Ready, Set, Cook! — A modified (GV) Design Sprint Case Study
A simple recipe for driving meaningful outcomes
Introduction
The Problem Scenario
Savr Recipes is a start-up that wants to make it easier for people to follow new recipes and cook great meals at home. Recently, they received negative feedback from users regarding problems they experienced when it came time to cook. As it turns out, at-home chefs need smart instructions that help guide them through new recipes with confidence.
They brought me on board to test solutions to help users accurately and easily create dishes that match or exceed expectations. I performed a modified (GV) design sprint to generate clear data before making (re)design decisions or expensive commitments.
Day One
Mapping the Right Recipe
A good map or good directions should feel like good camera movement in a movie. You hardly notice it. A vehicle transmitting you through a journey with minimal friction. For Savr users, however, this is hardly the case. In reality, much of the story here begins with a single truth: regardless of the outcome of a dish, if the experience is perceived as too stressful, users are likely to abandon the app. The inflection point is the moment users set out to cook a new recipe for the first time…there’s, seemingly, much to consider in creating an enjoyable, somewhat, challenging experience. How might we provide that?
User research feedback suggests users feel misled at the outset regarding levels of difficulty and find themselves too invested to turn back. They find themselves wondering if their ingredients are coming together properly without progress-point visuals and wonder why they’re cleaning additional kitchenware midway through the recipe in order to proceed. It also suggested these experiences, among others, deter at-home chefs from trying new recipes on the whole. The text-based only instructions proved burdensome and incapable of facilitating dynamic progress.
Now equipped with a shared understanding of the problem area and given insight on our target persona I mapped out a potential solution.
Meet our target persona, Nick! His goal is to confidently and easily follow a recipe so his dish comes out as expected. He is at the forefront of thinking heading into solution ideation.
Day Two
Recipe Remix
The map catalyzes a sense of direction keeping the target user in mind, therefore, I utilized day two for divergent thinking and solution ideation. I began with lightning demos whereby I reviewed a bevy of resources and other products for inspiration.
My intention was to be more exploratory and less perfectionistic with initial sketch solutions. I sensed more utility in trying to “remix” the Savr recipe approach with inspiration from other references in order to get to testing with something contextually useful. To avoid the perils of overthinking the sketch process, I performed a “crazy 8” exercise to try out variations of the most critical screen.
My idea of a critical screen soon became somewhat of a mixture of a few of these sketches. Our target persona needs intuitive and simple affordances in order to be sufficiently prepared to execute new recipes and much of that early instruction is best leveraged through video.
Incorporating media is a constructive way to address key issues at the outset of the experience and the “prep-ahead” video looks to accomplish a few things at once. It’s possible to inform the user in a way that considers the unique intricacies of each dish so they feel confident about their preparedness.
Day Three
First-Step-First
As noted earlier, much of our target users’ pain points can be addressed by intercepting any confusion early on in the process. A unique design challenge exists in the effort to maintain the attention of our target user throughout the flow so keeping the “prep-ahead” video down-to-earth and short and sweet is critical. Light commentary on things to look out for, common problem areas, any unorthodox ingredients or ways of preparing the ingredients, really, just giving them a sense of the road ahead. I created a storyboard to illustrate the process heading into prototypes.
My goal with the earliest prototype was to consider the various ways our target persona might look to engage with the recipe right after selecting it. What direction do they wanna go? Do they want to watch a video right away…or at all? Should the video autoplay from the beginning? All questions I considered but, in the end, I chose to design initial screens in a lean way that gave them options so that I might measure their thinking with visual and verbal feedback.
This means they’re given the choice to enter straight into the ordered list of instructions or, if they like, engage with images first to familiarize themselves with how the dish looks.
Day Four
Taste Testing
To reinforce my intention with the prototype I wrote a mini test script before recruiting participants. Ultimately, my goal was to quickly iterate on meaningful feedback, I was testing how participants maneuvered upon selecting a recipe. Rather than give the participants specific tasks at the outset I opted to merely observe their behavior. I did, however, ask the participants to demonstrate their thinking aloud as they made choices. Which affordances did they find useful? I reconciled not having a fully fleshed “prep-ahead” video at this stage because I was more interested in understanding the direction our target users intended to take given different options.
I tested the prototype with five participants. Each participant fell into the demographics of our target persona and the testing sessions lasted roughly 30 minutes. The process was enlightening, I got a ton of immediate feedback. One participant recommended reviews in order to read into opinions from other at-home chefs. Another participant responded, “no matter my experience level, I have all I need to get started, and I don’t have to look far.” One participant found it more useful to look at images of the dish right at the beginning and felt the accompanying video clips during each step was enough to visualize progress. Each participant was interested in the idea of the “prep-ahead” video which presented enough evidence of its potential utility. I specifically focused on the microcopy of the “prep-ahead” button to elicit feedback and to signal specific responses.
Impact and Takeaway
The testing session proved useful in many ways. I included the review feature to tap into community effects and engagement. My success criteria were predicated on identifying next step directives which is, in part, why I chose a modified design sprint approach. It’s invaluable to be able to pivot in such a short window of time with real data from target users at virtually no cost. I feel equipped with enough actionable insights to build onto the prototype in a constructive manner offering meaningful recommendations. An important next step involves scripting and producing a “prep-ahead” video to give our target user a sense of the type of recipe-specific information we intend to cover, then perform additional usability testing to further the iteration process.
