Carrate Chop — UX Case Study
Problem
College students are constantly busy between academics and social activities that they sometimes place food as a second priority and feel overwhelmed on how to incorporate cooking into their schedules. Especially during busy times, like midterms and finals, where many students switch over to mostly eating out, and me and my partner Serena wanted to know how to tackle that.
In short, how to solve this question: “How might we design a way for college students to cook quick and easy meals for their busy schedule?”
Goal
The goal was to create a cooking app that would help college students better transition from barely cooking, either because it’s their first time living on their own for or they are coming off a meal plan, to effecient cooks.
Must-haves for the app
- Onboarding process
- Sign-up/Sign-in
- Key Functions of searching for food/favorites page, planning page, and engaging platform for users to share cooking tips
Timescope & deliverables
- 1 week to present
- Research, definition & ideation, create a landing page, low-fidelity wireframes, high-fidelity mock-up and prototype
- Usability testing and redesign (and some more redesign)
User Research
1. Non-Directed Interviews
The key takeaways from the five more casual conversations with college students were that currently they are:
- Not using recipes
- Looking up how to cook individual ingredients (i.e. butternut squash rather than look up casserole that includes it)
- Get tips from friends and parents as well
Tips Shared By Students for Student:
- Having a constant supply of base/bulk ingredients
- Spices!
- Meal prep
This gave us a push to have a function for students to continue to engage with each other because everyone is cosntantly learning new tricks and tips in the kitchen!
2. Online Survey
The online survey really helped us gain more quantitative data. Below are graphics of key takeaways from 20+ responses of college students:
There is overall interest in cooking and dinner is the prime place for this app to help students achieve their goal to cook at home. Furthermore, a lot of the reason as to why students were 3 or 4 in terms of enjoying cooking was it took too much time and/or they hadn’t planned it well. We also learned that the average amount of time students want to spend cooking is 30 minutes, reassuring the goal to help students be more effecient in the kitchen by keeping that in mind when creating an inventory for the recipes.
3. From Both Research Methods
Quotes directly from users as to why they DO like cooking:
“Better than dining hall food”
“Trying to eat healthier”
“Relaxing”
“Meditative”
“Rewarding experience”
“Brings people together”
User Persona
Building from the research, Busy Betty was created. She is representative of the main customer base we would target.
Demographics:
- 19 years old
- Single
- Middle-class income
- 2nd year college student
Values:
- Efficiency
Goals:
- Just came off the dining plan and wants to be able to cook at home more often and save money this year!
- Enjoys uick and flavorful meals
Challenges:
- Busy schedule
- Doesn’t know how to cook a wide variety of food
Branding
Naming
Carrate Chop was a bit of a play on words (punny) and memorable to be distinguishable to the college demographic.
Logo
It took several iterations before we got the logo right. Below you can see the evolving process before we got the one:
It was important to keep it fresh and modern, all while it still being easily recongnizable in all black or white for different pages or future merchandise.
Typography
We chose Delius to keep it sans serif and curvy knowing sans serif reads the best online and curvy fonts appear more warm and homey.
Color Scheme
The color palette revolved around warm hues, based on psychology showing that red makes users more hungry. It is a cooking app after all!
Landing Page
Now with branding and ideas in mind (and a little bit of HTML/CSS), the landing page was created:
Phone App — Wireframes
But the landing page was all to finally get the customer to download our app. We gathered some inspiration from other cooking apps like Tastee and Allrecipes.com, but tailored it to our functions and simplified it to not overwhelm busy students.
Below is the low-fidelity version of the app:
Mockups Version 1
High-fidelity of the app that was shown to our user for the usability testing:
Usability Testing
This is one of the most critical steps of design where we watched user go through the app on InVision and see where they were confused or stuck. There was definetely a handful of feedback which we took into account to improve on version 2.
The Good:
- Logo and colors
The Bad:
- Scrolling/tap right side for onboarding screens didn’t seem intuitive
- Didn’t fully understand the function of the calendar
The Terrible:
- After personalized options are selected, there’s no next button → users very confused on what to do next
Version 2
The main fixes were on the “personalizing diet” page, in which we included check marks and a next button to help guide users. In a similar fashion, we added arrows on the onboarding process in case user didn’t realize the could tap to go next. We also expanded on the dietary restrictions and food options you could click to help users have more clickability on our prototype.
Prototype on InVision
Design is all about redesign and rethinking, so let if you go through the prototype, let usknow if there is anything that could still be fixed!
