HASTY
PROJECT
A recipe app designed for those making an effort to better their diets and health.
01 INTRODUCTION
Making cooking more efficient and less intimidating
In today’s fast paced and busy lifestyle, people often forget to take care of themselves. Students and working professionals are often bound by time constraints and neglect their diets. Most end up eating outside or have easy to make packaged foods.
However, many people are conscious of this and are trying to change their eating habits. This was a personal project I undertook to make the process of cooking healthier easier and less intimidating.
ROLE
UX Design
Research
Motion & Visual Design
DURATION
14 weeks
CLIENT
Personal Project
02
Project Goals
01
Improve lifestyle
Assist people in following a healthy lifestyle.
02
Efficient recipes
Offer a collection of quick and simple recipes.
03
Simple Process
Functionality to minimize time and effort required.
03
Research
Would such a product be useful?
The initial stages included conducting research to investigate what the users needs were. It was important to know why the users would need this app and if they did, how they would use it. What would be their goals using the app? and what will help them achieve them?
Who should be Interviewed?
I was looking to interview people who had a somewhat hectic schedule. College students fit perfectly into this category. Regular people at the gym and athletes would be following a good diet and hence would be good candidates.
To start, I decided to interview various students and fitness entusiasts at my university.
A
User Interviews and Survey Results
20 people interviewed*
95%
Expressed a desire to Improve their diets.
90%
Looked up recipes online before cooking.
90%
Used their cellphones to look up recipes online.
85%
Used what they already had in their kitchens.
Reasons for wanting to cook
95% of the 20 interviewed participants expressed a desire for wanting to cook more often.
01
Health
70% of the 20 interviewed users stated improving health as the main reason for wanting to cook more often.
02
Money
Participants stated that was it was a lot cheaper to cook at home than to eat outside and more budget friendly.
03
Better Meals
Students who ate mostly ready or packaged foods wanted better tasting, freshly prepared meals.
What do people think about cooking?
100% of the 20 interviewed participants stated lack of time and effort required as the reason for not cooking often.
01
Tedious
Most participants were exhausted because of their daily schedule. Even on a holiday, cooking felt too much of a hassle.
02
Time Consuming
Participants were of the opinion that cooking was a very time consuming activity.
Check out the process deck
Check out the process deck to view the full research findings
B
Usability test on competitors
Users were then asked to play around with the top 3 recipe apps or any other sources looking for recipes. They were given some scenarios and were asked to speak out their intentions and if they had any thoughts, comments or reactions while using the apps.
What major problems did the users face while using the apps?
01
Information Overload
Most recipe apps and websites had too much of irrelevant info which distracted the users.
Also every detail about the recipe, ingredients, direction and ads were all in the same place which proved to be mentally taxing.
02
Too many ingredients
Users were discouraged after seeing a lot of ingredients and didn't bother to check the directions.
03
No details in preview
Recipe preview on the platforms only including the name and a picture or one other details such as ratings.
Users lost a lot of time opening each recipe to see the details eventually getting discouraged.
C
Solution
Based on the information collected from the survey, I had a basic but good idea of what the users needed and what would help them in the process.
Features
I narrowed down a list of features that would be necessary to potentially improve their situation and acheive the project goals.
01
Quick and easy to follow recipes
02
Easy access to recipe information
03
Filters (Time, No. of Ingredients)
04
Add Ingredients / Ing. Available atm
04
Information Architecture
The organization of the content was imperative for a good experience. Based on the data collected, having least amount of steps in choosing a recipe was one of the primary goals along with the steps being intuitve and linear.
05
Sketches
The next step including implementing the design on the basis of the conducted research. This process involved many iterations of sketches and includes scraped ideas.
See process deck for full process
06
Wireframes
Next digital wireframes were created based on the sketches and conducted research. These were then used for usability testing.
You might notice the wireframes are all high fidelity. This was because I wanted the users to get a whole experience of using the app while testing.
07
User Testing and Iterations
The users were asked to play around with a working prototype of the app and were given certain tasks to perform.
Check out the findings and changes made to the designs in the process deck.
08
Visual Design
As the app was intended to be easy to follow and not intimidating, the visual design needed to be very minimal.
I decided to keep the colors to a minimum. I selected a pleasing hue of red to be used as an accent color as it is a color most associated with appetite.
The type selected is a friendly geometric sans-serif font which matches perfectly with the intentions of the design.
09
Final Designs & Motion
The initial wireframe designs were for iPhone 8 and I later created designs for the iPhone X. Motion Designs added a layer intuition and fluidity to the app's heirarchy and function. Animation were created using After Effects.
Home Page
The Home page allows users to search for recipes by either typing or browsing through courses and cuisines.
List of recipes with details
View a list of recipes displaying important details about the recipe. List view shows calories, number of ingredients, time, reviews and likes.
Filters
Users can add filters to view only selective recipes. One can filter the number of calories, ingredients, preparation time and macro-nutrients.
Recipe Page
The recipe page displays all information related to the recipe. It provides a quick and easy look at the ingredients and directions Recipes can be saved for later.
Thank You