Tools & Techniques

• Understanding: Task analysis, user journeys, competitor analysis, user flows, paper prototypes, digital wireframes, usability testing.
• Prototyping: Sketching, Invision app, Adobe Photoshop CC, Inkscape (SVG icons)
• Deliverables: High Fidelity Mockups

Overview

There’s a growing community of people who rely on meal planning. They struggle with having very little time to shop or cook amidst other daily commitments, so they seek to prep multiple meals for consecutive days. Cartmeal is a concept project for a client, I got the opportunity to work on its user experience as well as interface designing as an app.

Challenge

How might I assist meal planners who want to meal prep more efficiently while also seeking the flexibility to still cook something unique and tasteful?

Process

At start, I dedicated my time on understanding and defining the problem, and I started to come up with some first design concepts. An early competitive analysis showed me that the main, direct and indirect, competitors were already offering to their customers a selection of recipes, with the possibility of purchasing the corresponding ingredients from their store. However the following table shows that none of them fully satisfied users needs, in terms of features they need.

Based on my findings from my competitive analysis I felt confident into moving to the next step of designing my product which was coming up with a strategic plan and help build competitive advantage into my product. I chose to use the User Centered Design Canvas tool as my strategic plan because it focuses on both the user side and the business side.

Some key insights from my research showed that people want a variety of recipes that are easy to make and follow along to. Want simple ingredients and not complicated recipes. They choose recipes based on their cooking ability. Some vary their recipes they have chosen by a theme or based on a main protein.

People select recipes based on a number of factors: what they already have, what produce is in season, how long prep time is and cooking around their schedule, how many stores they would need to go to, and sales going on currently.

Summary

At the end of the sprint, the project was presented in a 7-minute presentation. Overall, the feedback was positive. However there is room for improvement. I enjoyed doing the research for this case study as I am passionate about it and it would be awesome for this to one day be a real app for people.