EatOnTime
Everybody eats! And most people can cook. But this app experience is for young professionals or young parents who just haven't had the time or resources to learn yet. Featuring an integrated grocery list and easy recipes for beginners, EatOnTime is a friendly, trustworthy place to spark a culinary passion.
01 Project Overview
The Product
An app focusing on meal prep and planning.
Duration
Dec 2021 - Feb 2022
The Problem
It can be difficult to find inspiration for healthy, tasty meals for families and beginners.
The Goal
We want to create a product that makes meal planning and prep easy, simple, and enjoyable.
My Role
Lead UX Designer & Researcher
Responsibilities
User Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
02 User Research
Summary
I conducted user research including interviews and personas. Going into the research, I assumed that certain people, including working parents, students, and young adults would be our main users. This was affirmed by the research conducted. I also discovered the reasons that people struggled to find recipes; including lack of time, lack of experience, and lack of organization for creating and following grocery lists in order to have all necessary ingredients for recipes.
Pain Points
1. Lack of Time
Users just don’t have the time to create elaborate meals between work/school and friends/family obligations. We want to make our product straightforward with easy weeknight recipes.
2. Lack of Experience
Users are not comfortable enough in the kitchen to try advanced techniques. This can be addressed with a difficulty rating scale and video tutorials of basic cooking techniques.
3. Lack of Organization
Users often have trouble acquiring necessary or alternative ingredients for recipes. Included in our product, there is a grocery list function that the user can utilize straight from the recipe page as needed.
Personas
Ben is a working parent who needs simple, easily accessed recipes because his family doesn’t have a lot of time in the day.
Mapping Ben’s journey through a typical weeknight dinner revealed pain points that our app could help solve.
![Google UX Design Certificate - Persona [Template]_image.jpeg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/1a9f93_c7b1f4167359467d9d90db4171735410~mv2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_414,h_233,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Google%20UX%20Design%20Certificate%20-%20Persona%20%5BTemplate%5D_image.jpeg)
03 Wireframing and Low-fidelity Prototypes
Paper Wireframes
I'll admit, these are pretty ugly. They were my first try at wireframaing and this exercise alone helped me to contextualize how important wireframing really is to the design process. Taking the visual away and just focusing on the functionality. This was my first real Aha! moment in UX design.
For EatOnTime, paper wireframes helped me to understand what layout combo might work best for the final product.
Digital Wireframes
Digital wireframes helped me bring my thoughts into the design application and showed me even more opportunities for iteration and improvement.
These wireframes show how all features work together and how they can support the user journey.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
The lo-fi prototype addresses initial user flow between each page in order to show how each page progresses.
Usability Study and Iteration
Round 1 Findings:
1. Add a grocery list button
2. Add alternate ingredient suggestion button
3. Make navigation clearer
Round 2 Findings:
1. Colors should be adjusted to be accessible
2. Recipe page was a bit cluttered
04 Mockups and Hi-Fi Prototype
05 Takeaways
Impact
The app makes making dinner a less daunting task.
“The app made it really easy to find a recipe that I was interested in, and to follow through with the execution.”
What I Learned
While designing this app, I learned that iterations on designs are crucial to the evolution of the idea. Including usability studies and using them in iterations as well only makes the product better.
Mockups
Iteration made each version of the app clearer and more enjoyable to use. The home page changed colors to be more accessible, included a search function, and a more organized featured recipe carousel.
The recipe page evolved by updating colors to be more accessible, including audio reading features, and an improved grocery list addition prompt.