UX FEST 2024

UX FEST 2024

✳ IN THIS PROJECT I WAS CHALLENGED TO

make culinary exploration more accessible to college students navigating the complexities of cooking meals for themselves 

TIMELINE
24 hours

SOFTWARE
Figma

ROLE
UXR, UX Design

TEAM
Kira Sugihara
Jamila Sims
Kaila Aquino

OVERVIEW


PROBLEM STATEMENT

TARGET USERS

“a page with easy to make recipes and what exact ingredients you need, possibly a page that will auto-populate suggested grocery lists based on recipes you want to cook/how often you are cooking/how often you go to the grocery store/etc.”

“Sorting recipes by main ingredient (I.e. chicken, ground beef, potatoes, etc)”

Create a mobile or web prototype that aims to address food insecurity, health + dietary considerations, and/or culinary exploration. In addition, your app/website must incorporate an AI-driven feature


QUANTATIVE RESEARCH

We decided our target users were young adults, specifically college students, that find it challenging to planning and cooking meals for themselves.

How do students feel about cooking for themselves?

We conducted 62 user surveys focusing on the challenges college students face while cooking meals for themselves

Key Takeaways:

80.1% of students find it challenging to find time to cook

62.7% of students find it too much of an effort to cook regularly

39.2% of students don’t know what to cook with what they have

41.9% of students don’t make a grocery list when they shop for groceries

* Created a survey on Google Forms, and sent it out to Cal Poly Students from years 1-4

User Statements:

In the survey, we asked what features they would like to see in a grocery list/recipe app and this is what they wanted:


I competed in UX Fest SLO 2024, a student-run designation where teams are given 24 hours to research, design, and prototype an application to solve a prompted problem. With my team of four other students, we were tasked to

This is the prompt we recieved:

During young adulthood, it's crucial to develop independent living skills, including cooking meals for themselves. However, most college students neglect food-related tasks like creating a grocery list, or finding recipes. Apart from being a vital life skill, cooking can also impact one's health.


How might we make culinary exploration more accessible to college students considering their lack of budget, resources, experience?

OUR CORE NEED

BRAINSTORM + MOODBOARD

IMPACT/EFFORT MATRIX

FEEDBACK + REFINED ITERATIONS

DESIGN SYSTEM

KEY TAKEAWAYS

TASK FLOW


To guide our design decisions, we employed an impact/effort matrix. This involved assessing the potential impact of each feature against the effort required for implementation. By prioritizing impactful changes that were feasible within our resources, we maximized the app's effectiveness while being mindful of our constraints.

adding some personality

To guide our design direction, we created a mood board capturing our visual inspirations, color palettes, and stylistic elements. This served as a visual reference point throughout the design process.




LOW-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

With inspiration in our hearts, we set to sketching out our initial concepts with low-fidelity wireframes.


Throughout our journey, feedback was our guiding light. We had the opportunity to speak with some of the judges for the competition to ask them for feedback and guidance towards our direction. We listened attentively to their insights and observations, using them to refine and iterate upon our designs.


the final look

  • Clean, easily-scannable, sans serif typeface

  • Decided Outfit of headings & Inter for body text

  • Muted blue → calming colors, less stressful experience



FINAL SCREENS

As our ideas began to take shape, we transitioned to crafting mid-fidelity wireframes.


Designing Within a Tight Timeline

One of the prominant lessions I learned was the art of prioritization within a tight timeline. With the limited time available, I quickly realized the importance of identifying and focusing on the most critical features to deliver a compelling user experience. This meant having a strategic approach to design, where we had to make tough decisions about what to prioritize and what to leave out.

Working in a Team

Clear communication and defined roles were essential for ensuring smooth collaboration and efficient progress.

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