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Savvy Gourmet: Recipe App Design

People are trying to find an alternative to eating out – it’s expensive and not always healthy. Finding time to cook at home can be difficult, with busy schedules and recipes that can be troublesome to follow.

Savvy Gourmet is a recipe and meal planning app that allows busy home cooks to easily find, save, and plan their meals with simple, healthy, and budget-friendly options.

The Goal

We want to help low-middle income families save costs on food by encouraging home-cooking with simple recipes that are delightful, easy & healthy.

Team

Khulod Jaber (Me)
Julie Dinwoodie
Franck Simard
Carrie Pan
Kirby Toh

My Role

User Research
Data Analysis
Sketches & Storyboard
Prototyping

Time Frame

3 weeks

Tools Used

Figma, Adobe XD, Miroboard, Google Office

Overview

The Problem

People are dining out more or ordering food for delivery. This can be expensive and lack quality and healthy meals.

Design Process:

Empathy

Design

Define

Key Takeaways

Phase 1: Empathy

People nowadays are too busy to cook, but at the same time ordering takeout is getting increasingly expensive. Many still opt for takeout in favor of convenience and time - but that isn’t necessarily the best choice in most cases both in terms of money and healthiness.


Our Objectives:

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  1. Encourage home-cooking with simple recipes
     

  2. Help low-middle income families save costs on food
     

  3. Understand what hinders cooking/food prepping

Hypothesis

People are more likely to use recipes to make meals if it was more affordable and less time consuming.
People are more likely to use recipes if it saves them time.

Methodology

Online surveys consisted on 15 open-ended questions

  • Done with random strangers on the Internet and social media

  • Posted on Reddit & Facebook

  • 1x1 Interviews consisted of 15 open-ended questions

  • Done with friends & other connections

  • 1 on 1 Video call via Zoom/Discord

Participants
 

  • People who cook at home at least once a week

  • People who want to learn how to cook

  • People who use recipes, or are willing to use recipes

Survey Data

Group 199.png

Phase 2: Define

User Insights

How often do you eat out?

“Eating out is a privilege and we used to go out once a week, when we lived in the city, but since we’ve moved it’s much less – more like once a month.”

How often do you cook?

“I cook dinner 80-90% of the time and I like to keep it simple. I don’t like long and difficult recipes.”

What are some of the frustrations that prevent you from cooking?

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  • “Finding recipes that are delicious, simple, and healthy."

Affinity Diagram

User Persona

Competitive Analysis

After defining our problem statement, we performed a competitor analysis to see what other similar apps exist. We chose:

image 36.png

To view a more deailed analysis you can find it here

Problem Statement

A person who wants healthy and affordable meal plans needs to have access to quality ingredients and easy-to-prep recipes. Time constraints and difficulty making home-cooked meals can take away from quality time with family.

I like, I wish, what if..

Using our Problem Statement, we began to ideate using the I Like, I Wish, What if method.

I like I wish What if.jpg

After ideation, we prioritized our ideas and selected the main features for our app. We then defined those ideas, which we sorted using a Feature Prioritization Matrix.

Feature Prioritization Matrix

Feature Prioritization Matrix.jpg

The Solution

An app that offers easy-to-follow recipes and can help the user find fresh ingredients at a comparable price. Will be suggesting recipe ingredients that are on special from a local grocery store's weekly flyer. It offers easy-to-follow recipes and will account for special diets/needs.

Journey Map

Storyboard

Phase 3: Design

User Flow

Savvy Gourmet App User Flow.jpg

Sketches

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Group 198.png

Style Guide

Final Design

iPhone 13 Pro.png

Key Takeaways

Creating the Savvy Gourmet app was a project that allowed our group to explore the exciting possibilities that a UX designer would experience. Throughout this process, we learned our first valuable lesson: Keep It Simple!

Coming from diverse backgrounds, we often spent too much time overthinking the processes and getting too specific in some of our tasks.
By keeping it simple we could build wireframes that were easy to use with only a few minor flaws.

Using our User Testing results we decided to iterate our wireframe to implement a couple more steps to allow users to complete the task of saving their favourite recipes and create a shopping list.



Moving On
 

  • Creating an onboarding process with coaching screens to aid the new user

  • Developing a tab bar to make navigating the app more seamless

  • Iterate, iterate, iterate

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