Green Kitchen
Aspire to be the best app for vegetarians and vegans
to share their cookings with the world.
About the project
Not just a cooking app
Green Kitchen is a food recipe and sharing app for vegetarians and vegans to find cooking inspirations, shop for ingredients seamlessly, and connect with like-minded people. Its unique feature is the preview video where users can seamlessly watch quick cooking videos and only engage in longer tutorials for recipes they are interested in.
RESPONSIBILITY
User research
Wireframing
UI Design & Prototyping
Usability Testing
TIMELINE
30 days
TOOL
Figma
Miro
Whimsical
Trendy angled mockups of Green Kitchen… but you are gonna learn all about this app in this case study, pinky promise
1. Opportunity for a new feature
A growing trend among Millenials
Vegetarianism and veganism have become a growing trend among the young due to their increasing awareness of health, the environment, and compassion for animals. Keeping a vegetarian or vegan diet is good for many reasons, however, only small proportions of the population are actually vegetarian or vegan. Aside from the tastes, lacking the necessary vitamins and nutrients for the body to function normally without meat is what gives people headaches when doing their non-meat diet.
The challenge to stand-out from the crowd
Initially, I thought of creating just another recipe cooking app because I thought there were not many apps out there for vegetarians and vegans. Existing ones are poorly designed and don't have as much functionality as the non-vegetarian recipe app. But after research and doing interviews, I feel like it is necessary to create something more than just a recipe app, it should take into account current digitalization trends, and how social media is changing the way people view and share content to this product to encourage long-lasting usage.
The purpose
How might we create a beautiful digital product (website or mobile app) that shows people great recipes as well as help them build nutritious meals. The product will be different from those existing in the market in that it will be easy to use, beautifully designed and inspiring delicious recipes.
2. Research
Finding the right people and ask the right question
I decided to rely on both user research interviews and surveys. First I use the survey to screen and recruit potential interviewees.
User research interviews would allow us to go deeper with each participant and ask those crucial follow up questions that can lead to the “why” behind people’s behaviors. This type of research was crucial because it helped confirm some hypothesis that we had and it served as the basis for our main user personas.
The power of community
I crafted the surveys questions on Google Forms and posted them on Facebook groups for vegetarian and vegans. I want to directly reach out to my target group and Facebook groups are perfect for that. I posted my survey on Facebook page called Vegetarian & Vegan Recipes group (1.3M users) and waited for 2 days.
I filter results based on frequent use of digital products (2-3 times per week) and people are comfortable with reading cooking recipes.
The goal is to
01. Understand how vegetarian people search for recipes online, what platforms, how they save the recipes for later use.
02. Understand people’s preferences of different cooking blogs and app, what works and what not. Determine what opportunities and needs might exist/ or not for a new recipe app.
03. Do users need another cooking app? How do users feel about existing product?
3. Insights
Key finding #1: Most vegetarians cook based on their preference
1. Most respondents said that instructions video are nice to have but not necessarily a must.
People prefer to have a quick look at the recipe and cook based on their style and what is available in their fridge.
2. Most of them said the don’t use the recipe app so often even when they have several recipe apps on their phone.
They often open up the app before or during their grocery shopping to get the list of items to buy quickly (More convenient than going to google and type in the dish, sometimes they don’t even know what dish to google). But when they have an idea on what to cook, they don’t need to use the app anymore.
Key finding #2: People often just google the recipe they have in mind and hit the first search result
1. Because the recipe searching only happens once in a while, they don’t have as many inspirations.
- They would love to use apps more but they don’t have time to browse for recipes. 1 event think it is a dreadful task ->
they can just type in the ingredients they have on google.
- They did watch some nice cooking videos on Youtube. But never cook the same way.
2. Some respondents mentioned that they see some cooking videos on Youtube and Instagram and got inspired to cook.
But they then have to google the dish again to get the ingredients and go shop for it.
“I just to look at it from times but I don’t follow the recipe!”
- Respondent 3
User persona
The idea behind this app is the technological trend together with the needs of vegetarians and vegans. That's why the target group is best to be Millenials whose lives social media has become an important part. The research has shown the same need patterns for young people nowadays to stay motivated on their food journey. I want the app to help people, through the daily scrollings across social media, find good cooking tutorials and shop for ingredients without having to go through anymore steps.
How to introduce a new cooking app that distinguishes itself from existing products and make shopping for food for vegetarians and vegans easier?
4. Feature mapping & Product strategy
User flow
I wanted the app to be simple to use and intuitive enough that users don't have to learn new techs. The Home Feed focuses on endless scrolling for contents, while in the Discover page the content will be more organized and visually displayed. Users can also post their own content to share with people. The Shopping list is another highlight feature of the app that available to users even offline. They can shop with ease knowing everything they need is in this app. Profile page gathers all of the information about the users, and let them manage and grow their feeds
Impact Effort Matrix
While brainstorming a variety of possible features, I analyzed the value of each idea based on user impact and development effort.
FINAL FEATURES:
Trailer videos for quick summary of the dish
Interactive ingredient shopping list
Follow and add friend feature to promote engagement with other people
5. From sketches to
digital wireframes
This is the users’ home view. They can view latest cooking videos and explore more
Shopping list function and personal profile view
Journey mapping
I visualized how the user will go through the app, from the moment of on-boarding to viewing the recipes, shopping for ingredients and cook the food. The user will have the most fun when scrolling through the home screen for short cooking tutorials, while the Discover page allow them to search for any recipes and cooking tips and tricks. Moreover, the app should have clear call-to-action buttons so users can freely interact with the app and it also provides every information the users need to complete their goal.
User flow
6. Visual Design
Clean layout to give way to free-flowing video content
Green Kitchen should always demonstrate ease of use and cleanliness while being fun and reliable . The brand look and feel is warm, interesting and eye-catching.
7. Usability testing
Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing with Lookback.io
lookback.io makes it so easy and fast to set up a remote test and manage all of the test recordings in one place.
I carefully screened the participants afterward based on the research's criteria before jumping to analyzing the recordings.
I wanted to test out 2 flows of the app as I want to make sure the core functionalities of this app is apparent to the users and they should be able to understand and complete the tasks with ease. Te result helped me make decision on the feature design of the app.
Add an ingredient list
View a cooking tutorial
8.Focus on the seamless user experience
Building a simple Sign Up flow
The onboarding screen introduces the users to 3 unique features the app can do. It then asked the user to sign in to allow for greater personalised content, or they can do it later. The onboarding screen focuses on minimal design and step-by-step process so it feels less overwhelmed for the users.
It's like the Tiktok of culinary world
Adopting the endless scrolling feature, users will find scrolling through content as second nature. This makes the app super easy to use. I chose the dark theme for the Home screen as it would gives a more comfortable experience when watching videos.
9. Further exploration
Search anything
While the Home page is more of a "rabbit hole” of food for the eye, the Discover page will give people more flexibility in what they want. They can search by categories, or just by name. Sort of like Google, but more niche and stylish. Overall, this division creates a much clearer and more inviting way for users to explore and discover new contents.
The ultimate shopping list
A shopping list that people can add on their own, add the whole list from an existing recipe or make changes to it freely. Everything is editable and accessible even offline so they will know exactly what to shop.
Personal account page gathers all the posts users have posted, or the food recipes they have saved. They can check for their social impacts and make edits to customize their profiles
