CHEFING

User Research, Wireframing, and Prototyping for the Chefing Mobile App
Project Overview
Chefing is an ingredients to recipes app. It takes the user's on-hand ingredients and determines recipes that they can make. Users can filter recipes by time constraints, dietary restrictions, and food cravings. The app also updates users inventory by scanning receipts and removing food items that are used in recipes.

Upon multiple conversations with post secondary students and learning about the infamous ‘Freshmen 15’, it came to my attention that healthy eating among post secondary students was a big issue!

Roles and Goals
Roles: This project started out as an individual school project and later became an opportunity to improve my UX skills. I took on the user research, wire framing, prototyping, and re-prototyping aspects of the project.

Goals: Create an intuitive and smooth experience using the app and incorporate features that are not only useful, but encourage the users to enjoy cooking!

User Research

To determine user needs, lifestyles, desires, and to make appropriate design decisions I conducted interviews. Interview topics included one's personal relationship and behavioural relationship with cooking.  This allowed me to gain a deeper understanding through combining both qualitative and quantitative information. The results show that a majority of users across various age ranges have a desire to cook, but may need a tool to assist them. 

User Personas

Using the research above, I created user personas to document, summarize and clarify user goals .

Wireframing

Wireframes were created for a potential app using InVision Freehand. Its purpose was to explain the idea to stakeholders.  Additionally, it allowed me to create a visual layout that minimized cognitive load and allows for a clear customer pathway.

The two wireframes below were created for the recipe criteria page and the presentation of viable recipes (which will be explained a little later)

THE UX FRIENDLY RE-DESIGN

Originally, this idea started out as a school project, back when I haven’t heard of UX Design before. After learning more about UX techniques, I decided to apply my knowledge by redesigning my school project’s prototype app.

Reducing Cognitive Load In Recipe Criteria Selection Stage

A key feature of the app is the ability to filter recipes based on a user’s time constraints and cravings. The previous project’s visual layout incorporated an excess amount of flow choices in a single screen that often overwhelmed people who saw it (based on usability testing). To improve this, I redesigned the process to include 3 key steps that come sequentially, rather than showing all the options at once. Furthermore, I removed irrelevant flow points to enhance the user journey.

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NEW

Increasing Sensory Reaction and Decreasing Cognitive Load When Presenting Possible Recipes

A key point in the user pathway is picking a recipe. To make this step more intuitive I once again removed unnecessary flow points and also put more emphasis on the use of images rather than words to allow for more sensory reaction and reduce decision-making time. Presenting a limited number of recipes in a frame also reduced decision-making time according to sample flow testing.
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Overall Results

- Through usability testing, the improved app had greater success rates in achieving tasks, with visibly less struggle.
- The app prototype caught the attention of regional newspapers! Check out the article here!
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
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Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
‍
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean.
Webflow
Web Designer
Apr 2015 — Mar 2016