Problem space

More and more adults, especially Millennials, are interested in cooking meals at home. A recent 2016 study by Peapod and ORC International found that Millennials are twice as likely as baby boomers to engage in home cooking, at a rate of 49% v 24%. To continue this forward momentum, making more resources to help people strategize their approach to home cooking can combat common challenges such as:

• Adults are busier than ever, and especially amongst the younger working generation, they don't have the time or resources to plan, shop, and cook. 
• Grocery shopping can be an expensive and daunting tasks to those who don't know how to cook. It gets pricey having to purchase a variety of ingredients for different recipes.
• Meal planning is difficult when you don't know where to begin.

Research

Over the span of a week, I conducted research on trending food and recipe websites and mobile applications. I also issued online surveys and one-on-one interviews with users of different engagement levels of home cooking.

One-on-one interviews

Participants answered a series of questions about their cooking and grocery shopping habits. A majority of participants were full-time working adults under the age of 35. Below are a questions from the interview:

• What’s your routine for planning out your meals for the week?
• ow often do you cook our own meals?
• How do you feel about cooking at home?
• How do you think people your age feel about cooking?
• What are common obstacles that you can think of that may prevent people from cooking?
   

Through interviews, I identified the following insights:

• All participants cited time as the major obstacle in being able to cook at home more often. Participants preferred cooking to buying food, but would default to takeout or fast food particularly after a long day at work.
• Participants want to cook more often than the rate they are currently cooking.
• Health is the biggest reason participants preferred cooking. 

Competitive Research

The following food websites and mobile applications were researched for this project:

• Allrecipes
• Food.com
• Postmates
• Tasty
• Instacart

In conducting research, I found that recipe sites such as Allrecipes, Food.com, and Tasty had satisfactory search functionality that made finding recipes easier. These services did not have meal planning their main intention however many did offer the ability to save recipes for meal plans. Grocery lists were a common and useful functionality as well. None of these apps focused on providing recipe results with similar ingredients to help with meal planning and efficient grocery shopping.

Survey responses

A 10 question survey was administered to 7 individuals with varying involvement in meal prep, grocery shopping, and cooking. All subjects are full-time employees between the ages of 28 - 33.  

Takeaways 

• 87% enjoy cooking
• 57.1% cook meals at home 1 - 3x per week
• 57.1% cook to save money
• 42.9% cited both tiredness from work and lack of time to prepare as reasons for not cooking more often

Below are a few highlights from the information gathered.

Persona

After hearing the experience of my subjects, I developed my persona for Recip.me - Sol Franz. Sol encompasses many of the pain points articulated during my research: busy, young professional, who understands the benefit of cooking at home but just cannot find the time to make this a priority. 

User flow

Based on the key features of the app, I constructed the ideal flow for the Recip.me user journey through the app.

Wireframes

Low fidelity wires were created in Sketch as a base for my designs. 

Interactive designs

CONCLUSION

Recipme underwent one round of testing using a low-fidelity wireframe prototype. The purpose of this test was to analyze how users interacted with user interface, and how intuitive the the app flow was for each user.

The following objectives were tested:

• Ease of navigation and flow for site design
• Clarity of category sections
• Identify areas users encounter an unexpected outcome or get stuck

Testing subjects

Three subjects were selected for usability testing. All testers are full-time employees working at least 40 hours a week. They ranged from 28-33 and had varying engagement with meal planning. cooking, and grocery shopping.

Scenario + Tasks

• Analyze site design
• Plan meal by base ingredient
• View recipes
• Access additional search filters
• View meal schedule
• View grocery list

Testing results

Users were able to navigate through the prototype with relative ease. Overall users expressed positive feedback in regards to completing tasks. 

• All users responded positively to site design and colors
• Users have never experienced an app with this sort of functionality but where able to navigate through the flow with minor hesitancy.