UX Design Case Study - What’s For Dinner? Mobile App

Concept: The App improves the meal experience for all household members by facilitating cooperation and streamlining the entire meal planning process. Our unique task-sharing feature allows household members to work together from recipe selection to drying the last dish, saving time, money, and frustration.

Project Overview

Problem:In a busy household, meal planning and execution are a lot of work, and too often seem to fall primarily on one person. As of yet, there isn’t a web-based meal planning platform that allows members of the same household to identify the tasks involved in meal planning, let alone to select which household member will take responsibility for each task.

Solution: A mobile app for households to make meal planning easier and to enable all household members to share in the process.

Tools: Miro | Figma | Adobe Illustrator | Adobe Photoshop | Adobe XD | Microsoft Excel | Google Workspace

My Responsibilities: User Research Plan, Problem Statement, User Statement, Value Proposition Statement, Competitor Analysis, Flow Chart Lo-Fi - Hi-Fi prototyping and Testing

Timeline: 3 weeks - group project

Interview Plan

Research Question: How do busy households handle food management (meal planning)?

Objective 1: As user researchers, we would like to learn more about busy adults' weekly meal experience.
Objective 2: As user researchers, we would like to discover how busy adults take inventory, create a grocery list, make purchases for their weekly meals.
Objective 3: As user researchers, we would like to understand the stress points of food management for busy adults and how it affects their meal planning process.

User Research & Insights

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Proto Persona

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Survey Data

  • About how many times per week does someone in your household cook a meal at home?

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  • On average, how often does someone in your household shop for groceries?

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  • What features would you like to see in a meal planning app?

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    Key Findings from Interview and Survey
    • Search was conducted through 5 interviews and a google survey with more than 40 respondents.
    • Our interview questions were developed to be more open ended yielding feelings, in depth perspectives, personal experience, pain points and insights.
    • Survey questions were created to yield statistics for particular behaviors or to identify specific needs for our users.
    • We found in many households the entire meal planning process to be overwhelming for one person.
    • A top four response in our survey was an app with a feature to share responsibility in the household.

    Affinity Diagram Process

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    User Persona

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    User Insight Statement

    Suzanne, a busy working mother, who is the primary cook for her family, needs an easy way to plan and divide tasks for their weekly family meals because being prepared to feed her family at home reduces both meal costs and stress related to the question, “What’s for dinner?”

    How might wecombine meal planning, grocery shopping, and collaboration with family members in one app and help Suzanne have a seamless, efficient, and successful meal planning experience?

    Problem Statement

    Busy adults want the ability to share meal planning tasks with other household members. Deciding “what’s for dinner?,” adding each ingredient to the list, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up can be prohibitively time-consuming if left to one person.

    There is a need to streamline this process and to facilitate task-sharing, enabling household members to prepare and enjoy more meals together and help Suzanne have a seamless, efficient, and successful meal planning experience?

    Value Proposition Statement

    Making meal planning a family adventure

    The “What’s for Dinner?” App improves the meal experience for all household members by facilitating cooperation and streamlining the entire meal planning process.

    Brainstorming

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    Feature Prioritisation Matrix

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    Storyboard

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    User Journey Map

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    Competitor Analysis

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    User Flow

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    Sketches

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    Digital Wireframes

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    A/B Testing

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    Iterations Made Based on User Test

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    Hi-Fi Prototype

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    Hi-Fi Prototype Iterations

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    Plan for Future Iterations

    • We want to enhance navigation within the app: add “bread crumbs”, redesign header and footer.
    • Also, continue to work on a user flow based on ongoing user testing & feedback.
    • Develop main features: Such us Meal planning, Recipe features, Grocery list to online shopping, Paid Subscription Service, Recipe Voting
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    Summary

    Main Emphasis: At the beginning of the project, we brainstormed several brilliant ideas, and our team came up with a meal planning app “What’s for dinner?”. We added a unique feature that helps families organize dinners while increasing family involvement to help with routine tasks. This feature formed our MVP. The result of our initial research inspired us to continue developing the application.

    Better User Flow: Through testing and iterations, we found that we missed including tutorial screens and the need for add household member’ screens. We could have saved time if our user flow was more intuitive, but we worked through and found good solutions.

    Takeaways: Despite the difficulties of remote work, we are proud to have worked with a group of creative and intelligent women to deliver a product that will make families’ lives more organized and brighter.