In this sprint, I chose to dissect SAVR Recipes, a startup that helps home cooks look up recipes and follow steps to make desired dishes. Although the application functions as a platform that presents recipes to the target audiences, there are some underlying issues that diminishes the user’s experience. My role is to quickly test out possible solutions before these issues become engraved into the company, on top of that role, my love of cooking has also motivated me to find new and inviting ideas without burdening the user. As someone who has been cooking for my family since middle school, I believe I make an excellent candidate for coming up with methods that suite the target audience.
Recently, Savr has been receiving negative reviews regarding the timing, order of steps, and new techniques when it comes to their recipes. These issues cause users to be disappointed with the outcomes because they did not feel the instructions were clear or easy to execute. For instance, one step may tell the user to put their dish into the oven and bake for 20 minutes and then proceed to tell the user to do another step, however, this step may take an average of 30 minutes to complete, which may result in overcooking the dish in the oven.
To do this as thoroughly as possible, I decided to literally put myself in the shoes of the target audience. As someone who cooks regularly, I created a simple recipe and then attempted to follow the written instructions while recording my progress with photos. I learned that a list of instructions was fine for a well versed home cook, however, I found myself improvising from my recipe. These improvisions and adjustments indicated that a new cook would be confused and lost and the results would probably yield something different than expected.
I then created a step-by-step mode that breaks down the recipe into simple steps in both text and video formats. I also added hyperlinks to techniques so users can choose to look up techniques on the fly instead of having to google unfamiliar skills in the middle of cooking. These features will allow users to simplify instructions instead of bombarding them with information, giving them clearer and more concise guidance.
On the first day of the sprint, I received an overview of the current situation of the app. The app started off with chronological lists of the recipes, however, the way the recipes were laid out left much to be improved. Using the affinity map, i recorded the following frustrations:
I then mapped out the user flow to better understand how the average user would approach an unknown recipe. This diagram allows me to visualize where certain areas may cause confusion or frustration with the user and what steps I could potentially use to avoid those frustrations.
Before sketching out ideas, I first did lightning demos on 2 mobile applications. The first being a mobile recipe app called Tasty. From this demo I highlighted the following features:
The second demo was over a mobile application called All Recipes. The following features were highlighted:
Tasty and AllRecipes provide videos with the chef cooking step-by-step giving the user a visual representation on what to do and how they can follow. Tasty also provides a step-by-step mode where a video of the step is playing along with text descriptions, which helps users learn as they go.
Both apps also provide steps while other steps are in process to help with the timing, allowing things to get done instead of having the user remain static and throwing off the timing of the entire dish.
After analyzing how other recipe apps approached the concept, I sketched out my Crazy 8s. Out of all of the ideas, I gravitated towards the 5th sketch. Majority of the user pain points pertained to confusing steps and terrible timing, both of which correlated with making mistakes to recipes. These issues could be solved by having a tutorial that guided users each step of the way.
From there, I crafted a single idea and used it as my Solution sketch, highlighting how the step-by-step concept would work inside of the Savr app.
On this day, I created a storyboard highlighting how a user would interact with the step-by-step mode of the application. Each box shows the progression of the app up until the final interaction of the step-by-step mode.
For my interactive prototype, I decided to design the storyboard in Figma and then use Marvel to create a basic prototype. I used the colors the initial app highlighted–which was a bold orange. From there, I expanded on the color palette and added blues as my accent colors. I kept the design to a minimum so that the users can focus on the interactions.
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For the user tests, I recruited 5 participants with cooking experience through my Slack channels and conducted a 5-act interview. User test recordings and notes can be accessed through:
Pain Points
Benefits
Suggestions to Add
All of the users found the Savr app to be simple and easy to use. Majority of pain points pertained to specific aspects of the app, the home page, the ingredients panel, and video versus photo representation.
I found that these pain points are preferences to the interface of the app. None of these elements actually prevented users from completing their tasks, however, they are still important in how they contribute to the user’s flow.
After completing this sprint, I realized I needed to make some adjustments to the app and listen to the masses. Although I was adamant about keeping some features, such as the gallery-esque home page, I learned that not everyone approaches these designs in the same way. Something a simple as adding an icon to a button or function can help guide users and give them hints and indicators regarding what they can hope to expect when interacting with a feature. Without this feedback from my users, I would not have thought of these improvements on my own and it is just as much as it is my battle as it is the user’s. Overall, by giving me limitations and simplifying processes, the sprint taught me that I can still yield an effective product within a very short span of time.
