Case Study Batch Gains

"How can I get a great week of nutrition?"

Select healthy recipes, generate smart grocery lists, and easy preparation.

Problem

The benefits of batch cooking can be hard to realize because recipes and instructions often are not formatted in a convenient way to do so.

Roles & Responsibilities

Solo UI/UX designer for project, interviewed mock client for their app idea.

Solution

A single application with healthy recipes and instructions specific to selecting, shopping for, preparing, and heating food.

Audience

Busy individuals who like to live a healthy lifestyle.

Discovery and Research

Client Interview Summary

Why?

Client wants to make batch cooking more approachable and easy to accomplish
Help fight the obesity epidemic
Provide guidance on healthy, cost and time effective nutrition

Who?

Anyone looking to get time back in their week
Individuals seeking healthier lifestyle

What?

Product needs to help individuals find healthy recipes
App needs to assemble a grocery list that will provide the best in-store experience for users
Provide food preparation instructions for make-ahead recipes
Needs to include quality images of recipes, ingredients, and food preparation process

Key Demographics

Age 25-44
Gender: Male & Female
Common Titles: Young professional, parent, Crossfit Athlete

Key Psychographics

Values: Wellness, nutrition, athleticism
Likes: Exercise, sports participation, eat well, travel
Wants: Have a six pack, grow career, focus on wellness

Challenges

Obesity and SAD (Standard American Diet)
Lack of nutrition planning
Financial budget for high quality food and ingredients

Preferred channels

Email, phone, etc.: Mobile app, Web App
Browses social media platforms ex. Pinterest, TikTok, Youtube

How research findings informed design decisions

Focus on the persona of a CrossFit athlete helped narrow the target user from "anyone who wants to live a healthy lifestyle" which is too broad
Preferred channels and content types of target users skewed towards short-form, mobile viewing, and social media focused. This influenced the app to remove extraneous information, be as minamalist as possible, and visually striking
Determining users would access app from home, in grocery store, and in kitchen provided emphasis on easy navigation to find information quickly

User Pain Points

Fear of being overweight, social and health implications
Financial frustrations of food budget creep
Scattered information on healthy recipes, cooking instructions, best practices, dietary guidance
Misleading food marketing that makes eating healthy challenging
Concerns that healthy food will not taste good and will lead to disatisfaction in the process of getting healthy

Competitive Analysis: All Recipes

Strengths

Excellent visuals make browsing easy, key info displayed prominently
Generates grocery list easily
Massive library of recipes

Weaknesses

Contains unhealthy recipes as well as healthy, not easy to filter
Looks at meals in a silo, not as part of daily nutrition
Some screenspace not interesting to users; personal quotes and advertisements

Opportunities

Brand recognition and associations that they have "all-of-the-recipes"
Increased demand for making different global recipes
Growing demand for preparing food by recipe websites in developing countries

Threats

Highly competitive segment with lots of new entrants
Consumer decision fatigue and outsourcing food preparation

Persona: Emma

"Fit Momma & Competitive Marketing Professional"

Motivations

Living life as a competitive person
Spending quality time with her family
Staying in shape
Being a strong business leader for her digital marketing team

Goals

Eat healthy during the week and have fun on the weekends
Raise healthy, active children who value sports over video games
Compete like an athlete, not someone doing the bare minimum

Frustrations

Effort required to eat healhty
Balancing family, wellness, and professional obligations can be emotionally taxing
High performance in multiple areas of life takes smart planning

Biography

Lives a busy life in Chicago
Played college soccer
Studied marketing and now leads a marketing team
Married with one child

Journey Map

Users interact with the application while at home prior to shopping, in the grocery store, and in their own kitchen along their journey.

Empathy Map

Wellness is a subject that comes with a lot of information overload, prompting a variety of opinions and emotions.

Information Architecture

User Stories for MVP

"As a User, I want to filter different recipes, so I can make my recipe decision simple."

"As a User, I want to be able to local ingredients in the grocery store, so I can spend minimal time in the store."

"As a User, I want to follow simple cooking instructions, so that I can easily make recipes."

User Flows

Wireframe Sketches

I Sketched to explore how to select recipes. There are so many ways to organize recipe options, I used divergent ideation on how a user might want to view and filter different food options.

Winner

A “Netflix Style” to horizontally scroll healthy recipes while also providing quick options and filters based on key user considerations for how they select food.