Expert Tastes
How can we offer inspiration and confidence to users when cooking?
Expert Tastes is designed for adults interested in exploring new and exciting experiences through food.
Role: Solo UX Designer
Scope: 8 weeks
Problem:
People who enjoy food but need inspiration and confidence, or have general food questions want to connect directly with food experts to support their food needs.
Tools: Figma
Research Methods: Competitive analysis, user interviews, usability testing, preference testing
Product goals:
Support users with building connections with each other and food experts
Support users with creating meal plans and menu creation
Assist users with requesting and attending live cooking sessions with experts
Exploration
I hypothesized that if I developed an app dedicated to subject matter experts who specialized in food, I would fill a gap many users face when it comes to food inspiration and guidance. To validate my hypothesis, I dove into a variety of research methods that I felt would draw the most valuable insights.
The first research method I employed was a competitive analysis to see how similar products compared on the market. I compared two products, 6YA, and JustAnswer.
For both competitors, users were frustrated by their pricing model. There was confusion around the actual cost of services, with some users complaining the initial price shown was not what they were charged. Users have also complained about response time, claiming it has taken 5+ hours to get a response, despite being told they would get a response in minutes.
Findings
From this competitive analysis, I learned that users truly do want to connect with subject matter experts to solve a problem that is important to them. However, they do not want that at the risk of misleading pricing and inconsistent response rates. I also determined that specializing in a niche industry for an expert app would allow me to drill down even further into the specific needs of my users which could maximize my impact on their experience.
After understanding how the market currently responds to expert-type apps, I decided to move on to user interviews. User Interviews would give me insight into the target user’s challenges and motivations. I wanted to test whether this application would genuinely fill a gap in their lives. My goals were to:
Understand users’ behavior around cooking
Understand users’ feelings about food and cooking
Collect data on the context in which people would use a cooking app
Understand users’ interest in connecting with food experts
Findings
I conducted 3 user interviews and noticed the following trends from interviewees.
Feelings:
Cooking is generally seen as a therapeutic activity
Food experts define a range of people. It can include chefs, family members, food enthusiasts, and nutritionists
Behaviors:
Users frequent social media as a means of inspiration for cooking new meals and trying new foods
Users would love to join 1:1 or group cooking experiences with chefs
Challenges:
Not having access to the ingredients needed to cook certain meals presents a challenge to users
Not having enough time is a big barrier to cooking more frequently during the week
From the insights I gained, I developed user personas to get a realistic picture of the users.
Design Process
Now that the target users and the scope were identified, it was time to begin designing solutions based on common goals. It was important at this stage to organize the research outcomes into the deliverables that lay the groundwork for building an accessible app.
Shawn and Priya both love food. However, despite their motivations being unique, they shared common goals and interactions. I designed various user flows to showcase this thinking.
From here, I drafted a sitemap to build out the structure and connections within the app.
I conducted a card sort to validate my initial sitemap. I wanted to ensure the categories and groups that I thought made sense aligned with the thinking of my target users.
The results of the card sort were very helpful. Many of the groups I made aligned with my first sitemap. However, there were a few labels that participants grouped that I did not initially have together.
I updated my sitemap to reflect the findings from the card sort since they were the most intuitive for users. The revised sitemap was clearer in terms of navigation and identified coexisting hierarchies.
Mid-Fidelity Prototypes
Methodology
Things were beginning to take shape, however, at this stage, I needed to learn how users understood and interacted with Expert Tastes for the first time.
This is where moderated remote and in-person usability tests proved to be the most valuable. I conducted them with 6 participants.
The results were in and the initial design of Expert Tastes was unclear and confusing. This was quite humbling! The highest severity issues were:
Users had a difficult time understanding the purpose of the app
Adjustment: Update content design to include clear and descriptive language on onboarding screens and throughout the app.
Users could not figure out how to book an expert
Adjustment: Update the confirmation icon text from “book” to “reserve”, and move the location on the expert profile to a more prominent position. Also, increase the size of the icon and text.
Users could not figure out which icon to select to search
Adjustment: Move the search function to the tab bar and update the text to “search” in addition to using the magnifying glass icon.
After reviewing my results, I made the necessary adjustments to improve the usability of the app. After the usability tests, I spent more time thinking about how to improve the overall design and I decided to change the initial login screens so that it also gave users more context of what the app was about. I conducted a preference test to validate my login screens.
Final Design
I went through many iterations before reaching my final screens. Since I was a solo designer, I relied heavily on potential users and design colleagues to get to this point. They questioned and validated my design decisions and provided industry-level feedback to ensure my designs were not only aesthetically sound but also intuitive and usable.
Through user testing and design feedback, I was able to:
Increase the contrast on the login page
Improve the accessibility throughout the app
Refine the homepage to be interactive and display important dashboard information
Refine the search page to include useful suggestions
Refine the expert homepage to reduce cognitive overload
Add further clarity to the goals of the expert profile
This was an exciting project to work on! The main challenges centered around the initial usability and accessibility of the design. However, through user testing, I was able to improve the design, making it more user-friendly. In the future, I would do additional preference tests to validate additional screens. I would also include a user survey to further refine my research in the beginning and gain additional insights from potential users.
There were various iterations before landing on the final design, but they were all a part of the learning process. My initial skill gaps were with Figma, however, I improved tremendously through each design iteration.