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Simply Healthy App

A Case study to solve the problem of eating healthy food in a fast paced world where cooking is getting harder to manage for many families

Study Goals

  • Gain a deeper understanding of users' eating habits.

  • Identify barriers and struggles.

  • Use an opportunity to educate users.

Project Overview

Food is the leading problem for many people around the world.  A constant juggle between work and home life leaves people seeking easier food options, often that means fast food and take-outs. Healthy eating and cooking at home require planning, cooking, and shopping. For most people that is time-consuming and cumbersome when the solution isn't one stop for all. our goal was to find a solution for people to be more efficient and yet enjoy cooking at home.

Tools: Adobe XD, Miro, Google Survey, Usability Hub

Design Technique: UX Research, Persona Development, User Interview, Wireframing, Sketching, Prototyping, and Usability Heuristic Analysis

Duration: 6 months

My Process

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Empathize

Research

For my research, I opted for secondary research to understand the problem at a deeper. For this, I opted to gather insights and data from scientific journals to learn the demographics. 

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The data published by CDC suggested, "Obesity is one of the leading risk factors for premature death. It was linked to 4.7 million deaths globally in 2017." (Ritchie and Roser. 2017)

In order to really understand how we can solve this problem, we really need to dig deeper to understand the barriers for the users. 

Social Factors

  • Health Condition

  • Intrinsic motivation

Community

  • Accessibility to healthy food and education

  • Difficulty changing eating habits

  • Low motivation to enact change

  • Children needs a priority

  • Different needs within family

  • Single Parenting

  • Small family structures

  • Support from family members

  • Critical health events

  • Community health education

  • Friends and social support groups

  • Parties and social events

  • Busy fast paced life

  • Work needs

Familial

Personal

Barriers

Facilitators

Quantitive Research

After completing my secondary research, I conducted an initial survey to recruit 6-8 participants for user interviews to quantify my findings.

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Provisional Persona

The insights gathered from secondary research and surveys, I created provisional persona to help me anchored in user-centric solution.

Busy mom with full-time job

Needs:

  • Recipes that are easy to follow and fast.

  • Grocery delivery.

  • Friends to help me stay accountable or in the same journey.

Challenges:

  • Family needs and work takes precedence.

  • Harder to find time to find recipe and have ingredients to cook at the same time.

Smiling Man

Single professional living alone

Needs:

  • Education on what is healthy.

  • Recipes that can make weeknights easier.

  • Be able to share recipes with friends

Challenges:

  • Beginner cook and work is stressful.

  • Finding it hard to manage time and cooking at home.

Portrait of Senior Man

Elderly with health issues

Needs:

  • Affordable recipe plan.

  • Deals on grocery shopping

  • Home delivery.

Challenges:

  • Health issues that makes it hard to go grocery shopping regularly.

  • Doesn't have enough education on healthy food.

Competitive Analysis

Before conducting user interviews based on my provisional persona, I conducted research on the biggest competitors in the market. I researched all the recipe apps that allow users to order groceries based on the recipes. 

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Forks Over Knives

Pros

  • Can be used in portrait and landscape mode

  • More than 160 healthy recipes from 20 different top chefs

  • Step-by-step instructions

Cons

  • Only connects to one grocery store at a time.

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Yummly

Pros

  • Useful, preference-based recipe recommendation

  • Compatibility with Instacart for online grocery ordering

  • Expansive video content for free users and subscribers

Cons

  • Lacks recipe-editing functionality

  • No pantry management tools

  • Some basic features are locked behind a monthly subscription

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E-meals

Pros

  • Easy transfer over ingedients between recipes to reduce food waste.

  • Accomodates special diets

Cons

  • Hard to cancel the subscription.

  • Not enough meal size options

User Interviews

As the next step in my research, it was necessary to verify the provisional personas based on the insights and needs we gathered from our initial research. I selected six individuals from the community, all aged between 25 and 65, who had previously filled out our survey. These interviews aimed to uncover the pain points and requirements related to cooking at home.

Research Questions: 

  • Do you cook food at home? 

  • What are the barriers that stop you to eat at home?

  • Do you use a recipe book or recipe app?

  • How often do you use online grocery shopping services?

  • Do you know which food is healthy for you?

Following the user interviews, I compiled a list of problems and formulated "how might we" questions. This approach helps me to stay focused on developing a solution that caters to the end-users' needs, rather than getting sidetracked by adding unnecessary features.

Problem HMW Statement

  • How might we help people cook healthy food at home?

  • How might we help people to learn more about healthy food recipes?

  • How might we help people find like-minded people to share a healthy food journey?

Empathy Map

By utilizing empathy mapping, I was able to analyze my research findings and gain a better understanding of my target users, their needs, and pain points. With this knowledge, I developed a preliminary design and conducted user testing to refine it.

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FEELS
SAYS
THINKS
DOES
DOES

User Persona

Name: Jennifer

Age: 39

Hobbies: Working out, traveling

Occupation: Full-time working mom

Needs

Jennifer needs a way to help her cook simple and healthy meals on busy weeknights. Some days she works long hours and doesn't have energy to cook and provide healthy meals for herself and her family. She understands the benefits of eating healthy.

Challenges

  • Busy work schedules that doesn't allow her to cook often at home.

  • Not knowing easy meal prep and easy recipes to cook.

  • Being accountable and sticking to the plan.

Synthesizing

  • How might we help people cook healthy food at home?

  • How might we help people to learn more about healthy food recipes?

  • How might we help people find like-minded people to share a healthy food journey?

Problem

  • Making the process less time-consuming by providing helpful tools for planning and shopping.

  • Online shopping services, healthy food education, and recipe tutorials.

  • A platform to connect with people and share recipes. Ability to rate and review recipes.

Solution

Wireframe

I find it enjoyable to create a user journey flow as it helps me identify the main touchpoints and maximize the conversion rate. It also provides a better understanding of the users' pain points and challenges. By gaining a deeper insight into user needs and behavioral patterns, I can iterate and produce a user-friendly product.

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This journey shows onboarding process.

START

This journey shows grocery checkout process in the app.

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Solution

Low-Fidelity Designs

I enjoy using sketches to translate my thoughts onto paper. This initial design exploration is cost-effective and can be repeated as many times as necessary. Additionally, it is an excellent way to initiate user testing and collect data for further iterations.

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Guerilla Testing with Medium Fidelity Prototype

Goals

​

  • Assess the app's core functionality, including the onboarding process to ordering groceries.

  • To determine the overall interface with a clear call-to-action function.

  • To identify any accessibility issues.

 

Findings

​

During the  test, I had to explain the meaning of each component to the users since some had a hard time visualizing what they were looking at. I discovered that a low fidelity wireframe would be a better option for testing with older populations who are not familiar with digital products.

Another discovery was that many people had difficulty locating the "call-to-action" in the prototype. I learned that the size and boldness of the call-to-action need to be increased to make it more accessible for all age-groups and people with low vision.

​

Recommendations

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After observing people interacting with my mid-fidelity prototype, I was able to identify several design errors right away. I realized that I needed to add a video feature that would be more accessible for all users. Additionally, I learned that the buttons in my designs needed to be made bolder and bigger. Moreover, in order to make the app accessible to a broader demographic, more personalization options should be provided during the on-boarding process.

Storyboard

I created a storyboard to help me create a brand identity. Storyboards are a great tool for collaboration and communication between cross-functional teams. They provide a shared understanding of the user's experience, facilitating conversations and feedback. Stakeholders can visually engage with the storyboard, providing valuable input and insights. This collaborative approach helps us stay anchored in our user-centric design process and ensures that everyone is aligned with the user's perspective.

Brand Personality: The purpose of Simply Healthy app is show inclusivity and empathy. The brand thrives for clean, modern, minimalist look that people from all race and culture can relate to and find what they need to make their health a priority. 

Brand Attributes: Inspiring, Loving, Caring, Flexible, Clean

Color Palette

Imagery Inspiration

High Fidelity Designs

After creating a storyboard, I developed a high-fidelity prototype using my research and testing insights for usability testing.

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Usability Testing

Usability testing was done based on the usability script and plant. For the usability test to ensure the functionality and accessibility of the app, five participants were chosen for testing in a one-on-one setting.  The primary goal of this testing is to understand if users can perform an assigned task without difficulty. This observation of users’ performing the tasks will help us gain a deeper insight into the functionality and accessibility of the app.  

Goals

- Assess the app's core functionality, including the onboarding process to 
  ordering groceries.

- To determine the overall interface with a clear call-to-action function.

- To identify any accessibility issues

Results

- All participants successfully completed Task 1. 

- One participant took some extra time to locate the call-to-action button.

- Task 2 was completed successfully by two participants. However, we noticed 
  that lack of to back button on a couple of pages made it difficult for one 
  the participant who accidentally skipped a page

- All participants completed tasks 3 and 4 successfully.

Further Improvements

- Adding an “Add ingredients” button to the recipe page instead of just a tiny “plus” icon next to ingredients.
 
- Some pages lack a back button

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