include photos or videos. With easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions anyone can try their hand in the kitchen.
Tasty
Tasty recipe app provides recipes with video instructions which are step-by-step guided.
Sketches
Being inspired by existing solutions, I created some sketches to flesh out some features that might be incorporated in the recipe app. Initially starting with Crazy 8s, I was able to then further refine my sketches to be more fully thought out and include features that would enhance the usability experience of the app.
Day 3 - Storyboarding
I revised my preliminary sketches to create a storyboard that represents the user as they follow a recipe. This storyboard acted as a wireframe to help confirm my design intent.
Day 4 - Prototyping
Digital wireframes were created to help define the feel of the experience and act as a starting point for the final prototype. These helped me to visualize size and placement of the screens.
Day 5 - Usability Testing
“I love how much fun and enjoyable it is to experience cooking a new recipe!”
The app was then tested using the prototype that was created from the previous day, I conducted usability testing to validate my design. I asked the users how they might go about choosing and following a new recipe.
Based on my user testing, many changes needed to be made to both the user interface and to the way the user experienced the app. The biggest issue with the preliminary design was many users did not understand how proceed to the next step of the recipe. This was for obvious reasons a very important feature.
After careful consideration, more research, and rethinking the experience, I took a step back to really think about what needed to change to add to the experience and allow users to better follow a new recipe.