Eat-Fresh: UX Case study for curated recipe boxes.

Problem statement —

Design an app that sells curated recipe boxes

Context -

Today cooking has become a necessary skill for all, especially for working professionals who don’t live with their families. And those who want to learn cooking find it very complex as they need to know the recipe and spend time getting the right ingredients.

While there is YouTube to find recipes and delivery apps to get you the essentials you need, the whole process still requires a good amount of effort. There is still a scoop to simplify this experience for cooking enthusiasts.

My task -

Design a mobile app where people can order boxes that come with a set of ingredients and the instructions to cook a particular dish. Clearly define the entire business model and the users you would like to target.

Assume that the company that owns the app buys the ingredients for you and has a team of experts who crafts the recipes.

User Group -

Working professionals living away from families, And different professionals have different needs. So think according to that.

This problem statement was from Chethan KVS also known as Design Pilot in the design world. Well if you are a designer you probably know him. He has been posting problem statements on Instagram. If you are a newbie designer and looking for some good problem statements to work on, you can check those. This problem statement is one of them.

Instagram handle — https://www.instagram.com/design_pilot/

Understanding what users do for their cooking situation -

• They hire a maid and buy veggies and groceries from the market or they get delivered online.
• They find a mess where they can get good food and eat
• They prepare food on their own (This is the target audience)

Who already knows to cook the essentials and who knows a little bit, Learning from YouTube videos.

I did some research to understand what users do to prepare food and learn cooking from YouTube.

Problems they face

• Cooking is very time-consuming when it comes to curry or gravy.
• Buy vegetables and groceries from the market, some get expired soon, some are needed to be there every day
• Cooking means a messy kitchen and soiled plates
• Difficult to decide what to cook
• Time management — there is a rush hour, things are running late
• Variety in cooking — Every member has different food preferences.
• Physical strain — Working professionals are new to this environment, cooking food for themselves, as they also work in the office. Difficult to balance both of them
• Not having a sense of proportion, How much to add even after seeing those youtube channels, One tablespoon? My spoon size is different from users, how much to add from my spoon.
• But watching videos is a very time-consuming process, Some of them prefer watching and some prefer the traditional method of recipe notes. For me, I learn best through video, while having the written directions in front of me as I go through the steps.

To understand more about the users, I have put myself in the user’s shoes

• I want to cook food for me and my friends (A total 3 of them)
• I want to cook something easy, filling, and less time consuming
• I want to cook food that can be made with my existing kitchen utensils like a cooker and pan.
• I want to cook food only for my dinner, I can’t cook early morning as I may become late for work.
• What about the weekends — I want to cook food for all 3 meals..
• I want to have a dedicated fixed amount for my needs, I don’t want to spend a lot of money. I have a tight budget.
• I want to have recipe box during my lunch, but I will cook this for my dinner.
• What if I’m allergic to something
• I am into gym, and i want to have more protein intake i wish i could customize it a bit to add more protien.
• Meals and food is fine, do then even send anything for beverages like tea, coffee, milkshakes, smoothies or may be snacks

Did some competative analysis related to food delivery and grocery delivery, some were direct competitors like

• Hello fresh
• Makery
• Big basket
• Swiggy

Business model of eat fresh

Users book a recipe meal box, the experts take his request, pick all the ingredients, and delivery the box to the user.

Types of users we have here -

1. I need recipe boxes every day — Subscription model

What we can do here is to make a subscription model for the user who wants to have food or cook food regularly without much hassle. We will be asking their preferences to understand what kind of diet do they prefer, likes and dislikes for food, any allergies, etc.

Ask them for their schedule to know at what day and what time do they need these recipe boxes and they can cook for them.

Different people have different lifestyles -

• Some eat food to keep themselves full
• Some eat food because they are into gyming and sport, they need good protein intake.
• Some of them want to look a certain way and they have opted for some expensive diet
• Some prefer having a ketogenic diet or going completely vegan
• Some of them are allergic to some foods or don’t like to eat some food items

2. Ordering recipe box once in a while — Get your recipe box delivered like swiggy and zomato

For the other user, they can simply order their recipe box from the app just like ordering food from restaurants. There are users who prefer eating homemade food and most of the time it is made by their maids and sometimes they prefer making their own food or they have a craving for eating something fancy which may not be available in the restaurants.

So here are the screen of Eat fresh App.

When the user open the app for the first time, he is taken to the onboarding of the app, where the user enter their phone no. and taken to the home screen of the app.

User group — Ordering recipe box once in a while

Home screen -

Displaying all the product offerings and the important information that a user requires.

• The first thing the user can see is the subscription pitch ( The main product ), since this is the main product so i decided to keep it on the top.
• Also I have used the images of the food instead of a group of different ingredients kept together, it would be easier for the user to identify the food item.
• Since working professionals are very busy, they want to cook something easy, filling and less time consuming. They can’t cook something time taking or even thinking of waking up early.
• Displayed the price and prep time. As these are the most important data to decide
• Cook yourself a ____________ This section changes according to the time of the day, Whether its breakfast, lunch, dinner it will suggest meals accordingly. Highlighted this as most of the people open these food app during the time of meal.

• Great delicacies food — We all have the one day where we think we are less than “sanjeev kapoor” and put on our masterchef hat and think of cooking something special, or whether its a sudden craving you have. Instead of ordering food, you decided to cook.
• Displaying some of the most fancy (Not regularly eaten food) ordered recipe boxes from the city.
• When it comes to recipe box, we don’t just stick to meals, but also sweets and beverages. We got your back when there is a sudden house party.

• Working professionals leave their home town and shift to new cities, so I made a curated list of states to fulfil their cravings during festivals or any special ocassions.
• In a lot of cities, its difficult to find other state good traditional and tasty food, but the ingredients would be available anywhere.
• I have avoided using any kind of image, instead I thought of using a plain white card with stroke illustration of a famous monument of the state and used the same brand color.
• Their might be a lot of recipes in the market but we may not have them, If you have any kind of suggestion for us, you can contact the customer care and in the future we can add it and notify you.

Explore and search recipes

This screen opens when the user clicks on see all in the home page and search in the bottom nav bar.

• User who are vegetarian can turn on this feature and see only veg options, this would be easier for the user who want to see only veg options and avoid non veg completely.
• Balancing the image with text. Used minimum data to keep the Interface clean, that is super important for the user like price, quantity, prep-time and Add button.
• Used a spacing of 24px between 2 product section and a grey line as a divider to keep things clean and easy for the eye.

Recipe details -

When the user clicks on recipe box, this screen opens and gives the entire recipe box offering, gives a detailed information what are the ingredients you will get in the box and other requirements.

• Begins with the some basic details like name, description, price etc
• Additional details like the quantity you have selected will be a serving for only one person.
• All the ingredients you will be getting in the box are mentioned here. So as mentioned here, the quantity of the ingredients are also provided and the exact quantity would be delivered to you. All you need to do is follow the recipe and mix the whole quantity as provided to you
• I have used text hierarchy for name and quantity by using opacity and size. It is an important data but didn’t require a lot of attention.
• Utensils required — Ok lets be honest, If you want to make a cake, then you need a oven, It would be a really bad experience if you ordered a cake recipe box and then realise that you don’t have the right cookware to make the dish.
• Also a lot of the bachelors don’t have all the cookware with them, so I decided to show the basic cookware required to make the recipe.

Cart and checkout page -

Cart page — In the cart page, I have made a simple summary of all orders, with a coupon feature and billing. In the bottom part of the screen, kept the important data like the total price and address. Followed with a CTA of place order.

Checkout page — Showed all the relevent payment methods and a default payment gateway. (Depends of the user what payment gateway is used frequently)

Delivery details

Providing all the details that is required for the user to stay updated regarding the order.

• Time is something users usually like to see, how much time will it take to get the order. So I decided to highlight that part.
• Added a status of the delivery with text. The text status often changes as the delivery is closer to the user.
• You can call the delivery to get to know anything if you want. Gave it a primary button. This CTA is the most important one, because any kind of late delivery or issues can mostly be solved by talking to the delivery.

User group — I need everyday, I want to cook my food everyday (before subscription)

Home screen

• The flow starts from home page itself, the banner image on the first fold of the homepage. When the user click on the get started button.
• Also showing the basic plan of Rs. 799/month, so that users can try this and get an understanding of how the product works and upgrade in the future.

Onboarding for subscription

Here are few questions for the users to understand them better regarding their food preferences and create a menu according to that.

Questions asked regarding — What diet do you follow?

Different people have different diet plan, and their body has adapted it. If a user is a hardcore non vegetarian and he is given vegetarian food to eat everyday. It would be difficult of the user.

Do you have any preferences ?

So now we know the users diet plan, now we need to know his preferences, like a user who is into sports and gyming they need too maintain high amount of protein in their diet, so that they can maintain their physique and build muscles, as they are going to consume food everyday from eatfresh, so we need to keep this in mind.

Food items that you dislike and ingredients that you are allergic to ?

• Ok we all can relate to the first question, We hate few vegetables, for me it was egg plant. I hated it and i still do. And there are a lot of user who don’t like a few food items.
• And some of them might be allergic to few food ingredients. So I have shown few options and also added a ( + Add food ) button, if you have any food item to add.
• This will make sure that it won’t add these food items in your menu.

Schedule your plan

Schedule your plan and select what meal of the day, at what time and day would you like to have, Create your own plan that fits you. If you like to eat lunch in your office, you can prefer having the recipe box for breakfast and dinner and cook for yourself with respected day and time

By clicking on the check box you can add the same time for all day, you can avoid adding time for every single time

• Different type of employed user will have different schedule. So we need to make it flexible to everyone.

For example — A content creator works mostly from home, so he can schedule for a plan where he is getting recipe box for all days and all 3 meals of the day.

But for a software engineer who is going to the office who mostly has his lunch in the office canteen, He can opt for breakfast and dinner for 5 days a week and for weekends, which are usually holiday he can get all 3 meals of the day.

So M T W T F — Breakfast and dinner and S S — breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Users can schedule the time, days, meals everything according to the preference. And in the end screen I have shown them a short summary of what they have selected.

Payment for subscription

• When the curated list is made, now it time to show the payment. The payment will be different for different users, based on the schedule and the preferences of the diet they have opted. And some diet have cheaper ingredients and some have expensive ingredients.
• Apart from that I have also shown the other benefits of the subscription
• Worked on the visual design, kept it very simple and clean.

User group — I need everyday, I want to cook my food everyday (after subscription)

Whatsapp message to remind them about the menu

• Users will get a notification on whatsapp and in-app notification to remind them to select food from the menu for the next day or week.
• It would be even better if we also leverage the whatsapp to send notification/reminder to our users to select the menu, we can send them the link to the page, they can select from the menu.
• And the problem with app notification is people usually ignore it, or a lot of them even turn off notification and it would be difficult for them to get the reminder, but user check whatsapp regularly.

Weekly menu — select according to your scheduled planned

User can select what they want to eat from the menu, either for the next day or for an entire week. I have divided the screen into 3 parts.

• Days
• Meal time
• Recipe boxes/ food

According to the schedule the have plan, it will be reflected over here.

• On weekdays — Breakfast and dinner
• On weekends — Breakfast, lunch, dinner

Further improvements -

• Customization of the recipe box, different user has different appetitate levels. The amount may be sufficient for few people and for few it may not.
• I want to send this meal recipe kit tosomeone else.
• And coming to the recipe box, I think we can add a dishwash liquid also. Nobody likes messy kitchen.

My Learnings -

• Understood the importance of product thinking and putting myself in the users shoes to understand them even better
• Thinking about the edge cases while designing the product.

And that’s a wrap, and yeah don’t forget to give 50 claps. Just press the clap icon. That’s it. Adios Amigos. Signing off…