My Kitchen Pal
— A focus on design ideation, prototyping and testing
Project Overview
Keeping track of what you have in your pantry and refrigerator can be tricky business, especially when out grocery shopping. What do you have in there? How much is left? What do you need to use up before it goes bad? What meals can you make with items you already have?
To aid users in the kitchen and while grocery shopping, My Kitchen Pal is a fridge and pantry organization tool, inspirational recipe book and shopping buddy for smartphone users.
Role: UX Designer / UX Researcher
Duration: 10 weeks
Tools: Balsamiq / Adobe XD / Marvel App / Miro
**Through the Design Ideation and Prototyping course in the Brandeis University User Centered Design Master’s Program
In a team, we initially came up with the idea of a tool to aid users in the organization of their food, grocery shopping and in the discovery of new recipes. This on-the-go tool would be in the form of an app as more people are using their smartphones to keep track of lists and surf the web for cooking inspiration. None of us were aware of any tool that analyzes the contents of your refrigerator and pantry to come up with recipes to make right away, so that is what we sought out to explore.
Background
Analyze current user behaviors surrounding cooking and grocery shopping
Come up with a tool that combines user wants and needs when it comes to creating grocery lists, keeping track of what food one has and searching for recipes to make
Objectives
To explore the question: How can we make an effective and easy to use tool for busy users to organize, keep track of and create meals all in the palm of their hand?
Goal
— My Process
Contextual User Interviews
Empathize
Scenario Mapping
Storyboarding
Define
Ideate
Brainstorming
Sketching
Paper Prototype
Prototype
Usability Testing {x3 Rounds}
Test
Lo-Fi Prototype
Mid-Fi Prototype
Iterate
— Empathize
I talked with 3 potential users to gather initial information on their current behaviors, pain points and goals revolved around at-home cooking and grocery shopping.
Contextual User Interviews
Overall, my users felt…
😵💫
Disorganized
Difficult to keep track of food they have or need and oh so many reviews and recipes to sift though
🗑
Wasteful
Often forgetting about items that don’t get used or go bad
🙃
Uninspired
Unsure about coming up with interesting recipes off the top of their head
Insightful User Quotes
“ I’m not very good at just looking at what I have and coming up with food to make. But once I find something I like, I’ll save it to use again later. ”
“ I don’t even look at a recipe if it has very little or bad reviews. It’s not worth it to me. ”
— Define
Mapped three different user scenarios: Choosing a recipe to make, logging a food item into their pantry/fridge manually and gathering inspiration by browsing recipes.
Scenario Mapping
Drawing out storyboards for each scenario to pull more context into potential user behaviors.
Storyboarding
— The Problem
At this point, each team member chose a specific aspect of the app to focus on for ideation, prototyping and testing. My area of expertise was on the recipe finding and browsing features. Based on my initial research and design concept artifacts, the main problem for users is that:
Finding the perfect recipe to make, using items you already have, can be a slow and painful process.
01
— Ideate
Holding a brainstorming session, I generated various solutions, features and experiences to aid My Kitchen Pal users in finding recipes to make.
Brainstorming
Overall, the recipe searching feature should be…
⚡️
Quick
Providing fast results based on user parameters
✍🏼
Customizable
Allowing extensive filtering, sorting and detail input options
➡️
Straightforward
Organizing recipes and information in an order that makes sense
Achieved through…
❤️
Saving
Favoriting and saving recipes to collections created by the user
💭
Filtering
Extensive filtering and detail input options to narrow user’s search
📃
Recipe Details
Including various details beyond the basic ingredients list and steps
👩🏽🍳
‘Made’ Indication
Marking recipes as ‘Made’ to update pantry and fridge information within the app
— Prototype
Pen and paper sketches of wireframes and flows of scenarios surrounding recipe searching : finding a recipe to cook, saving that recipe for later and indicating to the app that a recipe was made.
Sketching
Handmade a paper prototype of my design ideas, equip with movable parts and tested with users. This prototype explores browsing recipes and telling My Kitchen Pal the user created a recipe they had previously saved.
Paper Prototype
— Test
Three rounds of usability testing were conducted throughout the project, first on the paper prototype and then later on two sets of Lo-Fi wireframes.
First I conducted two usability tests on the paper prototype, one in-person and one remotely {digitizing the prototype}.
Feedback
Clear up ‘Menu’ terminology
Incorporate visual feedback when applying and selecting filters
Seamless movement between ‘Filter’ and ‘My Items’ screens
Clear up content input when a recipe was indicated as ‘Made’
Usability Testing #1
— Iterate
Moving onto a digital prototype, I narrowed my scope yet again to focus on browsing and filtering recipes and incorporated feedback from the paper prototype testing.
Lo-Fi Prototype
2 more usability tests on this digital Lo-Fi prototype, one in-person and one remotely
Feedback
Would like to see other recipe details like kitchenware needed and recipe difficulty level
Reviews have a major impact on recipe selection
Flow between ‘Filter’ and ‘My Items’ still not smooth, no sense of connection between the two
Option to only show ingredients using what user has in their panty/fridge
Add in a ‘Sort By’ option under ‘Filter’
Usability Testing #2
At this point, users were still struggling a bit using the ‘Filter’ and ‘My Items’ features. To better establish the experience and flow of My Kitchen Pal, I created a User Flow and Wire Flow before doing another round of wireframe iterations.
Second Iteration Lo-Fi Prototype
Two main changes in this iteration — clarity in the filtering when selecting items in the user’s pantry or fridge and the addition of a sorting feature for generated results {shown in the screens below}.
Take a look at all of my second iteration of wireframes here
In my third and final round of usability testing on my second iteration Lo-Fi prototype, I tested on one user in-person.
Feedback
Still feel disconnect between Filter and My Items
Some wording needs to be clearer or altered under filter or sorting selections
Get rid of sketch wireframe feel
Add in actual images in the placeholders
Reformat Home screen
Usability Testing #3
Final Iteration
Incorporating feedback from my final round of usability testing, I completed a final Mid-Fi iteration of wireframe designs for this project.
View final iteration larger here.
— Next Steps
Thinking about the next steps for My Kitchen Pal, I would:
Work with the rest of the team to bring together the designs of all features of the app
Conduct more rounds of usability testing and iterate on the final iteration
Finalizing content and explore visual elements and branding of the app to create a working Hi-Fi prototype, creating a ‘Kitchen Pal’ character/mascot
What does the app feel like with the designs from all team members?
Are there now too many filtering/sorting options for users, still not enough or the right amount?
Where do the recipes and reviews come from? {outside sources or only within the app}
How will filtering/sorting be applied with the use of the search bar?
Unanswered Questions
— Reflection
One of the biggest challenges I had for this project was conducting user testing remotely. Living abroad during a lockdown made it difficult to conduct enough in-person tests, however it was a learning curve I overcame and by the end was able to efficiently conduct all of my usability tests remotely.
Another challenge was specific to the Filtering and Sorting features of the My Kitchen Pal design. It was a consistent challenge for users in all testing sessions, so I had to really think about how that portion of my designs could be improved upon. Although I made it as intuitive as I could in my final iteration, there may be some features that a user will understand simply after a few uses of the app. This is something I would have liked to explore further if I had more time.
Challenges
Although it was a good challenge to work alone in the designing phase, I would have liked to work more like a functioning UX team. Since each team member had each split off after brainstorming, there was no way to tell how cohesive our designs and features would be if we were coming back together as a group later on.
Overall I feel confident in my designs, as they reflect my research and outcomes of the usability tests, staying true to the User Centered Design process. Although as mentioned before, I would have liked a bit more time to explore more options and solutions to the filtering and sorting features. Especially when it came to searching for recipes using items the user already had in their kitchen, as this was the most unique feature of My Kitchen Pal.
Improvements
