Foodhood
Your house admin sorted.
Case study
CareerFoundry UX Design Program 2020
Role
Sole designer
Project Duration
2 weeks, part time
Goal
A rapid concept creation aiming to improve online grocery shopping experience.
The problem
Although there is a trend for healthier habits, in large cities people often don’t have a lot of time (or will) to plan and do grocery shopping for a diverse and healthy diet. Unplanned shopping can lead to more food waste and an unbalanced diet.
The solution
Foodhood is a platform that plans house admin so people can focus on everything else. Personalised to users’ preferences, it allows them to add a whole recipe to the trolley, simply removing the items they already have at home. It helps users save money and reduce food waste by suggesting weekly recipes that share some fresh ingredients. Saving time and decision-making effort, users can also have schedule purchases, such as for toiletries and household products.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
I conducted a competitive analysis with two main food services in London: Waitrose Supermarket and HelloFresh. I chose these two platforms for the supermarket services offered by Waitrose, and the weekly recipes plan by HelloFresh.
Waitrose
Positives
Categories are shown in large buttons with visual context
Offers a category for dietary requirements
Clear use of filters make it easy to narrow down the search
Negatives
User has to pick a delivery time before adding any product to the basket
Special dietary requirements products are all under one category and not subdivided as other products.
Hellofresh
Positives
Waste reduce - Users can buy only the food needed for their chosen recipes
Users can choose how many recipes a week they want to cook
Negatives
No special dietary choice apart from veggie
No option for snacks or breakfastUsers have to pay before choosing the recipes
Due to the short time of this UX challenge, I only ran a survey study this time. Participants were aged 25-35 years old and familiar with online food shopping. To add a little more qualitative data to the research in the lack of user interviews, I also added an open question.
Survey
Insights
Users don’t stick to their preferred supermarket when shopping online, they are open to diversify and use a better online service for them.
On third of users prefer to buy pre-made recipes to be cooked at home (such as offered by HelloFresh) instead of regular supermarkets. There seems to be a growing market for a more tailored shopping experience.
Most users shop for food online once a week, but several users prefer to go online less frequently and might search for less perishable/non-food products.
Solution
A platform that sells supermarket ingredients based on a chosen diet giving the user a mix of recipes with the precise amount of ingredients to reduce food waste.
Persona - Sonia
31 years old | Marketing manager | London, UK
“We have to so many decisions on our day. I wish I was told exactly what to buy and cook for my dietary goals and habits”
Needs
Ideas for recipes that are easy/quick to cook.
Products that don’t contain peanuts and are low-carb.
To save time when doing her groceries shopping.
Habits
Sonia goes to the app every Sunday evening so she picks food and decides what to eat for dinner on the week to come.
She has already signed up and set up her dietary requirements, habits and payment method on the app when she downloaded it.
Frustrations
She has to watch for no-peanuts on every product.
She never knows what to cook for her low-carb diet.
She wants to eat better but doesn’t have much time to focus on it.
Goals & Expectations
To choose 4-6 recipes matching her preferences.
To add extra products of her choice.
To pay with Apple Pay or Paypal.
DEFINE
Sitemap
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Validate
I ran a round of usability testing both remote and in-person moderated with 3 participants. That was the first time I could observe if users understand the purpose of the app and how to use it. They did not!
Users appreciated having a personalised shopping experience and recipes suggested based on their dietary restrictions, calories, and cooking time of their preference. They also liked to move ingredients straight from the recipe to their trolley. But didn’t like having the whole week set up for them. They found it harder to replace or remove a recipe from a weekly plan than to select 4-6 recipes.
Positives
Users appreciated having a personalised shopping experience and recipes suggested based on their dietary restrictions, calories, and cooking time of their preference.
They also liked to move ingredients straight from the recipe to their trolley.
Negatives
Users appreciated having a personalised shopping experience and recipes suggested based on their dietary restrictions, calories, and cooking time of their preference.
They also liked to move ingredients straight from the recipe to their trolley.
REFINE
Refining the Design
Recipes
The revised prototype doesn’t suggest weekly plans anymore but separated recipes because on the first round of usability testing most users showed that would probably replace certain recipes inside the plan, and that would be more frustrating and less straightforward than choosing a few recipes by themselves.
I replaced some icons to make them bigger and more recognisable. I added an arrow next to the links and dark green colour to both links and actionable buttons to make it more evident.
Household Shopping
I changed the layout of the household shopping to be more consistency with the recipes layout and the drop-down system and to allow more space for information about the product.
Responsiveness
I wanted to emphasise the images so I limited the amount of colour through the app and kept the design as simple as possible. At this point, I also started to design the desktop website.
