GreenSpoon; Our Service Design Journey

Isay Acenas
Service Design Innovation
9 min readMay 7, 2021

Problem Statement

College students and young adults struggle to enjoy cooking at home. Based on our research, we found that the biggest challenges with cooking at home are: lack of motivation, not knowing many recipes, and limited time and energy for the activity. These insights led us to ask the question:

How might we make the cooking at home more enjoyable?

Our Process

My team’s service design journey started much further back than defining the problem and doing the research. In our initial breakout room as a newly-formed group, we discussed topics that mattered most to us. After about 20 minutes of casual conversation, we found that wellness and nutrition were topics of interest that were shared by all three of us (Maddie, Cissie, and me). At this point, we began unpacking this topic to see where we had potential to make an impact. I proposed using the Service Design Jam format to document our thoughts via mind maps, as well as preliminary research, and potential how might we questions. Figure 1.

Figure 1: Our preliminary thoughts and ideas were explored to see what issue/topic we should tackle.

Shortly after, we developed two personas, Nick and Cammie, and this helped us stay on the same page in terms of our ideal user base Figure 2. We had fun with this stage, as we drew these traits from people who we knew in real life to create such personas. These friends even ended up filling out our survey! This marked the end of Week 1.

Figure 2: Developed personas and potential survey questions based on what we would ask people like Nick and Cammie.

Maddie and Cissie put together the Google Form survey, and I focused on sending this out to as many people as I knew who fell into the college age/young adult age bracket. Our survey participants spanned the United States Figure 3.

Figure 3: Survey participants represented both coasts of the U.S.

While waiting for our research subjects to complete the survey, we started thinking of possible formats for our service. With Maddie on the timer, we did a design spring (3 ideas in 3 minutes), and drew out a preliminary prototype Figure 4. We were intrigued by the feasibility of a social and creator-based cooking app that would tap into the growing interest in online cooking content among young adults.

Figure 4: Design sprint (3x3) and a sketchbook drawing of our preliminary concept design.

In preparation for the Week 3 in-class check-in, I produced the slide deck that Maddie and Cissie used to update the class. I predicted that I would still be sick during this time, and in case I were to miss class (which I did), I wanted to contribute as much as I could on the backend. This check-in featured graphs I made with our main survey results, as well guiding insights for the development of our service Figure 5. Our full survey form can be viewed here, and our check-in presentation can be viewed here.

Figure 5: Slide 4 from our in-class check-in presentation. Main survey insights.

Within the same week, we analyzed competitor apps and platforms that also had a user demographic of young adults. We conduced a mini service analysis and split up the different platforms for us to analyze Figure 6. Through this exercise, we put ourselves in the place of the user so that we can come back to our own prototype with as much of a user mind as a design/creator mind.

Figure 6: Mini service analysis to compare competitors and also gain user insight from our own perspectives.

Also in the same week, we developed a stakeholder map based on our intended service and the platforms we analyzed previously Figure 7. This helped us set the stage for the scope and organizational structure of the service we were creating. This marked the end of Week 2.

Figure 7: Stakeholder map featuring the core, direct, and indirect roles surrounding our intended service.

Week 3 was mostly focused on developing a working prototype via Figma Figure 8. Maddie spearheaded this process by developing the first few frames, and Cissie helped refine this early prototype and design. I focused more on the backbone structure and basic navigation. With this platform and the ability to adjust the designs ourselves, we started having deeper conversations on functionality and how it intersected with the visual design (UX/UI).

Figure 8: Preliminary design concept through Figma.

During Week 4, we made the most progress, and we were lucky to have found common ground very quickly which made the design and development process very smooth. Maddie created different variations of the logo, and we agreed on the same one. During the in-class studio time and the days following that week’s class, Cissie and Maddie focused on refining and ensuring the functionality of the visual and interaction design Figure 9.

Figure 9: Our Figma as of the end of the Week 4 studio class time.

With limited UX/UI skills, I opted for jumping off the Figma during studio time and going to Canva to begin creating our slide deck for the final presentation Figure 10. I used the entire studio time to ensure that we had all of the components necessary, and that the flow and design were appealing to ourselves and future audience. Between Week 3 and Week 5, we made final designs based on user feedback that we sought throughout the wireframing process, and then adjusted our designs and functionality accordingly. This marked the end of Week 4.

Figure 10: Created a Canva slide deck while Maddie and Cissie worked on the Figma wireframe file.

Week 5 was focused solely on presentation development and practice. With our prototype and slide deck ready to present, we ran through the presentation two times to ensure that we would meet the time limit while still conveying a strong message and description of our service: GreenSpoon. Leading up to our final presentation, we felt relaxed, ready, and excited.

What Worked

  • Adjusting our scope to fit a work-from-home, quarantine lifestyle.
  • Incorporating user feedback throughout our entire design process.
  • Using email and text to send project updates and deliverables 3–4 times per week.

Challenges Faced

  • Working with teammates from a different time zone, however, we worked around this by delegating tasks efficiently which allowed us to push our project forward on our own time.
  • Checking back in on our research and user feedback Figure 11.
Figure 11: I drew a map of what this process looked like for us over the last three weeks.

Moving throughout this map was challenging in nature, but ultimately beneficial for us as we stayed true to our research insights and desired user base. For future projects, I would want to map out our timeline across a map like this to see how often and for how long we would progress or revert to previous steps. This and the time zone difference were the only main challenges I faced in our design process. I believe that much of the success of the process is attributed to our very constant communication and openness with each other. We were very lucky that our group chemistry and individual skills complemented each other to move through this entire process in just five weeks.

Final Results

By Week 5, we had produced a working prototype that enabled us to do the following:

  • Conduct user testing and gain feedback.
  • Adjust select features to fit the given feedback.*
  • Present the concept to the rest of the class through a 20-minute presentation.

*For example, one user test noted that content should include both videos and recipe cards, not just videos, because it will be more accessible for those who have trouble following video lesson formats. In response, we made the recipe cards and video tutorials go hand-in-hand, and either format may be available for a certain recipe.

By the end of this course, we had presented GreenSpoon, an app-based recipe platform built for novice home cooks. It carries the following features:

1) Recipe and video tutorial database.

2) Individual pages for cooking content creators.

3) Access to live and pre-recorded cooking classes from creators.

4) Recipe tinder to explore new recipe ideas.

5) Social connections to friends and other users who join classes and post content.

Our goal is for users to be more excited about the cooking process, tapping into the social nature of preparing meals at home, and using creator content to make these cooking tutorials feel more accessible and doable in the eyes of a novice home cook. GreenSpoon’s different features aim to tap into different kinds of engagement, whether it’s through a random selection of recipes (recipe tinder) or by building a parasocial relationship with a select few content creators that a user chooses to follow.

Our final Figma file can be accessed here, and our final slide deck presentation can be accessed here.

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

Although our proposed service has multiple features for different kinds of engagement, it is not comprehensive enough to tackle every obstacle that our survey participants identified as a barrier to cooking at home. Even after testing with our user base, our research subjects noted the following:

  • Time: For them, time is a commodity, and it is often difficult to commit to live or asynchronous classes with a busy work life as a young adult. To address this, GreenSpoon might consider developing a meal-prep-only option, which will allow users to make multiple recipes in a single day for future consumption.
  • Ingredients: Oftentimes, ingredients come in quantities that make it hard to justify the purchase of. Users are often turned away from recipes because of a long ingredient list and hard-to-find ingredients. GreenSpoon might address this by offering recipes and/or filters that allow users to work with a certain number of ingredients.
  • Online Learning: As seen from the pandemic, taking classes online can be a draining experience. It would be interesting to see how GreenSpoon might approach fostering in-person social cooking experiences by identifying nearby users who are open to sharing ingredients, skills, equipment, etc.

Lastly, Professor Chao brought up to all of our groups that it’s in our best interest to incentivize the other stakeholders who are providing the service, which in our case is the content creators. Our group should consider designing a unique paid partnership program that will incentivize creators to leave platforms such as TikTok and YouTube for a more lucrative opportunity. The funds to pay them will be reliant on those who join the paid membership option. If we could do this project for another 5 weeks, our group would definitely focus more on the content creator’s user experience and how that onboarding process would look like. In our mini group debrief right after the presentation, we were really excited that our classmates wanted to download the app! This really affirmed our work over the last 5 weeks, and obviously there is so much room for improvement, but I am really glad that it ended on such a positive note.

Conclusion

This was ultimately an exciting project that allowed each person in our group to express our creativity, and more importantly, utilize and grow our skills as much as possible within these five weeks. Cissie was incredibly skilled at visual design and analysis and Maddie led us through the preliminary designs that set the basis for our entire service (including creating the logo!) and effectively guided all of us to produce a working concept together. My contributions were mainly in visualizing our research, organizing our work into weekly update emails, and producing our final presentation. I truly feel that each person had a niche role in this project which made the entire process smooth and productive, which allowed us to maintain excitement for our final service even through to the end.

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