Xprecipe

Find your favorite recipe, customize the ingredients to your dietary needs. Pick up your favorite recipe ingredients from your local market in a meal Kit, cook, and enjoy!

XPRECIPE WHITE LABEL MOBILE RECIPE APP

Xprecipe

Today, Xprecipe is in Phase One for retesting.

Xprecipe is an idea I had after talking with people using other similar apps. So many apps offer a great product but have a significant gap in expectations; what they provide does not meet why their customers want it, leaving them feeling frustrated and disappointed.

Project  Case Study

Tools Required

Figma, PowerPoint, Otter, Trello, Zoom, Canva, Google Suite.

Engagement Type

Project proposal

Resources

Five member team of UX designers and UX researchers

Duration

3 week canvas

Collaborating with team members over Zoom.

 The Problem

“Working parents wanting a balance between work and family life need an easier way to provide healthy meals customized to their dietary needs.

Finding time to create a menu for a picky family, grocery shop on a budget, and prepare a meal is a struggle.”

The Challenge

Today we shop in the grocery store by what we are out of. The challenge is how to flip that convention and give users the experience of shopping for what they would enjoy eating. For example, what would you like to eat from a menu?

Shop for what you want this week, don’t replace what you ate last week!

The Solution

Research told us that consumers want a product that is: 

  • Fast and convenient
  • Customizable
  • Affordable

Opportunities

  • Users told us they don’t mind going into the store. Some of our users said they use grocery shopping as an outing. To keep an MVP make it easy to pick up the meal in-store, this system brings customers into the store.
  • When the user chooses a custom ingredient the store can sell premium product placement to distributors within the app.

Objectives

Who is the end-user?

Busy individuals want the convenience of a meal kit and want it customized to their needs.

Why will the user use the app?

Because they care about want to control what they eat.

What will be the user’s end goal?

Health food options for themselves and or their families.

When will the user use the app?

The app will use anytime the user needs to plan a meal.

Where will the user use the app?

The app is mobile there so it could be in bed night or in a parking lot before leaving work.

How will the user accomplish their goal?

Their goal will be accomplished by using the feature that enables them to customize the recipe of their choice.

What we learned

What they do
  1. Most of our users are mature, successful working women with families.
  2. They shop twice a week.
  3. They plan and prepare the family meals.
What they say
  1. They don’t mind shopping.
  2. They see shopping as their weekly get away.
  3. The want to support their local grocery store.
  4. The want help with meal prep and planning.
What they think
  1. A prepped meal ready to cook sounds easy.
  2. Meal kits are not a good value.
  3. There is not enough time.
  4. They want healthy options.
What they feel
  1. Meal kits are overpriced.
  2. Family mealtime is important.
  3. Supporting local groceries stores is important.

Pains

  1. Schedules are tight, time is limited.
  2. They don’t trust delivery services.
  3. Shopping for diets is difficult.
  4. Meal prep and planning are time-consuming.
  5. dining out is expensive and unhealthy.

Gains

  1. Healthy meals at home.
  2. Buying from the grocer is more affordable.
  3. Accounts for food restrictions.
  4. The app would save time.
  5. Confident in the quality of the food.

Three Week Plan

UX Design

Phase 1

• Competitor Analysis
• Market research
• Proto persona
• Survey

Phase 2

• User research
• User interviews
• User observations

UI Design

Phase 3

• Affinity diagram
• Empathy map
• Explore user needs
• User persona
• User insight

Phase 4

• User Flow
• Information architecture
• Storyboard
• User story
• Feature prioritization

UI Design

Phase 5

• Define MVP
• Low Fi sketches
• Mid Fi wireframes
• Prototype

UI Design

Phase 6

• Test prototype
• Reiterations
• Key takeaways

Phase 1

Competitive Analysis

I placed the competitive analysis first because, as this is an idea, I need to know if this is a viable concept that solves a problem in the market. In addition, competitive analysis and secondary research will help understand the size of the market and Xprecipe’s placement in it.

SWOT analysis will begin an understanding of the wants and needs of potential users.

Strengths

  • Creative, healthy recipes

  • High-quality pre-proportioned ingredients

  • Inexpensive

  • A complete meal with minimal preparation

  • Very high-quality ingredients

  • Creative, healthy, high-quality recipes

Weakness

  • Expensive
  • Minimal nutrition-specific recipe customization
  • Extremely low-quality ingredients
  • No nutrition-specific recipe recipes
  • No recipe customization – you get what’s in the kit
  • No ability to order JUST the ingredients of the recipe and then customize
  • Ingredients are available to buy right on the website, but ingredients are not pre-proportioned
  • No nutrition-specific recipes

Survey data highlights

Eighty-eight potential users participated in a survey; 23% were male, and 77% were female. To create a base for the user persona, we used the data from the survey.

Complete set of survey data

Click the following image to view the complete set of survey data.

Meal Prep

55%

of participants wanted an app to help with meal prep.

Gender

77%

of participants were female

Partnership

72%

of participants were married or in a long-term partnership

Age groups

79%

of participants were between the ages of 25-44

Of 88 participants

83%

were interested in a grocery app that helped with meal prep

Secondary market research data

    Online grocery shopping statistics & trend highlights

    • E-commerce grocery sales are expected to hit $129.72 billion by 2023.
    • US supermarket and other grocery store sales hit more than $750 billion in 2020.
    • Americans spend about $120 a week on grocery shopping.
    • Hiring a personal grocery shopper costs about $27 an hour.
    • Coronavirus increased the number of digital grocery shoppers by 41.9%.

    ‘Clunky and scrappy’ user experience is not an option.

    Consumers have more choices than ever before in where to shop online. While brand strength and quality continue to be necessary, the user experience in the e-commerce journey is becoming increasingly relevant for consumers in deciding where to shop.

    Phase 2

    Conducting user research

    1. We created a research plan for my team to follow when conducting the usability tests.
    2. We conducted usability tests with participants to gather as much information as possible.
    3. The interviews were recorded and transcribed to break the information into bite-sized pieces.

    Usability testing Interviews

    Participants were interviewed one-on-one with two separate wireframes. The strengths and weaknesses of these two wireframes are used to drive the design of the final prototype.

    Observations

    Participants were interviewed one-on-one with two separate wireframes. We considered the strengths and weaknesses of these two wireframes to drive the design of the final prototype.

    Phase 3

    Breaking down the information

    1. Using affinity and empathy maps we learned what our participants do and think.
    2. The interviews delivered information such as likes dislikes, frustrations, pains, and gains.
    The following are some interview highlights

    “I like to see the how-to recipe videos”

    “I like the option to add ingredients like extra chicken and pantry items”

    “I like that I can see the different options she can substitute with”

    “I like the pop-up for my personal profile to remind me to adjust it.”

    “I like it gives different options for meat if I didn’t want chicken”

    “I like it gives different options for meat if I didn’t want chicken”

    “It doesn’t really give you much detail on the options, but it’s easier to use”

    “I always look at reviews so showing them with the recipe is really good”

    User-Persona

    We believed a busy single mother would be our target audience.

    We were wrong.
    After our research, the persona emerges as someone completely different from who we predicted.

    Meet Cerise Peters.
    Cerise is a professional accountant employed full-time. She is married to Dave, an IT professional working in Lehi, UT. Together they are the parents of 2 healthy teenagers, 16 and 14.

    Click the previous image to view the complete persona.

    User Insights

    “I wish there were better options to the mealtime dilemma. Current meal kits are pricey and complicated. I need something simple and affordable to pick up and prepare for my family, so we can eat at home more often and save money.”

    “I would love an app like that! Because shipping is not an issue, it’s my local grocery store, which I would love to support.” 

    “I’d love an app where they do meal prep ideas, and then you buy the products, and as long as it’s competitive with the other services and more affordable.”

    “Meal prepping kit delivery services are appealing until you see the price.”​ ​

    Phase 4

    User Flow

    Click the following image to make it larger.

    Information Architecture

    Click the following image to make it larger.

    User Story

    When developing the user story and storyboards, we created them around the persona; we set the scene around a busy professional woman. The stories told us that they were compelling and solved an issue. The stories helped drive our ideation process by describing the functions and features the app would require.

    It’s 5:00 pm, and Cerise is still at work.

    She is thinking about her family. What to make for dinner?

    She texts a friend for help. They suggest Xprecipe.

    She downloads and opens the app.

    She finds a delicious recipe and orders the ingredients from her grocery store.

    Cerise runs to her store and picks up her ingredients that are waiting for her.

    She brings everything home and prepares dinner.

    Dinner is served and her family is happy.

    Phase 5

    Define MVP

    Xprecipe is at this time designed as an MVP minimum viable product). The user will browse for a recipe, choose a meal that will fit the occasion, make any substitutions, purchase the meal and then pick it up at the grocers’ deli counter. We did not design a delivery system for the app. However, there are many services set up for delivery. Therefore, until the research warrants it, delivery would not be an advantage.

    Prototype

    Click the following image to view a larger image.

    Experience the Xprecipe prototype

    Check out the Xprecipe prototype. We designed the user journey to browse for and purchase the:

    One-pot chicken alfredo meal kit. You will find on first row to the right.

    Click the module below to start the experience.

    Phase 6

    Key takeaways

    1. Being flexible and listening to our users is key, for instance: while we originally thought our users wanted options on brands of products, what they actually wanted was to swap products completely i.e. chicken for shrimp
    2. Testing and iterations, then more testing and iterations on the final mock-up
    3. In-store testing
    4. Additional features such as possible A.I.
    5. Finish patent
    6. Take to the stakeholders

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