Meal Mates
A collaborative cooking app presented by Hello Fresh that allows families and people living together to easily prepare meals together.
Spring 2023
Three Months Senior Year
How might Hello Fresh make family dinners more attainable and effective for the modern family?
Background
Hello Fresh is a meal kit delivery service that offers weekly boxes of pre-portioned ingredients and recipe cards for a variety of meals. They are exploring how they can encourage more working families to take advantage of their services.
Objective
To investigate user preferences and behaviors surrounding cooking as well as modern family dynamics in the home.
Role
UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Impact
This application will encourage more families to cook together by targeting the root causes of why families do not cook together, organizing the preparation process, and allowing more family members to get involved in the cooking process. The goal of this app is to get more family members involved in preparing group meals in order to relieve the stress and workload of others and be able to enjoy quality time enjoying their meal together.
THE PROBLEM
To increase Hello Fresh usage among families by encouraging more members of the family to be involved in the cooking process.
Hello Fresh’s key challenge: driving loyal service engagement with families of 3 or more. When approaching this problem I want to start by researching the modern family dynamic to identify their wants and needs when approaching meal times so I could best help my client accomplish their goals.
I decided to begin by researching why family dinner is so important and identifying the daily routine of a potential Hello Fresh user preparing a meal for their family.
Project Outline
Getting Organized
Includes check-ins throughout the timeline reinforced through various channels
Review Brief and Client Expectations
Establish Project Frameworks
Analyze Data and Pinpoint Design Goals
Prototype, Feedback, and User Flows
Refine Design and Test
GOAL!
Design Research
Qualitative Usability Testing
Initial Research and Planning
What is a modern family?
Working Parents
Single Parents
Declining Marriage Rates
Kids Later in Life
Shift in Gender Roles
The simplest starting point was to collect quantitative research to organize user interviews and surveys around. This allowed me to get an idea of the problems before hearing people experiences and understand the extent of what I should narrow my focus on.
Organizing User Data
Analyzing qualitative data allowed me to start to identify common themes and problems relevant to the design challenge
Clear trends began to emerge when we synthesized the data from our survey responses. I started noticing a common theme that many families don’t cook together because of how hectic it can get in the kitchen. many families are also very busy with their own schedules with work and school and it makes it difficult to come together.
I also learned that people rely heavily on technology to stay connected to one another and it is simply a new way of life that cant be avoided to it must be embraced to used to help bring people together in person.
34
In Person User Interviews
>3x
Expected Survey Responses
31
Full Survey Completions
Common Themes
Time and Energy
Preparation and Cleaning
Busy/ Conflicting Schedules
Planning Meals
Dr. Katja Rowell
Family Doctor, Author
“Our society puts far too much on mothers’ shoulders while offering little support. The pressure to do family dinners ‘right’ can feel defeating and can even make families less likely to eat together.”
Based off my research I noticed a common theme of the cooking and cleaning responsibilities falling on one person, usually the mother. Therefore when that one person cant do it, it doesn’t it done. This has proven to be highly unrealistic in the modern family.
Project Goals
.01
Encourage all family members to take on responsibility at home
.02
Promote quality time spent between family members
Simplify cooking so we can spend more time eating!
.03
Create a flexible experience for realistic modern lifestyles
Problems
Different schedules not lining up
Small Kitchen Space for more than one person cooking
Not knowing what to cook
Designing the Solution
Concept
An App that divides up the steps needed to prepare and cook a meal to different family members.
This would allow family members to complete their part of the meal prep on their own time, making cooking an easier more interactive task, and allow each family member to share the responsibilities in their home.
Early Sketches
I created multiple versions of the Meal Mates app and recipe detail views so I could test ideas around the ways family members might engage with each other and manage their progress through the app. I also created screen flows for family progress tracking and conceptualized a way for individuals to track where their families are in their progress.
Choosing Hello Fresh meals and viewing ingredients and instructions.
Interacting with family members integrating task management features.
Setting up user friendly to-do list and easy to follow cooking directions.
I was able to observe members of my previous test group interacting with different prototypes of the app and modify the wireframe design based on the feed back I was given. Based off this data I learned that people want lots of visuals to guide them along their cooking process. I also noticed people like easy to follow directions and task management.
Mapping out different wireframe pathways and possible screen layouts.
Personal profile customization that allows you to view upcoming meals and choose who you are cooking with.
Rough initial variations mapping out the user flows.
UI Design
Branding
Personalization
Imagery
Calendar Planning
Task Management
Browse the hello fresh meals you already own to decide what to cook with your family
Digital recipe browsing takes allows you to plan your meals and takes the question out of deciding what to make.
View Meal Details
Adjusting the serving by how many people will be eating divides up the tasks required equally.
Easily plan meals with your whole family despite their busy schedules
Plan family dinner around your schedule by inviting and accepting mean invitations
Home Screen
To-Do List Helps Keep Track of You and Your Family’s Tasks
View all family members tasks to keep track of whose doing what to keep each other accountable. Quickly identify roles with profile pictures
Finish your tasks on time based on your schedule and avoid over crowding the kitchen with too many people cooking.
Treating meal prep like a virtual planner
Using color to signify important information like when a meal has been completed.
Home Screen
User Feedback
“I really appreciate how easy to follow the platform is. I never have time to cook full meals by myself by the time I get home from work and I could see my kids and I having a lot of fun with this.”
Joseph Klimt, 49 Single dad of 2 teenagers
“This would be so cool for our family. We are always so busy that we always end up making our own mini meals for ourselves and barley talking but this looks so easy. I like how you can track what everyone is doing .”
Kailey Chiu, 17 Highschool Student living with her brother, sister, and mom
