Creating an ‘Add Recipe’ feature for the Blue Apron app

A case study on how to increase Blue Apron’s user engagement by posting recipes and communicating with Blue Apron chefs

Eva Schicker
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read

Our UX design team, Ella Kaplan, Eva Schicker, Joshua Reinitz, and Varsha Bakshani, was tasked by Blue Apron to recommend the best design solution allowing users to upload their recipes and engage with the Blue Apron community by voting on recipes posted by other members. To accomplish this task, we conducted user research through interviews, data synthesis, design prototyping, usability testing, usability synthesis, and design iterations.

Blue Apron’s company vision guided us throughout our research to keep their values top of mind

  • We are passionate about building a better food system
  • We’re developing better standards for higher-quality ingredients
  • By cooking with Blue Apron, you’re helping to build a food system that’s better for everyone

This led us to the following hypothesis to begin research interviews with 5 current or past Blue Apron users

Blue Apron users want to engage more with each other by posting and voting on recipes

The interviews were designed to help us validate assumptions and identify pain points associated with meal-kit delivery services, specifically Blue Apron.

Sample questions included:

  • Walk me through your last experience with Blue Apron (or another meal-kit service)
  • Tell me about your cooking habits
  • How do you decide what to cook

The interviews provided us with important key takeaways

  • Users are looking for a method to help them in the kitchen with their cooking skills
  • They have limited time and cooking must be low effort and easy
  • Application must be easy to navigate
  • Users would like recommendations on cooking techniques as well as recipes
  • Users want to save money

Using affinity mapping to synthesize interview insights, the following areas of user interest emerged:

And the following user i-statements rose to the top:
“I’m familiar with meal kit services.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“I have a busy lifestyle.”
“I’m conscious of the environment.”
“I need help in the kitchen.”
“I’m active online.”
“I search online for recipes.”
“I like easy-to-follow recipes.”
“I need help in the kitchen.”
“I’m health conscious.”

Thus, we were ready to create our pimary user persona

Suzie Sanders: The Super Mom

Suzie Sanders, 40 years old, the stay-at-home super mom, lives on Long Island, loves food variety

Suzie is juggling her kids’ busy schedule while continually making efforts to save the planet. She usually plans meals ahead to meet the wide range of her family’s tastes and habits. Her husband Roberto loves to cook, but Suzie regularly enjoys using blue apron for quick easy meals during the week. Low-cost meals and the ones that she can prepare in advance, are a priority. She actively shares recipes online and looks for new ones.

Defining her needs
• Needs help in the kitchen
• Cooking is easy and low-effort because she does not have the time
• Would like recommendations on recipes and meal preparation
• Needs an easy-to-use app

Suzie’s pain points
• Cooking to suit her family’s many different food preferences
• When Roberto insists on cooking every Friday night
• Sometimes, he gets home from work past dinner time

Defining her goals
• Wants to save money
• Wants to learn how to cook better

This led to a revised problem statement from the initial hypothesis

How might we help the Blue Apron user broaden their cooking knowledge and skillsets through interaction with other users and establishing a community based on posting and sharing recipes?

We were now ready for our Design Studio to ideate and craft

  • A revised home page
  • A user flow
  • Placement of must-have features
  • Mandatories such as pop-ups and input fields

A MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have) Map was crafted to identify the Must Haves in the first design iteration

Culling insights from the MoSCoW map, a Feature Prioritization Map was crafted, identifying the key features needed for the first design iteration

Key Features to Develop

Add a Featured Recipe active link to create an opportunity for Blue Apron members to interact with the new Featured Recipes section

Add a recipes nav bar tab to allow members to post original recipes which are voted on by the Blue Apron community

Create a weekly featured recipes section can vote and comment on recipes

Thus, we were ready for the first Mid-Fi Prototype

  • We added an ‘Add a Recipe’ button to the bottom nav bar, giving users a quick and easy posting feature on the app
  • We created a ‘Featured Recipes’ list on the home screen, to comfortably scroll through this week’s top-trending recipes posted by other chefs. Users can click on the recipes, vote on them, and see the full recipe.

Usability Testing Round 1, setting task scenarios and task flows

Task Scenario 1
Imagine yourself in your kitchen. You have successfully cooked and tested your own recipe for grilled chicken and you’re very excited about posting it to the Blue Apron community. You have your ingredient list ready, have already thought about describing the steps, and you are ready to take a picture of your dish.
Please post a recipe for Grilled Chicken with 5 ingredients.

Task Scenario 2
While looking through other posted recipes, you found a recipe for Chicken with Tomatoes posted by Molly Mills. You tried it out and loved it. You would like to vote on this recipe so that it might become a ‘Featured Recipe’ next week.
Please vote on Molly Mills’ Chicken with Tomatoes recipe.

Task Scenario 3
Last week, you posted a recipe for a delicious pea soup. You are curious about how well it’s doing in the ratings.
Check on your recipe for pea soup to see how it has been received thus far.

Results in Usability Testing Round 1 were as follows

Important findings emerged from this first round of usability testing. Task 3 was easy to accomplish by the users, while Task 2 did not perform well. Task 1 was relatively easy to accomplish.

Key takeaways were
• Add a back button
• Add an edit feature
• Improve search function

A design iteration led to the 2nd prototype, this round in hi-fi rendering

Improvements

  • We added an improved search function
  • Users were now able to edit their posted recipes
  • We added an easy-to-use back button

Usability Testing Round 2 showed greatly improved results

Both Task 1 and 2 had improved by 20% and 30%, respectively.

Task 3 performed slightly down, but improved greatly in terms of Average Time to Completion.

This led to our 3rd hi-fi Prototype, which was presented to the client with the following refinements

  • We added a ‘Comments’ function
  • ‘Voting’ and ‘Ratings’ were refined
  • ‘Saved Recipes’ and ‘Submitted Recipes’ sections were separated

The presented prototype (click on Invision link)

Closing thoughts

Usability tests show that users enjoy posting recipes on Blue Apron and are interested in commenting and receiving comments on their recipes.

Users have a keen interest in establishing a community on Blue Apron that helps them educate themselves and interact with one another.

Thus, our next step is to gain a stronger understanding of what the optimal communal forum would be for Blue Apron users, and to begin to develop a conceptual framework. We are passionate about implementing a community for Blue Apron chefs to freely share and receive comments on their recipes, and we will work hard to provide the features necessary for Blue Apron users to become successful recipe publishers.

Thank you.

Eva Schicker

Written by

Welcome to my UX and art universe. I am a passionate listener, engaged researcher, and modernist visual designer/artist. Every insight counts. UX bootcamp grad.

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