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AVANT-GARDE VEGAN

Quick Recipe Search App

Self-improvement project

Avant-Garde Vegan is a fast-growing company that creates incredible vegan recipes by vegan chef Gaz Oakley. His YouTube cooking show has had over 63 million views. Gaz will open his restaurant in the near future but has recently created menus & dishes for many restaurants like Wagamama & The Vurger Co.

Background

My Role: Designer, in charge for user research, UX design, UI design, and Interaction design
Process: Research, Analysis, Ideation, Prototyping, Testing
Tools: Figma, Miro, Excel, Procreate

Difficult to find the right recipes on YouTube or website
They can't save favourite recipes, cook step-by-step or collaborate with users
It takes time to find the right recipe

People problem

This product design provides the best value of structure and value. A simple workflow allows users easily find, save or leave a review.

Design solution

As an initial step, desk research was conducted on different recipe services, focusing on the user flow and experience across different layouts. Findings from the research were used as starting point for brainstorming and workshop sessions for the proposed UX and UI designs of the Avant-Garde Vegan app.

Desk Research

Also done was: a functional and summary analysis, persona analysis, UF and CJM, and "Jobs to be done" method.

Basic functional analysis

To build the foundation of the app, I needed a basic functional analysis where I reflected the minimum required set of functions.

competitive analysis

I analyzed similar services that are already running and analyzed what functions they use and how they work. I also compared my app with competitors to understand what new I can offer in comparison with them, as the user will see how my service is better than competitors'.

summary analysis

list of functions

I made a comparison between the competitors and us. I transferred all the functions of the analyzed applications and rated each of the functions on a five-point scale.

It’s time to categorize and prioritize all the content in this list. The goal here is to group similar content together in order to come up with logical menus.

card sorting

Apart from the best-in class and competitor analysis, 15 users were also asked questions about:

Favourite vegan apps and recipes
What they like / dislike in a vegan recipe apps
How users search for recipes
What do they want to see or what could be useful for them

Key insights were identified from an analysis of the best-in-class recipe apps: structure of recipes, filtering, leaving/reading opinions via simple and clear interfaces, recipe categorisation by cuisine and quick words, choosing favourite recipes, easy to search for what the user needs, and see relevant ideas for cooking.

Key insights

user surveys

People want a guide on how to cook (step-by-step)
Users want to see small details like calories and reviews
Users need an easy to use the app yet flexible enough for their diets
Would like to have a free trial before buying the whole app
They like to follow chefs they know and trust the taste of

research findings

After pinpointing the main characteristics of the vegan recipe app target group, I created some rough personas to identify more easily who will be using this app. This is an example of a proto-persona I was using as a base to develop the hypotheses statements.

Persona

Student, supports vegan community

Michelle

Age: 23 years old
Lives in: London
Motivation: speed of the process

Michelle studies at University as a student of Economics and uses a couple of different apps to keep up with tasty vegan recipes. She likes reading newsletters like ‘Free Vegan’, follows The Vegan Society on Twitter and is open to other ways of getting informed about specific topics around veganism or to find in-depth discussions and interviews with plant-food scientists.

Goal: Michelle lives in a busy city and hates wasting time. One of her New Year’s resolutions is to find a good app for cooking vegan meals so as to use her cooking time in a more productive way. She needs an easy-to-use app flexible enough for her diet (with nutritional information) and with quick cooking times.

Accountant, healthy life matters, longevity

Age: 36 years old
Lives in: New York
Motivation: long life, healthy body

Robert is an accountant by day and gym-goer by night. He treats his nutrition like numbers on his spreadsheets. He wants all the small details available: calories, macros, micronutrients.

Goal: Robert likes facts and details. He doesn’t want to spend lots of time working this out himself, reading long stories and background details. He likes apps that show him directly what he needs to know to make informed decisions about his health.

Robert

Lien

Lien is a school teacher and loves to educate. She values others lives along with her own. She became plant-based primarily for the benefit of the planet and the welfare of the animals.

Goal: Lien wants to find recipes that are tasty for her but also see that she is helping others. The interface should be warm, approachable, and human. She’d love to see small details like nutrition information, recipe rate, carbon emission reduction. If not per-recipe, then at least the app itself and the company behind it.

Age: 29 years old
Lives in: Belgium
Motivation: saving others

School teacher, cares about the planet and its animals

user journey map

Business Goal: Making more money or helping customers to make better decisions.
User Goal: Explore recipe pool opportunities and real users that may share their experiences and wishes.
Design Goal: Guide users with a fast and easy-to-use app where they can find the right recipe within 1 minute.

Product goal

NAVIGATION FLOW

I created the app navigation flow before creating the design to make sure our solution makes sense and simple to use.