Dawn Mulloy
UX/UI CASE STUDY
Meal-prepping made easy for today's busy families.
The Problem
On average, a busy American family dedicates 70+ hours a week to work, school, and extra-curricular activities. Dedicating this amount of time makes it difficult for these families to enjoy home-cooked meals together.The modern world needs a way to make meal-prepping easier for the average family.
The Solution
The goal is to create an app that helps busy families enjoy home-cooked meals every week. The app will focus on giving families the resources they need to manage their time in a way that allows them to prep all their meals for the week in the most stress-free ways possible.
My Role
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User Research
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User Interview
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Competitor Analysis
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Affinity Mapping
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Persona
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Empathy Map
Project Duration
14
Weeks
25+
Screens
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Journey Map
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User Flow
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Information Architecture
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Low Fidelity
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High Fidelity
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Usability Testing
Tools Used
Figma
Illustrator
Zoom
Docs
Design Process
1
Discover
2
Define
3
Ideate
4
Design
5
Recollect
User Research
Competitor Analysis
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Researched current competitors such as:
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meal kit subscriptions
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meal-prepping planners
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meal-prep calendar templates
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Filtered through competitor solutions/ideas that work vs those that do not worl
User Personas
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Based on collected research dicoveries, created a persona for which this solution would be tailored to.
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The persona became:
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Mama Mary : a 30-year-old work-from-home wife and mother of 2 children who participate in extra-curricular activities during the week.​
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Surveys
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Found potential users that matched the target audience qualifications.
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Conducted 1 on 1 surveys to gain insights on pain points with the problem that needed to be solved.
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Developed ideas based on the information that was collected during said surveys.
Empathy Maps
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Based on data received through user interviews, created an empathy map highlighting what the user:
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Sees & Hears​
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Says & Does
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Thinks & Feels
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Pinpointed Pains & Gains
Ideation & Design
After completing the research and conducting the initial user interviews, the focus of the solution basically presented itself. It should focus on; simplicity, health, time management, budgets, and providing a variety of recipes. These people are tired and would love to have home-cooked meals, but they all agreed that they would benefit from a simple, usable, meal-prepping app. An app goes hand-in-hand with convenience, simplicity and always being connected. It doesn’t get much simpler than being able to rely on something that is most likely always in your pocket. This is why it was decided to create an app rather than a cookbook or a webpage.
Time
Money
variety
energy
Testing & Recollection
The first round of user testing resulted in many edits being made, which was expected. The main findings that came from the first round of user testing showed me that I needed to be more aware of where each element of the screen was bringing the users. For example, a few people pointed out that there was no way to add a specific recipe to a specific meal. They could add the recipe to a “foodlist” but they couldn’t specify that it was a breakfast recipe. So, for the next round of testing, I made sure to create a screen that allowed the user to pick which meal they wanted the recipe for and I also added a way to add that meal to a day of the week. This showed the users that the app would in fact help them plan their weekly meals in detail to not only the time of day but also to a specific day of the week. Upon re-testing, there was positive feedback on attention to detail in this particular screen flow. There were other scenarios that played out similar to this where I ended up creating more screens to make a certain task flow smoother. The testing process showed me how necessary it is to get many eyes on one product because other people will always catch something the designer either overlooked or didn’t think of in the first place.