A NEW LEARNING APPLICATION FOR
Beginner Cooks
introducing
Our UXDI Team
Seth Pritchett
Lauren Glenn
Joshua Land
Christian Villalba
OUR SUPPLIES
Methods
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping & Synthesis
Persona Crafting
Journey Mapping
Competitive Feature Analysis
Design Studio
Usability Testing & Reporting
Prototyping
Tools
G Suite
Miro
Slack
Figma
Zoom
My Role
Interviews
Research
Synthesis
Design
Testing
Prototyping
our plan
1
Researched, interviewed and learned more about beginner, intermediate, and experienced cooks
2
Used our research to define the user and discover opportunities to help
3
Drafted design solutions based on the needs, wants and opportunities of our users
4
Tested the function, navigation, and user control of our high fidelity prototype.
1. Learning more about our user
We began our research by surveying 43 people to find out if they cook, what their experience level is, and if they wanted to advance their cooking abilities. From this survey, we interviewed 14 participants whose cooking skills varied from beginner to experienced and asked them three primary questions: What devices and websites do you engage with when researching and learning new skills? What do you believe are the basics of cooking? How do you test your knowledge and practice your skills? Our objective was to explore and learn more about the behaviors, needs, goals, and pain points beginner cooks experience. Through this research we gathered the data from our interviews, synthesized our findings through affinity mapping, and defined the following insights.
Insights We Uncovered
Beginner Cooks
In order to learn new cooking skills, safety, and tools beginner cooks rely on their mobile device to research websites for recipes and videos, then practice and test those abilities inside the kitchen.
Introducing our persona
Meet Sasha
Now that our team had researched our target audience, studied the problem space, and discovered our insights it was time for out team to turn our attention toward defining more about our primary user. To help us focus on creating the right product for right user, our team crafted the persona of a beginner cook who aspires to improve her skills so that she can one day prepare great meals to share with others.
key points for sasha
Goals
To improve her cooking skills so that she can prepare and enjoy home cooked meals with her friends and family.
Needs
A way to enhance her cooking skills that accommodates her preferred method of learning.
Pain Points
Lacks basic cooking skills and knowledge in the kitchen. Her busy schedule and lifestyle limits the amount of time she can spend learning new skills.
2. Opportunities to help Sasha
Our team relied on journey mapping to help us detail the different steps Sasha experiences as she researches and discovers new skills to help improve her cooking. Here, we focused on capturing her emotional state as she travels through different points of friction and success.
Learning more about
Sasha's Journey
Highlighting sasha's journey
Lows
Sasha searches online to enhance cooking ability, but results are recipe based and not on the skill building she needs.
Highs
Friend refers him to new job
Hired after interview
Sasha finds one single recipe that includes all the skills she needs to learn in order to make her favorite dish.
Opportunities
To help develop her cooking skills without relying on learning new recipes.
Defining The Problem & Finding Our Opportunities
Sasha lacks the knowledge and skills to cook her favorite dish. She searches online through numerous videos and recipes until finding one that meets her needs. Shasha relies on her kitchen as a place to practice her skills and test her knowledge. How might we help Sasha improve her skills and test her knowledge without relying on her kitchen and recipes to accomplish this?
3. Designing A New Learning App For Beginner Cooks
Before crafting any design solutions, our team used the MSCW Method to help us research and define what features should be included in our final prototype. Here, we found that individual profiles, standardized testing, and player rewards prove to be important features in learning applications that should be included in our final prototype. Next, our team relied on the insights from our user interviews, as well as the findings in our persona a journey map, to create product that would help Sasha advance her skills, safety and tools as a beginner cook without being limited to learning and practicing new recipes in the kitchen. The images below highlight the results of our research and iterative design process as we worked from problem to solution and developed our designs from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity prototype.
exploring
Design Solutions
Skills, Tools, & Safety
From our user interviews we discovered that beginner cooks rely on skills, tools, and safety to advance their abilities in the kitchen. Our team utilized these insights to create three primary categories that would allow Sasha to explore and learn more.
skills
Illustrations & Descriptions
We found that Sasha relies on her mobile device to explore recipes and videos to learn new skills in the kitchen. However, this situation relies on high-speed mobile data and therefore limits her flexibility to learn. To solve for this, our team created this prototype as native iOS application that utilizes illustrations and descriptions which allow Sasha to learn anywhere and anytime.
tools
User Profiles & Player Rewards
Since we know that Sasha wants to advance her abilities as a beginner cook, our team relied on user profiles and player rewards to persuade engagement and track the accomplishments.
Safety
Practice & Testing
Through our research and insights we found that Sasha relies on her kitchen in order to practice and test her knowledge and skills. However, this limits her potential to practice and test her abilities anytime and anywhere. To solve for this, our team relied on standardized tests as a way to promote practice and testing, as well as increase flexibility and engagement.
4. Testing our new skill assessment feature
After completing our high-fidelity prototype, we used the following script below to test our design with 4 participants. We captured the results in a usability test report below. Click the link below to follow along with our test scripts and see what it takes for Sasha to learn, practice and test her knowledge and skills.
high fidelity
Usability Test Report
Recap
Our UX Design team joined together over a three week project with the goal of helping more people learn to cook. We screened 43 people and interviewed 13 participants whose cooking skills ranged from beginner to advanced. We learned that beginner cooks struggle to learn new skills, tools and safety when relying on recipes and videos to be practiced in the kitchen. Next we used persona crafting to define our user Sasha, a beginner cook whose looking to advance her abilities. Through journey mapping we discovered our opportunity to help Sasha with the flexibility to practice and learn new skills, tools, and safety anywhere and anytime.
With our research and discovery completed, our team turned our attention to crafting a new learning application that can help Sasha reach her goals. Finally, our team worked through the iterative design process from pencil sketches to high-fidelity prototype, to design and test our product solution. Our results showed that users navigated and tested our product with success.
