The College Student As a Cook

Helen Piloto . UX Research Fall 2023

The Problem

College students, globally, have been notorious for their ramen noodles and empty pantries. With their new found independence must come new ways of taking care of themselves, with food!

“College Students as Cooks” is a UX Research case study which documents the research process of understanding student pain points and areas of success to gain insight on the relationship between students and cooking. The research done culminates with possible design ideas to help solve problem areas.

Research Goals

1. Understand user pain points within cooking.
2. Understand user relationship with sourcing food.
3. Find what is working within their routine and what is motivating them.

Research Questions

1. What role does food and the kitchen play in students’ lives?
2. How do students on campus vs. off campus compare?
3. Are college students motivated to learn to cook?
4. Have students tried to cook, or follow a recipe, how did that go?

Project Assumptions

• I assume students in college have a more limited budget, access to kitchen spaces and time to cook.
• I assume students might not have the priority of cooking at the moment.

Secondary research

Secondary research documented on Figma

I began my research with focusing on 5 direct competitors, where students most commonly their food from, and 3 indirect competitors, companies that deal with similar issues around cooking but not neccesarly a good option for students.

I learned most universities dont have a good way of supporting students cooking for themselves off campus, students tend to go for a food source that takes the least effort, and there are not very convinent meal prep plans for students because of their unique needs.

Surveys

Image of student answers

I sent out a simple surveys out to 15 college students, in a variety of schools, to get an better idea of the relationship between college students and cooking. From the surveys I learned many people turn to quick meals during finals, such as ramen, microwaved rice, or ordering takeout.

I learned that students are heavily motivated by fitness and communal cooking. Some common pain points were prepping food, grocery shopping, clean-up and time — time being the biggest obstacle.

“Its nice to have a couple easy meals that you like and can eat often, and that you can buy a few things but make multiple meals from.”

“love it but it hates me”

Interviews

Affinity Mapping

I conducted 3 interviews to get more in depth information on student schedules, budget, pain points and what is working for them. My interviewees consisted of 1 student in Pomona, CA and 2 students located in St.Louis, MO. After transcribing and taking notes on these interviews I was able to do an affinity map to find similar themes between interviews and distinguish important findings.

I learned :

• families who place an importance on food, or food as communal/social practice tend to cook more or want to cook.
• Many students in college dont necessarily want to cook at times, it is not an immediate priority- but they do want to in the future.
• Portion control and grocery shopping is an issue with cooking.
• People want quick meals with ingredients they can reuse to safe money and limit food wastage.
• Every campus has very different meal plans and solutions, therefore every campus’s students relationship with cooking is very different.
• Students want to make the most of the appliances they already have.
• Cooking together helps inspire and create confidence in new cooks .

Graffiti Wall

Image of Graffiti Wall

I put up multiple Graffiti walls within the Sam Fox School located in WashU’s campus to get more responses around the question of “what do you love or hate about cooking?”. This approach allows me to understand a bigger breath of user pain points or areas of success.

Reply on Graffiti wall

For the graffiti wall I learned while many people feel a great sense of accomplishment from cooking. Although, time, space and cleanup heavily deters them on the daily.

Personas

The next step of my research process is creating personas to reflect my collected user data.

Lola is representative of many of our users which have desires to get better and cook more but struggle with left overs, time, and technique.

Carl is not very representative of all the data collected, while his persona is apparent in college students he is not my target audience. Carl lives on-campus, is not motivated to learn, and has determined it is not his priority in life at the moment.

User Journey Map

I focused on Lolas persona since she is representative of my research and users I want to focus on. Through a macro lens I created her journey transitioning to off-campus living, which typically comes with less meal points, less convience to eat every meal on-campus and more space to cook for yourself. While Lola struggles with time, especially during deadlines, she finds success in learning online and making simple meals.

Lola user journey

User Needs Conclusion

After conducting my research I decided to focus on off-campus students, because they are the ones more in need of cooking for themselves as they spend less time on-campus and have less access to on-campus food with their limited meal points. While on-campus students struggle with accessibility issues with kitchens and end up cooking in dorms, I had to divide the two groups because of their variety of different needs.

Students off-campus struggle with:

• knowing what to buy and how to use it
• left overs
• trying new techniques and making use of existing equipment
• time and clean up
• budgeting

Students off-campus succeed in:

• communal cooking
• learning online
• being motivated to cook
• time efficient meals

Students need a way cook in a time efficient manner so they can reap the benefits of cooking.

Students need a way to learn how to cook in a way that works for them so they can have control of what they eat and feel confidence while cooking for themselves, or others.

Students need methods to shop for groceries so they can limit food waste, make different meals out of the same ingredients, overall reducing costs.

Product Road Map

Many of my users are heavily frustrated , intimated and lost when it comes to food. By food I refer to knowing what to cook, what to buy, and how to prepare it. Challenges such as sourcing, planning, food wastage, prep and clean up deeply deteriorate students relationship with cooking . Leaving them discouraged or overwhelmed with the task of cooking. As students transition from on-campus, to off-campus, to post-grad, their relationship with the kitchen changes.

product feature planning

My goal with this app is to help students build and slowly integrate cooking into their daily lives as their transition into independence. Features that will help do this are catered grocery lists and recipes to target food wastage and eliminate confusion at grocery stores. These recipes will be highly visual and catered to their experience level.

In the future, it would be ideal if this app could coordinate with food services or colleges to help students transition to off-campus dining plans, and post- graduation. I would consider what having a community feature or an AI included to target communal cooking need and to answer questions quickly.

Site Map

Story board

storyboard

Concept testing

“I think the hardest part will be managing food wastage and assuring people with actually cook with the ingredients they buy. so keep the recipes simple and compelling”

concept testing deliverables

With concept testing on my initial concept, I was recommend to simplify some aspects and reorganize the site map to more clear sections. This led to to add more information on my story board and reorganize my site map to have more clear pages. Students testing my concept also emphasized the importance of the budgeting aspect on the app.

I found that visual representation of the data through storyboarding was easier to understand in comparison to the site map which needed some initial explaining.

Final Takeaways

To take this project further I would begin to do some wire frames and go through more rounds of concept testing to solidify my idea. From there, I would make more concrete deliverables of wireframes, my sitemap and storyboard to create the final prototype on Figma.

Throughout this process I think my approach to research went well. I was able to get a deep understanding on student needs on different levels because of my variety of methods. While I enjoyed the Graffiti wall method, if I were to redo this project I would have put up my graffiti wall up earlier to really take advantage of the findings. I would also have interviewed a bigger breadth of students, in different universities and living situations, to get a more complete understanding of students varying situations.