Role
UX Research
UI Design
Skills
Wireframe, Prototyping, User Research, User Interface, Branding
Team
Solo
Duration
13 weeks
01 Define
Rising food prices and delivery fees
In 2023, the food price increased another 5.8% and many people now struggle to dine out, and order takeouts due to high food prices and delivery fees.
Food Waste Issue
"value sizing" issue in the US — getting more food for the dollar. The problem is, whether you want so much food or not, the more you're served, the more you eat. This results in either overconsumption or an increase in food waste
Lack of appreciation for home cooks
Much of the increased workload of home cooking is shouldered by women, and society shows limited value to their full-time work
Problem Statement
Home cooks struggle to minimize food waste and optimize personal time, as they often purchase ingredients in bulk and face lengthy cooking processes.
Here I introduce…
Ave24 is a sustainable marketplace that serves each person with daily home-cooked meals.
We create a diverse and cultural community for food enthusiasts to discover a variety of home-cooked meals from around the world. Home cooks offer their daily cooked meals to consumers who are searching for the taste of home or finding their grandmother’s recipe.
02 User Research
Competitive Analysis
By identifying the competitor landscape, I was able to understand the current market situation. Also, by analyzing direct , secondary, and indirect competitors allows me to identify gaps in the market. This helps me to tailor my product or service to meet unmet needs.
After I Identify the competitors, I compare their key features and I was able to see many trends and missing needs. Currently, there are existing app for home cooks to host but no platform provides an opportunity for home cooks to sell their food separately.
User Persona & Empathy Map
User personas provide a detailed representation of my target audience, home cooks and customers, including their demographics, behaviors, goals, and pain points. I focused on two different types of user that will be on AVe24: home cooks (the provider) and food lovers(the consumer), I want to understand the need and goal of my target audience to better tailor my platform for them.
User Journey
This journey map highlights Jessie's experience as a customer of Ave24, from knowing about the app to browsing the profiles of home cooks, viewing their menu list, and picking up her meal. I was able to identify Jessie’s motivations, actions, emotions, and pain points throughout her exploration.
This journey map highlights Maria's experience as a home cook, from knowing about the app, to meal planning and shopping to preparation, serving and packing the meal, and finally selling her meal to the customers. It captures her motivations, actions, emotions, and pain points throughout her preparing process and interactions.
Business Model Canvas
Information Architecture
I develop a IA for Ave24 to visualize the features on the app and the overall flow for the users. I IA focuses on the Home cook side, includes profile set up, my menu list, community page, and order page. The MVPs I will be focusing on is menu list, profile, and community features.
03 Ideate
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Usability Testing
Interview Discussion Guide
Understand home cooks’ attitudes, behaviors, and pain points
Identify tools, processes, and services they leverage
Uncover latent and unmet needs and identify opportunity spaces
I conduct usability testings with mid fidelity wireframe with 5 home cooks. I was able to learn about their motivations on meal sharing and community building, at the same time, I was able to receive feedback on the app functionality, user interface, and many great questions came up as well.
# of interviews
5 interviews and testing
Format
3 online interview and 2 in person interview
Target Audience
Full time & part time home cooks
Age range
21-65
Key Objectives:
Understand the importance of community and food sharing for home cooks
Gain insights into how home cooks integrate technology into their cooking routines
Assess home cooks' sensitivity to pricing when setting the cost of their meals.
“Good company and friends is when you meet them at a dinner table.”
Grace Shen, full time home cook and part time financial consultant
“If the profile is privately protected, I would love to share some meals. If I’m comfortable later on, maybe I will start sharing with the public.”
Lilian Rong, part time home cook and Undergraduate student at Parsons
“If you go to a grocery store, you buy a certain amount of food, let’s say I buy a can of crushed tomatoes, there’s no way for me to use half of it, I’m not going to save them, I will use all of them. So I will always end up making a larger portion.”
Amrin Haque, part time home cook and Undergraduate student at Parsons
“Meal Sharing is very private for me. I only prefer to eat or share meal from people I know. I think it’s important for home cooks to be transparent about their ingredient and cooking environment.”
Julie Wu, part time home cook and Undergraduate student at Parsons
“As someone who enjoys home cook meals, I have always enjoyed my mother’s cooking, I wily definitely use this app if I can.”
Nirva Bao, part-time home cook and Undergraduate student at New York University
Key Takeaways
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Improving trust and fostering a sense of community should be prioritized to enhance user satisfaction and retention. Adding direct Messaging Feature can be useful for customrs to smoothly communicate with home cooks.
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Users expressed a desire for more customization and flexibility in various aspects of the platform, such as portion sizes, pick-up locations, and meal preferences.
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There was a consistent emphasis on the importance of transparency and authenticity, particularly regarding meal images, ingredient lists, and cooking environments. Implementing measures to ensure real and accurate representations of meals, along with transparent communication about ingredients and cooking practices
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Home cooks find it important to have a space to customize and personalize their home cook profile. As meal sharing can be private to many home cooks, user suggesting to have the choice to operate as private account when beginning.
From my Usability Testing, I was able to ideate these How Might We questions that support my next steps.
How Might We…
How Might we motivate home cooks to share their cultural culinary expertise and family recipes while addressing concerns about privacy?
How Might we create a system that reduces food waste by allowing home cooks to trade or share excess ingredients or meals with their local community?
How Might we build a platform that fosters trust among users, ensuring transparent transactions and addressing concerns about food safety?
#1 redesign
Improving Customization and guidelines when adding new menu item
User Feedback:
Users appreciated the informative nature of the feature
more detailed information such as portion size and ingredient lists would be helpful
Users recommended adding prompts for descriptions
Solution:
provide more visual guidelines, such as keyword and hashtag search bars and progress bar
reorganize the information in a more understandable visual hierarchy
add portion size for better reference of the price
BEFORE
AFTER
#2 redesign
Adding Suggestions and Examples for better transparency for customers
User Feedback:
requests for clear instructions or prompts to ensure users upload real images of their meals
implementing AI-driven assistance to filter out any filters or alterations on uploaded images
Users highlighted the importance of trust and transparency in food images
Solution:
adding toast and notes for home cooks to upload real representation of their image
adding more choice of media when uploading
AFTER
BEFORE
#3 redesign
Separate contents in the community page for easier searching
User Feedback:
Users expressed enthusiasm for the idea of a community space, especially for sharing recipes and cooking tutorials.
incorporate filters or categories for easier navigation and organization of content.
Solution:
changing the top dashboard to profile icons and messaging; more connections between users
implementing filers and categories for better browsing
AFTER
BEFORE
#4 other ideas
better connections and community building between home cooks and customers
User suggestions and idea:
implement features like private messaging or chat to facilitate communication between home cooks and customers
personalization for profile
some users suggest having a space where home cooks can interact with their followers or friends
Some users proposed a subscription model for recipe sharing as a potential revenue stream for the platform.
Branding Strategies
Design Principles
By analyzing competitors’ brand identity, logo style, color direction, Imagery, and Typographic choices, I was able to identify the potential Strategic Opportunity Space for Ave24’s Branding direction. This provides me a simple understanding of the white space of the current market.
Engaging Imagery
Use high-quality, enticing imagery of homemade meals to capture users' attention and inspire them to explore the offerings available on Ave24.
Community-Centric
Incorporate features that facilitate community engagement and interaction, such as user profiles, forums, and recipe sharing, to foster a sense of belonging and connection among users.
Transparent Information
Provide transparent information about home cooks, including their profiles, specialties, and cooking methods, to build trust and confidence among consumers.
Mission & Vision Statement
“we envision a world where homemade meals unite communities, transcend cultural boundaries, and inspire sustainable living.”
Testing different visual Styles: 3 Stylescapes
“Our mission is to share the warmth of home through every homemade meals.”
04 Design
UI style Guide
05 Final Design
Personalized Menu for Home cooks
Home Cooks can specialize in a variety of cuisine or specific dishes
To minimize the waste of time and ingredients, it’s important for home cooks to schedule their cooking times.
for customers, they can search by individual cooks, types of cuisine, or specific dishes they’re craving that usually can not be found at restaurants at an affordable price.
Customizable profile
Home Cooks creates their personalize profile that brands their identity
Home cooks can review their business statistics, reserve events, and friends list in their profile section
home cooks can communicate with their customers to secure a enjoyable pickup process; users can also engage with their private friends or event hosts
Vibrant Community Hub
The feature allows home cooks and consumers to share recipes, tips, and engage in discussions.
Users can discover their home recipe from here, or learn some cool cooking tips from professional home cooks
home cooks and customers can both reserve seats at private events, such as home dinner and cooking lessons
06 Reflection & Next Step
conduct more targeted user interview
For this project, I was mainly recruiting young home cooks who doesn’t spend extreme amount of time on cooking like at home moms. If I had more time and connections, I would want to hear more from full time home cooks and at home mothers’ opinion. It’s important to prioritize my target audience’s need.
Develop a strong and well structured wireframe
It’s my first time doing UI design and this practice of designing low, mid and high fidelity wireframe was very unfamiliar. I didn’t recognize the importance of having a well structured and mid fidelity wireframe before furthering developing into final design.
