CHEFME
An App that helps you navigate your everyday cooking journey
DESIGN PROBLEM STATEMENT
Millennial's Cooking Struggles
College often represents the transition into adulthood as students move away from their families. Beyond studying and socializing, young adults are now also responsible for their living necessities like cooking. Yet with limited cooking knowledge and skills, students struggle to cook for themselves, resorting to take-outs, meal prep subscriptions or frozen microwavable meals, which is not the most economical or healthy for students. Though there are a lot of resources online to help student with cooking, like youtube videos or recipes, the act of having to look up a recipe online might not be the most convenient and efficient for busy college students.
USER RESEARCH
Target Users: college students, young adults
SECONDARY RESEARCH 01
The article “Can’t cook, won’t cook? A tenth of students never made their own food” (Denham, 2013) highlights the issue with the limited cooking knowledge of college students. Research done by studentbeans.com shows that 65% of students skip breakfast, 59% of students skip lunch and 29% of students skip dinner each week, illustrating the bad eating habits of college students. This bad habit is in fact due to the lack of cooking education as James Eder, the founder of studentbeans, said: “Over half of students wish they’d learned to cook at school and therefore go off to uni with limited cooking know-how.” Students expressed that they tend to stick with just a few safe recipes while others rely heavily on take outs or food from home.
“I find cooking for myself quite empowering. There’s a real sense of achievement when you cook something particularly good or impressive to show off either at a party or in front of housemates. I also like being able to eat as much as I want, when I want!”
- Jonny (21), Durham University
SECONDARY RESEARCH 02
Another research claims that 1 in 3 college students don’t know how to boil an egg, while 1 in 5 can barely make toast (Daily Mail Reporter, 2012). A spokesperson from Sainsbury expresses that “students heading off to college this month need a crash course as to how to set themselves up for their new lives”. The study also shows that 48% of student will be hungry during their first term because they are unable to make even a simple dish like spaghetti bolognese while a third are bemused by baking a potato.
PRIMARY RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
“I just moved out to the apartments this year and it was really a struggle to have to take care of myself at first. Especially with food. Back home, my parents would prepare all my meals for me but now I have to do it on my own.”
Caroline Martina (20) UCLA
“I learned how to cook in college through talking to my friends, asking them what their favorite recipe is. I also cook with my housemates a lot, that is how I started to cook. Now I love cooking!”
Jenny Tong (21) UCLA
“As a college student who just moved out from the dorms, I didn’t know how to make a lot of dishes. The first month, I was eating the same thing every meal! But I started seeing what my friends are making on their social media so I asked them for the recipes. That’s how I accumulated my collection of recipes”
Kai Chen (21) UCLA
SUMMARY
The major issue with living alone for the first time is the lack of cooking knowledge and skill. Though there are lots of resources online, the resources are often not user-friendly or consolidated, making it complicated or even confusing to use. College students expressed their interest in learning how to cook, yet they need a tool to help them get started. ChefMe is the solution. It is an app that allows users to explore different recipes and follow simple instructions with video guides to help them start their cooking journey and gain cooking knowledge and skills. ChefMe also aims to create a community that connects its users through the exploration of food and cooking. Users can share their passion for cooking through interacting with other users, exchanging knowledge to further their cooking techniques.
DESIGN SOLUTION
An app that allows users to discover, follow and share recipes to enhance their cooking experience.
I first developed a persona to understand our target audience's needs. I then wrote a few scenarios in which our users will need our app for in order to help create features of the app. I then proceed to create low fidelity wireframes and workflow to map out the app. After that, I designed the app screen wireframes and created a high fidelity prototype based in the wireflow.
SCENARIO
Everyday cooking scenarios faced by college students
SCENARIO 01: ASAP FRIDGE MEAL
Kaitlyn came back from her work late and is in a hurry to meet her friends to go out at night. She only has 1 hour to make her meal and eat before she leaves the house. She opens the fridge and realizes that she only has a few ingredients left from her last grocery trip and is unsure with what she could cook with the limited things she has. She then inputs the few ingredients she has: chicken, broccoli, pasta and pesto into ChefMe. The app immediately generated a few recipes based on the ingredients she inputted.
Kaitlin then chose the recipe that she thinks was most suitable for her night. She then checked the comments and reviews of this recipe and decided she wants to make a chicken pesto pasta with broccoli. Following the detailed instructions with video guidance, she began to cook.
After she cooked her meal, she immediately took a photo of her finished meal and posted it on the ChefMe sharing platform. This allows her to share with her friends her proud meal of the day. She is also able to rate the recipe to share her thoughts with the other users on this platform. She then proceeded to eat her meal, got ready and left.
SCENARIO 02: PREPARING FOR A POTLUCK
For a sisterhood event, Kaitlin’s sorority decides to make a huge potluck where everyone has to contribute and bring a home-cooked dish to share. Kaitlin and her roommates, therefore, decides to go grocery shop for their individual dishes.
At the grocery store, Kaitlin is unsure what she should make hence buy, so she opens up ChefMe for advice. Since she has to make big enough portions for all her sorority sisters, she decides to make something simple, with few ingredients. So she goes on the “Simple, Easy, Fast” tab on the app and clicks into the “5 ingredients recipe”. She then browses through the list of suggested recipes based on her previous preferences and chose “Tuna Casserole”. After checking the comments and reviews, she buys the 5 ingredients needed for her dish.
Kaitlin then goes home and begins to prepare her dish. Following the recipe step by step with video guidance, she effortlessly finishes her dish. She then wrote the caption and uploaded the photo she took of her finished Tuna Casserole and shared it to her wall on ChefMe.
SCENARIO 03: EXPLORING OPTIONS
Before going to bed, Kaitlin decides to plan for her meal tomorrow. Not knowing what to make, she decided to browse through the ChefMe app to look for inspirations. She saw that her friend Priscilla made Vodka Sauce Pasta and it looked delicious so she decided to check it out. After looking at the reviews and the video, she decided to save this recipe to cook for tomorrow.
She then went to check for the menu of the day. She also found it exciting and decided to save it for tomorrow as well.
WIREFRAME & WIREFLOW DESIGN
Wireframe Design
These simple templates provided guidance for the actual app designs. Similar to other wireframe designs, a shape with the cross represents a photo, while the grey shaded shapes represent buttons. After creating these simple templates, I was able to develop the core structure of the app, hence proceeded to work on the wireflow of the ChefMe App.
Wireflow designs
An initial low-fidelity design (not posted) illustrates the flow of the apps, especially what each of the buttons leads to. However, this image is not comprehensive in showcasing the exact usage flow as there are limited frames and functionalities in this initial design. Therefore, a high-fidelity wireflow diagram (image above) is created on InVision to illustrate exactly the pathway of each button and function.
Scenario Workflows
SCENARIO 01: ASAP FRIDGE MEAL
User can access the “What’s in my fridge” function through the menu button on the home page. They can then input all the ingredients they have available in order to generate a suitable recipe for them. Users use the “+” to add ingredients while the “back” button to remove ingredients. To generate the menu, users press “--->”. A few recipes with the specified ingredients will then be generated. Users can browse through the provided options to find the one they like the most. After choosing the recipe, users can look at the video guide, check the reviews, or share the recipe after they finished cooking.
SCENARIO 02: PREPARING FOR A POTLUCK
User can access the 5-ingredient recipes through navigating the “Simple, Easy Fast” option in the menu page. After browsing through the various 5-ingredient recipe options, user can choose the one they like and explore the chosen recipe. For example, they can watch the video and check the reviews. If users don’t feel like cooking at this moment, they can also save the recipe. If not, after cooking the meal, users can easily post their cooking experience through uploading a caption, star rating and a photo.
SCENARIO 03: EXPLORING OPTIONS
Users can scroll through the home page, which acts as a feed for them to explore what other people are posting. If any posts interest them, users can press into the post, which is linked to the recipe used to create that food. Users can then explore the recipe by watching the video, checking the reviews or saving it for later use. Other than the news feed, users can also explore the daily “recipe of the day” to explore more options.
BASIC FUNCTION: SIGNING UP & LOGGING IN
Sign up: New users need to input a few basic information like name, username, password, icon, age, occupation, neighborhood. They also have to answer a few questions like how would they rate their cooking skill or how much they like cooking so we can have a better understanding of the user’s abilities and habits.
Log in: Users who have already signed up will have to input their username and password to access the app.
After signing up/ logging in, users can use the basic 3 bottons on the bar to navigate the main sections of the app: profile, menus, home page.
BASIC FUNCTION: FINDING FRIENDS & MESSAGING
To message friends, users can access all the chats in the top right “message” button.
If users want to initial conversation, they can access friends through the profile page. Similar tap on the image of your friend to start the conversation.
If users want to add a new contact and message them, they can use the search bar to find the person and add them to message them.
DESIGN EVALUATION
Usability Testing
Description:
This usability test is to evaluate the user interface, ease of usage, and content of the ChefMe Application. The interviews are conducted in 2 different location, apartment and café. Both users are college students who just moved out to the apartments this year, which fits our target audience. Users are interviewed for basic cooking habits and lifestyles, their initial thoughts on the app’s usefulness as well as interphase design. They are then asked to complete a few tasks within the app to test the functionality and usability. After completing the tasks, users are asked to provide their final thoughts and suggestions.
Reflection & Conclusion:
Through interviewing people that fits the target audience group, we were able to not only gain insights into the usability of the app but also the content design, which allows for further improvement of the ChefMe application.
Both users found it relatively easy to navigate through the app as the format, layout, and design is quite similar to the apps they are currently using. One user highlighted the similarity of ChefMe with Instagram's layout while another said the home button resemble the iPhone home button. These similarities made satisfied the usability heuristics as it matches the real world provides consistency and standards and focuses on recognition rather than recall, which made it easier to use.
However, they expressed that the buttons can be more specific to make it even more recognizable. For example, one user said the home button looks like the camera button, which made it quite confusing. She then suggested me to include a home button icon to make it more obvious. Another user complained that the back button might not be the most efficient as after messaging someone from the profile, she expected the back button will take her back to the profile instead of the messaging page.
Both user’s overall comments are positive. They expressed their interest in this application as they see the benefit of being able to connect with friends and share their love and passion for cooking. Yet they both said they will only use it if a lot of their friends are on it, hence raises the issue of network effect.
Overall, the content and idea of this application fits the needs of the target users. Yet some of the design must be refined, for example the button design, roadmap design etc in order to make it more user friendly.
