Meal planning looks a little different for everyone. The pandemic altered attitudes and behaviors regarding purchasing, preparing, and consuming food. People are cooking more and there is a general increase of confidence and creativity in the kitchen. 71% of those who are cooking more intend to do so after the pandemic ends (Hunter Food Study Special Report). In addition, meal planning has shown to reduce food waste because people are more mindful about what they are purchasing each week and how they will use it in recipes.
The traditional idea of meal planning or prepping can be intimidating for the home chef who prefers more flexibility. Meal planning shouldn’t be a stressful experience, and Zest strives to bridge that gap, especially for younger chefs who may be getting recipes and inspiration from their favorite content creators online.
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Before diving into any design solutions, I sought to understand more about food planning and user goals and habits when making a food plan through interviews, market research, and competitive analysis.
I analyzed several products to see how the problem of creating a digital and flexible meal plan is being addressed currently for users . I selected apps that had on one or more of the features I was looking to build, including: cataloging recipes, saving recipes from multiple sources, meal planning, and making a grocery list.
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Clean UI and consistent design for organized aesthetic
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Customizable lists and planner allows user to have control
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Ability to share recipes or lists with others
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Ability to scale recipes or convert measurements
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Add recipes from various sources
I conducted five 1-on-1 interviews with people who cook at least three times a week and often try new recipes.
"I want to be able to personalize my list and plan, knowing it's okay if I don't stick to it 100%."
"I identify meals I want to make for the week and then make a grocery list after that, which includes my weekly staples."
"I like to replicate recipes I've made in the past."
Based on the research data, I created a user persona to help guide some of the decisions for this project. It was important that this persona captured elements from the user research in order to make it an effective tool when designing.
After initial research and creation of a user persona, I created a feature overview to prioritize potential features. The biggest challenge with this project was to keep the scope manageable within the time frame constraint. There was so much I wanted to include and build out, and I had to prioritize the features based on the most important elements from research. Redefining my focus meant moving away from including food waste tips and the flow for adding and cataloguing recipes in this version.
I focused my design around the idea of a meal planner. The grocery list and cookbook would be supporting elements, but the main flow would center around creating and editing the weekly meal plan.
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View a daily and weekly meal plan
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Edit the dinner plan for Monday night
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Assign the appropriate recipe from saved recipes
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Add ingredients for this recipe to your grocery list
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Share grocery list with a friend
After determining the core flows for the designs I wanted to test, I sketched out the initial designs before building out low-fidelity wireframes for initial usability testing.
Key questions that came up during this stage:
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How to reduce the amount of clicking around to keep the flow streamlined when editing plan?
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How to design the list of unassigned recipes for the week vs. the weekly plan?
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Is the full calendar view necessary for the MVP?
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How can users easily search recipe database for favorite recipes?
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How can users share a grocery list or plan for collaboration?
The central ideas of this app are simplicity and flexibility. Users should feel empowered to create a meal plan that inspires them to cook each week and to have a place to gather recipe ideas and favorite meals. The key words driving the design of the product are:
fresh / bright / flexible / creative.
After conducting the first round of usability tests, I had valuable information about the elements that worked well and the ones that were confusing for users. I continued to design the screens for the full MVP and received helpful feedback along the way.
Priority design decisions revolved around the organization of the planner. After many iterations, this version was established to identify the current date, allow users to toggle between weekly plans, and view the daily details. The recipe view page was build as a separate screen to accommodate users who might want more flexibility and not assign recipes to specific days.
A priority with the design was to minimize the amount of clicking a user had to do in order to link a recipe to the meal plan. Initial testing revealed confusion on how to link a recipe to a specific meal without having to visit the recipe details page. This resulted in building a quick edit and add flow within the daily edit view.
While users can manually add an ingredient to the list, this feature allows users to pick from the ingredients in a specific recipe, streamlining the process of making a meal plan and coordinating the shopping list.
While several rounds of iterations happened during the course of this project, there were a few essential changes that came about after usability testing.
The original design was confusing for users with the date at the top and the vertical dates on the weekly planner.
The most prominent changes on this screen were creating quick “add to” buttons for planner and grocery, as well as separating ingredients and instructions for clarity.
An earlier version was not intuitive for users to edit the meal from the daily view. There was also no “quick add” to browse recipes.
This project gave me a wonderful opportunity to think through the process of designing a full app. It allowed for a lot of creativity in decision-making.
Because I was designing something I felt passionate about, I had to remind myself who I was designing for – and the research and user persona proved very helpful for this step. It was definitely a challenge to design something that felt “new” and creative within a saturated market, but I know this project pushed me to think about how to incorporate the good from what is already out there, while adding my own spin. It was also challenging to keep the flow within the scope, while also accounting for the main screens that would be included in a MVP app.
Overall, this is just the first step in creating an app like this, and a reminder that the design process is non-linear.
© Maya Scheidl 2024. All Rights Reserved.