Understanding the design process
Case study of meal-sharing application design
Design is when you create responses to human problems, that are relevant, usable and beautiful.
During my first week at the master of HCI+Design program, we’ve gone through the Immersion studio by the end of which teams had to present their rough prototypes. All the works were done through the lens of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). We picked the theme of “meal-prepping” (cooking one time for 5 days ahead) and explored how might we facilitate this process through meal-sharing.
Team: Olga Khvan, Zoe Rathbun, Shian Yang
Duration: 1-week design sprint
Organization: University of Washington, HCI+Design department
Main stages:
STEP 1. Forming the design challenge.
After brainstorming we picked one theme we were interested in: meal-prep trend, meal sharing based on different cuisine preferences.
Before actually “designing” and craft interfaces, we had to clearly understand the problem scope and question we are trying to answer through our design. One of the common ways to frame it is to come up with the design challenge and “How might we” statement.
STEP 2. Research and insights.
Primary research: we analyzed academic articles about meal sharing and asked people (within our potential target audience) to fill in a digital questionnaire. Through the questionnaire we tried to understand what are people’s habits and preferences in cooking.
Secondary research: analysis of similar services existing at the market.
All these formed a better understanding of the target audience, their needs and barriers to use the application.
Insights:
1. It is needed to build trust around the Meal sharing app, as it is one of the main barriers to entry.
2. Meal-prep communities can be a potential target audience, as they are already built around special diet preferences.
3. Groups can encourage positive behavior.
STEP 3. Concepts.
Concept 1. Meal prepping + swap
Users create or join a group around their diet/cuisine preferences (no more than 7 in a group). Each of the members indicates what he/she is going to cook. They meet at a certain time and swap the cooked meals on a regular basis.
Concept 2. Customize your diet.
Users join or create the group. Inside this group, they can organize a cooking day/week when they split cooking responsibilities. They each take on a roll: planner, shopper, cooker, etc. After cooking they share/swap the meal.
Concept 3. Meal prepping together/pot luck
Users form a specific dietary, nutritional or cuisine group.
An expert in that group organizes a tutorial at his/her house and hosts the other members to cook together. They cook together while also exchanging and building knowledge.
STEP 4. Downselection.
During the downselection process, we reviewed the pros and cons of each of the concepts, analyzed how well it solves our design challenge and meets the requirements. It was also proposed to evaluate (1–5) each of the concepts by three criteria: Excitement, Relevance, Achievability. So that for us Concept 1 turned out the most feasible and straightforward solution. It was also the easiest way to organize meal sharing and do not spend a lot of users’ time.
STEP 5. Testing idea.
As we could not cover all the functions inside the application, we decided to pick up one main use-case. As the meal-sharing process was one of the most important in our concept, we used it for the testing.
We created a flowchart to visualize the essential steps during the meal-sharing process. It helped to understand roughly how many screens do we need and what are the main functions of each screen. After that, we crafted paper prototypes and tested them in the field with few people.
This step helped us to receive some valuable feedback, understand which features are not useful or annoy users. The insights from this step:
- People are not that skeptical as we assumed, as they already got used to Airbnb and Uber experience.
- People are open to the meal-sharing if there would be “trusted” profiles, ratings and reviews.
- Even though people are worried about building trust around food sharing, they are not ready to put too much effort into making it (we assumed that taking photos of each of the cooking steps can make users’ dishes more trustworthy).
- Group has to have an administrator inside it so that he/she can moderate the content and users inside this group.
STEP 5. Revised functionality and prototype.
Based on gathered comments and data we understood that most of the people would better join a certain swap, than doing it on a regular basis inside a certain group. We decided to let users joining bigger groups based on their food preferences. Inside these groups, users can organize a swap for a certain date and indicate what they are going to cook. So that people would have the opportunity to share meal-preps in different small groups without changing the main one. Additionally, each of the groups will have an administrator, who can review the content of the group, decide whether a certain user can join this group or not. For instance, if a certain user who has a very low rating and bad reviews wants to join the group, the administrator can reject his request.
Reflections
Building trust within a sharing application is a complex process. Still, it has already started its development in modern lives. Before, humans did not behave in such a “risky” way as living in a stranger’s house or sitting in a stranger’s car. Now services as Uber or Airbnb are pretty popular among users, as they could build this “trustworthy model” among their customers. For our concept due to time-limit, we could not fully develop a working model, still, we realized that the shift happens when people see a good amount of other people or friends using this app.
Another important aspect is regulations and identity verification inside the application. As creators, we have to be sure that users do no harm to themselves and to each other. For example, we have to be aware of communities built around Anorexia or other harmful food disorders. Moreover, some of the users can probably have an allergy or strict diet so that we, in general, have to know how to manage all these things.
Techniques used:
- Braiding. It is an ideation method when team members spend time individually sketching the ideas. Then they come together, discuss the ideas. Usually, teams make several iterations. Then ideas can be grouped based on their similarities. Also, the team can go through the brainstorming process once again. It is not necessary to stick to one certain sketch of the idea. Sometimes people create new ideas by mixing together different sketches.
- Critique sessions. Numerous teams share out their ideas and receive feedback. First of all, it helps to formulate your idea and present it to others. Secondly, it gives an opportunity to step back and view the idea from different perspectives.
- Paper prototyping. It is easy to craft and then use. Also, it helps to focus the user’s attention on information flow and the processes, so that he/she is not distracted by the wrong colors, forms, composition, etc. Additionally, as paper prototypes are handcrafted, people usually find them nice and cute. This first impression can help to slide into the interview more smoothly.
