FUSION FLAVORS
INTRODUCTION
Gourmet cooks who enjoy experimenting with fusion cooking and unique ingredients lacked a specialized app tailored to their needs. Standard recipe apps didn't offer the advanced features required for exploring and creating innovative fusion dishes. Fusion Flavors was developed to meet this specific demand. The app provides a comprehensive collection of global recipes, advanced customization tools, and a platform for culinary enthusiasts to share their fusion creations, all while streamlining meal planning and ingredient management.
In the Fusion Flavors project, I focused on designing an app that catered specifically to the needs of gourmet cooks interested in fusion cuisine. My work centered on ensuring an intuitive user experience with features for recipe experimentation and community sharing.
OVERVIEW
Problem
Existing recipe apps fall short of providing the sophisticated tools necessary for crafting and experimenting with innovative fusion cuisine. There's a noticeable absence of platforms catering to the demands of gourmet chefs delving into fusion cooking, which calls for an intuitive interface supporting recipe exploration, experimentation,
and communal sharing.
Connecting Cultures through Cooking
Goals
The Fusion Flavors project aimed to fill a void in the market by developing an app specifically tailored to the needs of gourmet cooks passionate about fusion cuisine. By offering advanced features not found in standard recipe apps, such as comprehensive recipe collections and customizable tools, Fusion Flavors aimed to empower users to explore and create innovative fusion dishes while fostering a vibrant community for sharing culinary creations and techniques.
RESEARCH
To guide this transformation, we embarked on a user research journey.
User Survey
To understand the needs of our target audience, we conducted a user survey to gather insights into the cooking habits, preferences, and challenges faced by cooks interested in fusion cuisine. The survey results would inform the design and development of Fusion Flavors, a mobile app specifically designed to cater to this group of users. By understanding their needs and pain points, we can create an app that offers a seamless and intuitive user experience, empowering them to explore and create innovative fusion dishes.
Survey Topic and Purpose
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The survey is to learn more about how users, especially gourmet cooks and want-to-be gourmet cooks, currently use recipe apps, what features they find most important, and what they would like to see in a new recipe app.
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The purpose of the survey is to design a user-friendly and informative recipe app that mirrors the attributes of gourmet cooks.
Target Audience
The target audience for the survey includes individuals who are interested in cooking, particularly those inclined toward gourmet or advanced fusion cooking. The following are the images of the survey results,
Demographics
Cooking Experience
Feature Naming Preference
Icon Preference
Design Choice
Color Choice
Key Insights
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Users with fusion cooking challenges and people intimidated by fusion cooking find the gourmet ingredients tab and the technique tab
to be helpful -
To increase the visibility of the fusion recipe generator, it could be made more visible and prominent by turning the other icons gray.
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For the color option, as users felt option A was easier on the eyes, the contrast of the yellow could be reduced, so option A was also easier on the eyes.
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The survey reveals a diverse user base with varying cooking skills, preferences, and expectations for the Fusion Recipe App. The findings can guide feature development, naming choices, and design considerations.
Persona Development
By crafting abridged personas representing target user segments, we gained granular insights into their expectations, behaviors, and pain points. This helped us empathize with their needs and desires for a fusion cooking experience.
Key Insights
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Fusion cuisine is a core interest, but users value features supporting their health
goals and time constraints. -
The app should cater to exploration (finding new recipes) and
experimentation (modifying existing recipes). -
A sense of community through recipe sharing and interaction with other
fusion food enthusiasts could be valuable. -
An intuitive and user-friendly experience is essential for all user groups.
DESIGN & IDEATION
Early Exploration & Sketches
I explored various design concepts through brainstorming sessions and low-fidelity sketches. This helped me visualize potential layouts, information hierarchy, and core functionalities for the Fusion Flavors app. These initial explorations served as a springboard for further development and refinement of the user interface.
Key Insights
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Peer review helped me see a broader view and not be restricted by a particular cook.
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There is an unlimited variety of features out there if I think outside the box.
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Some ideas that are obvious to me might not be to others, so the app features should be kept simple and easy for users to understand.
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Ideas can be taken from apps that are not only cooking or recipe apps.
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It would be wise to include features for all types of cooking even though the prioritization is for Gourmet Gabriella.
INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS
MoSCoW ANALYSIS
To prioritize features for Fusion Flavors and ensure a user-friendly experience, we'll conduct a MoSCoW analysis. This method will categorize features as Must-Haves (essential), Should-Haves (important), Could-Haves (nice-to-haves), and Won't-Haves (not included in this initial iteration). This will help us focus on functionalities that best serve the needs of gourmet fusion cuisine enthusiasts.
INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS
DESIGN REFINEMENT
Wireframes
Key Sights
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The wireframes serve as a foundation for usability testing. Insights from user testing can be used to refine the wireframes and ensure an intuitive and efficient user experience in the final app.
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While low-fidelity wireframes might not focus on aesthetics, they clearly show how key functionalities like search bars, filters, and ingredient lists will operate within the app.
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The consistent visual language throughout the wireframes promotes user familiarity and reduces confusion when navigating different sections of the app.
INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS
USABILITY TESTING
We are conducting usability testing for the Fusion Flavor recipe app paper prototype. This usability test aims to assess the user-friendliness and effectiveness of the Fusion Flavor Recipe app prototype.
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We have several concerns and goals for this test:
1. Navigation Evaluation: We want to determine whether users can easily navigate through the app's interface, including accessing important features like the homepage, favorites/saved, shopping list, and profile information.
2. Content Accessibility: We aim to ensure that users can quickly find and access recipe-related content, such as explore different recipes, ingredients, and techniques, filter recipes by categories,
3. Search Functionality: We want to assess whether users can easily locate and use the search box within the app to find different recipes, ingredients, or techniques.
4. Social Interaction: We want to ensure users can easily share their recipes on social media. We also want to ensure that users can easily communicate with other users through the community for feedback, ratings, challenges, etc.
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Task list for user testing
1. As a culinary enthusiast, you appreciate Mediterranean and Mexican cuisines. You love the fresh Mediterranean flavors and Mexican dishes' bold, spicy profiles. You're using the Fusion Flavors recipe app, which you trust for its diverse selection of fusion recipes. Find fusion recipes that creatively combine elements from both cuisines. Pick a recipe that you like and save it on your to-do list.
2. You are a seasoned chef who is always up for a culinary challenge. Today, you're embarking on a fusion experiment that takes two seemingly unlikely cuisines, Indian and Italian, and combines them into a mouthwatering masterpiece. You've decided to explore the Fusion Flavors recipe app, a trusted source for innovative fusion recipes. Discover a fusion recipe that creatively marries Indian and Italian cuisines, incorporating the unique spice blend of garam masala with the beloved comfort of pasta. Save the recipe to your to-do board.
3. To ensure you have all the ingredients needed for a recent recipe you've found and saved, you create a shopping list. You know the app does this, but you've never used this function before. Create a shopping list of all the ingredients you need for “Thai peanut chicken ramen.”
Recordings of user testing sessions
Feedback from Usability Testing​
5 Things to Change/ Design Differently Based on Testing Feedback
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PROBLEM: The prototype has the functionality of adding all the ingredients to the shopping list; it doesn’t have the option to pick only necessary items to be added.
SOLUTION: Activate the checkboxes next to the ingredients when the add to shopping list button is clicked, and only the selected ingredients are added to the list.
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PROBLEM: Some users have trouble spotting the fusion generator when they glance
around the homepage.
SOLUTION: Make it more prominent or bigger so users can spot it immediately when they come into the home screen.
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PROBLEM: The categories for the different cuisines confuse the users and make them
think too much.
SOLUTION: Make the categories simpler by removing subcategories and displaying all the
cuisines in the drop-down.
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PROBLEM: In the shopping list, when users are two or more recipes, the list keeps adding ingredients without any categories, making it difficult for users who would like all their ingredients to be categories so it would be easier while shopping.
SOLUTION: Sort the ingredients and place them in categories like Dairy, Protein, etc.,
for the user’s convenience.
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PROBLEM: Some users wanted to go to the shopping list and then find the recipe and
add the ingredients.
SOLUTION: Add a “Add Ingredients by Recipe” button on the shopping list page.
INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS
1. HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS
1.IMPACT & CONCLUSION
What's Next
With the high-fidelity prototypes in hand, the next steps for Fusion Flavors involve a rigorous testing and refinement phase. User testing will be conducted to gather feedback on usability, information architecture, and overall user experience. Based on this feedback, we will iterate on the prototypes, refine layouts and functionalities, and address any usability issues.
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Once the prototypes are polished, we will present them to stakeholders in a compelling pitch presentation. This presentation will showcase the app's potential and user benefits and address any concerns from stakeholders. Following a successful pitch, we can move forward with development, confident that Fusion Flavors is designed to meet the needs of our target audience.