For my course with Springboard, we were given a fictional design sprint exercise. Based on the given brief, its research, personas and the reviews collected by current users; I had to partake in a solo-design-sprint challenge. Mapping, sketching, deciding, prototyping and testing.
Overview
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Savr Recipes is a new startup that wants to make it easier for people to follow new recipes and cook great meals at home. This cooking and recipes app is designed for at-homes and includes an active community, where users can rate and review recipes for other users. Feedback from users has shown that there are problems with the instructions. The user does not know which kitchenware they need for cooking. The user doesn't know if they are on the right track halfway through. A lot of times users see techniques that they are unclear on. Users want to be fully prepared before they start cooking.
I chose this design challenge over others because I can relate to cooking a meal at home and the frustrations that come along with it.
My role
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In this solo sprint, my role is to synthesize the research, produce an effective prototype, and conduct usability testing.
Day 1 - Mapping
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On Day one of the design sprint, I reviewed the existing research on the problem and mapped out the steps a user would take while using Savr to achieve their goal.
Insights
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Users feel lost while cooking halfway through because they’ve only seen how a finished dish looks, not the photos of key steps.
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Users dislike looking back and forth at the phone while they were in the middle of cooking, risking food smudged all over the phone screen.
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Understanding unfamiliar cooking techniques and feeling lost when coming across an unfamiliar term.
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Users would prefer knowing the ingredients, tools and techniques beforehand to avoid making mistakes.
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Unclear steps lead users to feel stressed out, and ultimately make mistakes.
Persona
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Once I was done reading through all the user issues it was time to familiarize myself with the persona I would be designing for.
It was important for me to be able to understand how to create an experience that makes cooking by following a recipe from beginning to end easy and seamless.
After understanding the persona Nick, it was time for me to map out what his journey would look like when using Savr.
Day 2 -Sketching
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Ideating
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Before doing the crazy 8’s I tried putting some ideas and thoughts into writing and sketching to come up with some solutions to the problem.
Now that I had a map built, I began brainstorming the possible solutions.
User paint point 1: Users feel lost while cooking halfway through.
Solution 1: Adding photos or videos at every key step to let the user know how the item is supposed to look at every step of the cooking process.
User pain-point 2: Users dislike looking back and forth at the phone while they were in the middle of cooking, risking food smudged all over the phone screen.
Solution 1: Adding a voice-controlled feature that will read out the steps and also let the user use voice to move to the next step or go back or repeat a step without touching the phone.
Solution 2: Adding a hand free feature that let the user will be able to hover his hands to move to the next step or go back without touching the phone.
User pain-point 3: Understanding unfamiliar cooking techniques and feeling lost when coming across an unfamiliar term.
Solution 1: Adding videos of cooking techniques before the user starts cooking so that the user is aware of the techniques beforehand.
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Solution 2: Difficult terms can be underlined with a link to click and find details about the term without going to google or leaving the app.
Crazy 8 Exercise
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For the crazy 8s exercise I chose the screen that the user would be looking at while they are in cooking mode. The user would most likely be using it while they are cooking.
Day 3 - Decide
The idea I selected is hands-free cooking using speech. This voice feature will guide the user throughout the cooking process by:
A voice read out loud each step.
Voice command to go from one step to the next or back or repeat a step in case the user wants it.
Timers are included in each recipe step whenever it is needed. The timer can be reset using a voice command.
This hand-free experience will enable the users to focus on cooking and avoid touching the phone with dirty hands.
Scenario
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A user who has chosen a recipe, and is in the kitchen - ready to start cooking and following instructions.
Day 4 - Prototyping
Day 5 - Validate
It was finally the time to test the prototype. The testing of the prototype was done remotely over Zoom. All participants cook at home and have referred an online recipe for cooking.
Users opened the Adobe XD prototype on their computer, and by sharing their screen I was able to see how they interacted with the prototype. The test had the duration of approximately 15 minutes.
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