Role
Tool
UI/UX Designer
User research, Visual design, Wireframing, Prototyping, user testing, branding
Figma
March-May 2022
The Problem
Solution
During COVID, it becomes inconvenient for people to go out and grab a drink at the bars as well as going to cafes. Some find the cost of drinks unreasonable and want to make their own.
The existing apps on the market are hard to use as the tutorials are hard to follow with too much text and little visuals. On the other hand, users don't feel accomplished when they finished a recipe as there isn't a interactive community for them to share final results.
Mixology will recommend drinks for users based on time, cost and ratings. Tutorials are easy to follow with choices of text, images, and short videos.
Users will be able to share the final product and earn points when finishing a recipe. They will level up in rank once more points are collected. With a higher rank, users will be able to enjoy more privileges and even win rewards.
User Research
We received 54 survey results and conducted 5 interviews from first round research.
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From those results, we learn that users like DIY recipes as well as following recipes online. However, most find existing apps not useful, therefore only 40% tried recipe apps before.
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Users have different preferences of content presentation: 36% prefer photos with text description, 40% prefer video tutorials and 24% prefer both.
Affinity mapping
We conducted second round of user research and gathered more data from our initial findings as we specify the target users and their motives.
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After analyzing the data, I find 3 reoccurring themes:
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1. Users want to DIY drinks during gatherings.
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2. Users think purchasing drinks are too expensive and inconvenient during COVID.
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3. The top 2 favorite drinks are coffee and cocktail.
Persona
After collecting user data, we narrow down the target users: people around 25-45. Those users tend to favor cocktail and coffee, and they usually have more spare time after work or at weekends to try drink recipes. Most claim they will drink with friends during weekends and would love to DIY drinks.
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How might we...?
Using the HMW questions, we are able to identify essential needs of users and prioritize certain problems.
HMW make friend gatherings more fun?
HMW encourage users to find making drinks fun?
HMW make sure recipes are easy to follow?
Main functions
In the initial design, the app will feature those key functions:
Home will encourage users to discover new drinks.
Users can search for recipes with tags based on: difficulty level, estimated time, cuisines, occasions and drink category.
After they are done following a recipe, they can share results in community and earn points to improve their rank.
We decide to include a rank system to help users feel more accomplished when finishing a recipe. As users make more drinks, they can earn points and eventually level up.
As they have higher rank, they can enjoy those privileges:
their posts are more likely to be featured in community, badge can be shown in profile, and they can customize their rank title.
Rank system
User Input
After running user testing with low-fidelity prototype, we find out several pain-points as well as opportunities for improvement:
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"Will I get rewarded with the badges and points I have?”
"I am not used to the profile icon location.”
“What is the difference between collect and like?”
“Is there a difference between the 3 different search filters?”
High-fidelity
After user testing, I realize it is important to make the homepage more appealing and personalized to the user. Therefore, I added the change recommendations function so that users can discover more recipes.
Besides, I combine “recipe "and “search ”in the nav bar as users think it is unnecessary to have too many search bars.
Home
Receipe
Decision making seems to be a challenge for users during testing, therefore I decide to add estimated time and recipe ratings on menu page.
After researching the existing recipe platforms, I realize a pain point is that the serving size is usually not specified or a recipe can only serve a fixed amount of people. On the other hand, there isn't images for ingredients. Which is inconvenient for users as they may not have prior knowledge about them.
Therefore I decide to include ingredients calculator to make sure users can customize serving size based on their needs. The ingredients are listed with images and serving size so users can be prepared.
Reflection
This is the first project that I was in charge of, and I learned a lot during the process. Because my team has no prior experience in the field, I volunteer to become the leader and guide the flow of the project.
Through out the project, I learn to better demonstrate human-centered concepts into the design process. As designers, we tend to be biased and isn't seeing problems from the users' perspective. Therefore, it is important to keep in close contact with potential users and figure out their needs. We get to conduct lots of user research and testing to learn from the users and make improvements based on their inputs.
In terms of the design aspect, I learn to pay attention to the details. It is the small details that determine the usability of the product.