End-to-end design, User Research, Mobile Design
Simplifying Meal Planning for Busy Individuals and Families
Overview
Ever wondered what to do with the remaining grocery after a week of meal prep? Or how to plan meals that will fit everyone's preferences? This case study explores solutions to address these pain-points through user-centered design approach.
My Role
User Research: Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Persona Mapping, Journey Mapping, Empathy Maps
UX Design: Sketches, Wireframing, High-Fidelity Prototype, Usability Testing
Tools: Figma, FigJam
Understanding The Problem Space
Families need a way to build customizable meals because juggling everyone's preferences and restrictions is time‑consuming and stressful.
Consider Whitney, who always has to prepare two meals- one for herself and one for her husband who is a vegetarian. Making two separate meals needs more time, more groceries and potential waste, and more space to store.
While meal planning works for individuals, it gets more complex with the increasing number of family members.
Semi-structured interviews with 7 participants helped me understand the users I’m designing for and their needs.
Needs
Family members' have different dietary constraints and preferences.
Actions
Batch-prepping and mix-and-match is how families keep meals interesting.
Constraints
They have time, space, and money constraints.
Some user quotes from the interviews
Current solutions focus on providing meal ideas, nutrition tracking, and meal planning. But users need more.
I analyzed available apps in the market (App Store) to understand how they solve user pain-points. Most apps already solve the problem of deciding what to cook by providing users with different meals options based on their preferences so I looked for opportunities which would address other pain points of my personas.
Exploring Opportunities
To bridge the user needs with opportunities, I developed HMW statements that were broad enough to allow multiple solutions, but narrow enough to set focus. To understand how will each potential solution help the user, I created storyboards with solution scenario for each HMW statement.
01
HMW make meals flexible for different preferences?
02
HMW make meal planning easy for everyone?
Customization Options for Dietary Preferences and Restrictions
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
Collaboration on grocery list and meals
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
Generating Meals from Leftover Groceries
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
User Feedback
User testing with 8 participants resulted in 100% task success rate, but there was room for more efficiency and clarity.
Findings from the user testing helped guide the design and flow of the app before jumping to high-fidelity prototype. I made design changes based on findings from the user testing to make the prototype more efficient, provide better clarity, and better interaction.
MVP Product
Scenario: Helping users with different preferences
Selecting and modifying meals and recipes from the curated list further
Scenario: Sharing grocery list
The user has added the meals and generated grocery list. They want to share it with others for easy shopping and collaboration.
Scenario: Using up the leftover groceries
After the weeks meals are done, there are some groceries left
Learnings
Working on the project helped me refine my empathy skills while discovering and understanding user pain-points. I started the project with an assumption that busy individuals are constrained by time, but learned that other factors surrounding them like families and their preferences also play a major role in their decisions of meal planning.
Future Work
My vision for this app would be to make it community focused where people can share their ideas on how to customize meals, make simple meals, etc. and share it with others.
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