GV Design Sprint
Mari Shear, UX Designer
Duration: 1 week
Tools Used: Sketch & Figma
Role: Responsible for UI prototype design solution and validation interviews.
SAVR Cooking App
Project Overview
In this day and age of busy schedules, every moment counts. That's especially true at meal times. We want to make the moments we have to gather ingredients, utensils and prepare the meal all go as effortlessly and smoothly as possible. This design project goal was to optimize the cooking process with an already existing cooking app called SAVR, in a GV design sprint timeframe.
The Challenge
How can we make it easier for people to follow new recipes and cook great meals at home? How can we help users to accurately and easily follow cooking instructions?
What I Accomplished
During the design sprint process I highlighted the main pain points of the current SAVR app and brainstormed design ideas that would make the selection of recipe, preparation and cooking process more user friendly.
Here's How I Did It.
Day 1: Understanding Goals and Challenges
Users had expressed positive feedback about finding quality recipes in the SAVR app, but there was definitely work to be done creating a better user experience when it was actually time to cook!
After analyzing recent user feedback notes collected by the SAVR team, these were the pain points I uncovered with the current state of the app:
​
-
Issues with users not understanding the cooking techniques required in more advanced recipes.
-
Step-by-step cooking instructions being hard to follow.
-
Lack of a "preparation" step to make sure everything that could be done before the cooking process started, was completed.
-
Lack of knowledge of which cooking equipment the recipe may need to be completed, before the cooking process began.
​
​
After understanding the main challenges the app faced I drafted a possible end-to-end experience a user might have by making a map.
Day 2: Sketching Possible Solutions
Using what I learned from the first day, I started my design process by comparing other apps that were accomplishing similar things in the form of lightening demos. I found 3 apps that seemed to solve the problems SAVR users were encountering. Using these outside inspirations I did a quick crazy 8's exercise pictured below:
I then shortened my crazy 8s screens into a short 3-pane storyboard of the screens I thought were most crucial to solving the problem, which was focusing on the actual part of the app where the user was about to start cooking.
Day 3: Deciding Which Solution To Prototype
I approached the topic of developing which solution to prototype by making a storyboard. I wanted to focus my solution screens on the main “How Might We”s that were decided on during the first day of the sprint. I wanted to create screens that would solve the problem:
-
How might we make it easier for people to follow new recipes and cook great meals at home?
-
How can we help users to accurately and easily follow cooking instructions?
Day 4: Prototyping
Day 4: Prototyping
As I built my screens I came up with a clickable prototype in figma to showcase the main screens in my storyboard.
Try my prototype here:
Key goals of my prototype:
-
Iron out any key usability issues.
-
Check to see if the step-by-step cooking instructions are easy and clear to follow.
-
Find out if the entire app concept is easy to use and understand.
-
Discover any possible improvements or alternative features that a user may appreciate to consider for future iterations..
Day 5: Testing
I developed my prototype and tested in person with 5 participants. During my testing I found a few errors in my prototype which I was happy to discover and also some really great tips..
Key User Testing Notes
-
There was some confusion with the navigation bar icons, specifically the "add" icon.
-
I got another tip that the icons in the navigation bar were visually hard to read.
-
My video icon which links to a video of the recipe being made was also too easy to miss for most of my participants.
-
The navigational icons at the bottom in the step-by-step instructions weren't easily detectable and I realized I needed a more contrasting color.
-
I was happy to hear the preparation/equipment portion of the app was appreciated.
-
I had received a suggestion of a possible cooking "Tip Of The Day" feature on the main home page, which I thought was really clever
-
I also got another suggestion for a possible "If you liked Mac &Cheese, try this!" so a similar recipes prompt either on the homepage or the end page of the step-by-step instructions.
Post-Sprint Final Adjustments
After the sprint was over I took into consideration the design flaws that were pointed out to me during my interviews and made some adjustments.
Conclusion.
During my testing portion I found that there is a lot of room to improve with cooking apps and websites. I heard lots of complaints regarding wordy intros in which users have to scroll far down the page just to get to the actual recipe. I also heard of people feeling unprepared and disorganized when following a typical recipe website layout, so the parts of the app that seemed to target that disorganization directly was appreciated and refreshing for users looking at the prototype.
The other awesome part I wasn't prepared for where the amount of creative suggestions on how to make a cooking app better. There are alot of great ideas by users that could be embraced and made valuable by this app. So I think we are on the right track to adding clarity to the cooking process with the possibility for alot of tweaks and cool features..