End-to-end design, User Research, Mobile Design
Simplifying Meal Planning for Busy Individuals and Families
Overview
Ever wondered what to do with the remaining grocery after a week of meal prep? Or how to plan meals that will fit everyone's preferences? This case study explores solutions to address these pain-points through user-centered design approach.
My Role
User Research: Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Persona Mapping, Journey Mapping, Empathy Maps
UX Design: Sketches, Wireframing, High-Fidelity Prototype, Usability Testing
Tools: Figma, FigJam
The Problem
Meal planning is a high-friction task, especially for individuals and families with different dietary needs.
Many existing solutions either focus on diet tracking (like MyFitnessPal) or structured meal plans (like Mealime) but fail to offer flexibility for households with different food preferences.
The Goal
To design a mobile solution that streamlines meal planning, and optimizes grocery management while addressing dietary needs and preferences.
My Approach
01
Understanding the users
02
Scoping down user needs
Competitive Analysis
Personas and Journey Maps
Defining project goals
03
Ideate and Prototyping solutions
Divergent Thinking
Storyboarding
Sketching
Lo-fi prototypes
04
Evaluating and Iterating on solutions
User Testing #1
Hi-Fi Prototype
User Testing #2
Research Summary
I conducted semi-structured interviews with 7+ participants to understand the emotional side of meal prepping, revealing the frustrations and pain points that users experience on a daily basis. I also analyzed currently available apps to understand their feature set and the problems they address, and finding opportunities.
In-depth Interviews
Understanding user journey, pain-points, and needs
Competitive Analysis
Analyzing the currently available apps and how they solve user pain-points
Some user quotes from the research
Key Findings
01
The issue for families is about planning meals
Research revealed that making meals that accommodate everyone's preferences, especially for a busy family was one of the key pain-point. The problem here was essentially of *meal planning* before *meal prepping*.
01
Juggling different needs and preferences within the family is overwhelming
02
Making different meals for different preferences/needs is time and money consuming
03
Getting everyone on the same page for a meal might be difficult
02
Most apps focus on individual meal tracking and meal ideas.
I conducted a competitive research to see what problems current apps are solving in this space. Most of the apps already solve the problem of "what to cook" by providing users with different meals options based on their preferences so I looked for opportunities which would address other pain points of my personas. Current features of the audited apps include:
01
Selection of meals based on preferences(varies by app)
02
Generate groceries from selected meals
03
Order groceries through third party apps
Defining the problem
I created 4 user personas based on the interview insights which helped me make sure I designed for the needs of the core user base. Mapping out user journeys for these personas helped me understand the end-to-end user experience, identify key touchpoints and potential pain points while meal planning.
A common persona, 'Working Wife Whitney,' represents a user who wants meals for themselves and their family members who have different dietary preferences.
Opportunities and Solutions
To bridge the user needs with opportunities, I developed HMW statements that were broad enough to allow multiple solutions, but narrow enough to set focus. Then I started
01
HMW make meals flexible for different preferences?
02
HMW make meal planning easy for everyone?
To understand how will each potential solution help the user, I created storyboards with solution scenario for each problem scenario identified from the research.
After weighing the ideas to what's available, what's feasible and what addresses the user need better, I narrowed down them down to 3 potential solutions.
🔹 - Simplifies household meal planning and grocery shopping, reducing conflicts and improving efficiency by removing the burden of one person doing all the meal and grocery planning.
🔹 - Simplifies the process of finding creative ways to use leftover ingredients.
🔹 -
Customization Options for Dietary Preferences and Restrictions
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
Collaboration on grocery list and meals
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
Generating Meals from Leftover Groceries
Increases the app's accessibility and inclusivity by providing a personalized, tailored experience and meeting individual user needs.
User Feedback
User testing with 8 participants resulted in 100% task success rate, but there was room for more efficiency and clarity.
Findings from the user testing helped guide the design and flow of the app before jumping to high-fidelity prototype. I made design changes based on findings from the user testing to make the prototype more efficient, provide better clarity, and better interaction.
MVP Product
Scenario: Modifying a Recipe
Selecting and modifying meals and recipes from the curated list further
Scenario: Sharing grocery list
The user has added the meals and generated grocery list. They want to share it with others for easy shopping and collaboration.
Scenario: Using up the leftover groceries
After the weeks meals are done, there are some groceries left
Learnings
Working on the project helped me refine my empathy skills while discovering and understanding user pain-points. I started the project with an assumption that busy individuals are constrained by time, but learned that other factors surrounding them like families and their preferences also play a major role in their decisions of meal planning.
Future Work
My vision for this app would be to make it community focused where people can share their ideas on how to customize meals, make simple meals, etc. and share it with others.
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