PANTRY MOBILE APP
This project is one of many products from my experience at Forge's three-week, full-time UX training program, Launch. Working in designer groups, we tackled various design challenges and presented our work to panels of other UX designers. I contributed significantly to the interviewing, ideation, and design portions.
Cooking regular, fresh meals for the family isn't simple.
With the already incredibly busy job of being a parent, cooking for the family can feel insurmountable. Parents have to make sure to buy the ingredients they need in time to use them, make use of them before they expire, and make sure they make something of the right quantity and content that works for the whole family. This is made even more difficult if the parents wish to keep the recipes fresh and avoid cooking the same couple of dishes each night. With Pantry, a mobile user experience conceptualized by teammates Tina Chen, Isaac Leifert, and I, users could balance all of these tasks in one place.
We got to know parents who do this every day.
To gain more insight into how people cook and the current processes that work and that don’t, we conducted a series of directed interviews, non-directed interviews, and gathered survey data from parents who cook. Some examples of questions we asked throughout our research are:
How much free time do you have to cook?
What's your daily cooking routine?
How do you usually shop for ingredients, and how often?
Throughout all of the research, we uncovered key insights, some important ones being:
48% would only cook one meal a day.
56% indicated that they only have 0–1 hours to cook per day.
80% of respondents search for recipes by cooking time.
One parent also noted:
"Balancing varying preferences within the family while keeping recipes fresh is tough. Not to mention also needing to use ingredients I already have while they’re still fresh."
How much free time do you have to cook?
What's your daily cooking routine?
How do you usually shop for ingredients, and how often?
Throughout all of the research, we uncovered key insights, some important ones being:
48% would only cook one meal a day.
56% indicated that they only have 0–1 hours to cook per day.
80% of respondents search for recipes by cooking time.
One parent also noted:
"Balancing varying preferences within the family while keeping recipes fresh is tough. Not to mention also needing to use ingredients I already have while they’re still fresh."
There's not a lot of time to cook fresh meals.
In order to design a solution that touches on our users' most pressing frustrations, we mapped out their emotional journey throughout the cooking process from planning to execution, making note of pain points and potential solutions.
We hoped the Pantry app would help them find suitable recipes to make much quicker, use their ingredients more efficiently, and allow them to allocate more time to other aspects of their lives.
We hoped the Pantry app would help them find suitable recipes to make much quicker, use their ingredients more efficiently, and allow them to allocate more time to other aspects of their lives.
Pantry is for the spread-too-thin parent.
The primary user persona we used to craft our design solutions, Stacy, is shown to the left. We conceptualized her by touching on the themes consistent throughout our user research, such as lack of time, varied family food preferences, and trouble keeping a stock of fresh ingredients. Stacy is the prime example of a user who would benefit the most from our solution.
A look and feel of freshness, balance, and modernity.
Starting with the app's brand kit, we aimed to remind users of fresh, ripe food with our bright tomato logo and rich colors. Our brand colors are tertiary, which shows the fun and creativity that comes with combining individual ingredients into a delicious dish. Pantry is meant to be a modern solution for cooking fresh meals efficiently, which a color scheme filled with vivid, balanced colors creates.
Our choice of Capriola and Carme for our typography gives the app a playful feel. Parents expressed stress when speaking about cooking, so a touch a fun was due here.
Our choice of Capriola and Carme for our typography gives the app a playful feel. Parents expressed stress when speaking about cooking, so a touch a fun was due here.
Personalized recipe discovery.
The user will enter their specific preferences when loading the app, such as how many people they cook for, how long they prefer to cook per day, any dietary restrictions, etc. Therefore, the user will see recipes that work for them right off the bat.
Once they’re thrown into that first screen with recommended recipes based on their preferences, they can further filter the results by type of food, restrictions, and more. This helps parents sift through the huge variety of recipes out there, and save time by hiding recipes that they wouldn’t make.
Once they’re thrown into that first screen with recommended recipes based on their preferences, they can further filter the results by type of food, restrictions, and more. This helps parents sift through the huge variety of recipes out there, and save time by hiding recipes that they wouldn’t make.
Ingredient tracking.
With Pantry’s appropriate digital pantry, the user can view all of the ingredients at their disposal all in one place. With the ability to sort their pantry by expiration date, date added, and type of ingredient, parents can get a sense of what they can cook and what they need to buy at a glance.
A common use case would be a parent sorting their pantry by expiration date in order to view the ingredients expiring first, so they can prioritize cooking with those to avoid throwing them away. The ingredients are color-coded as high priority, medium priority, and low priority when sorted by expiration date, so the user does not have to interpret specific numbers. The user can also customize what each color means to them personally.
A common use case would be a parent sorting their pantry by expiration date in order to view the ingredients expiring first, so they can prioritize cooking with those to avoid throwing them away. The ingredients are color-coded as high priority, medium priority, and low priority when sorted by expiration date, so the user does not have to interpret specific numbers. The user can also customize what each color means to them personally.
Receipt scanner.
Worried that updating ingredients in the pantry could get tedious? So were we. In a second iteration of our design, we came up with a built-in receipt scanner, where the user can update their digital pantry with up-to-date ingredients in just a few clicks. It will automatically record the item name, purchase date, purchase location, and more. With this information, the app will be able to estimate the expiry date for each item automatically without any extra work on the user’s part.
What if the scanner misinterprets the receipt? No problem. The user can review the scan and edit/add items to ensure it’s accurate every time.
What if the scanner misinterprets the receipt? No problem. The user can review the scan and edit/add items to ensure it’s accurate every time.
Smart cooking.
It can take a lot of time to take inventory of current ingredients and figure out what needs to be purchased when cooking something new. Once the user decides to cook a recipe they find on the app, they can check if they have the ingredients before they start. If the app does not detect the right ingredients in the user’s digital pantry, they can add each one to their shopping list in one click.
The user can then select the appropriate serving size to automatically adjust the instructions to serve the number of people the user is cooking for. While cooking, the user can enjoy both written, step-by-step instructions and video tutorials in order to suit many learning styles and skill levels.
A worthy extension would be to turn the share button in the top right corner into a means of connecting the shopping list to apps like Instacart, so the user doesn’t even need to go to the grocery store to grab the ingredients.
The user can then select the appropriate serving size to automatically adjust the instructions to serve the number of people the user is cooking for. While cooking, the user can enjoy both written, step-by-step instructions and video tutorials in order to suit many learning styles and skill levels.
A worthy extension would be to turn the share button in the top right corner into a means of connecting the shopping list to apps like Instacart, so the user doesn’t even need to go to the grocery store to grab the ingredients.
Usability testing.
When initially testing Pantry, we asked users to perform a few key tasks and observed their actions. We had users go through the onboarding process, set a filter on the recipes, scan a receipt into their pantry, and browse their pantry while verbally interpreting what they saw.
Many users stumbled trying to find the ‘skip’ button in onboarding, lost track of what filter they applied to the recipe results, and didn’t always understand what the color-coding meant when sorting the pantry by expiration date.
This caused us to move the ‘skip’ button down below the other buttons in onboarding, add a tag showing what filters have been applied to the top of the recipe discovery page, and add a key to explain the expiration date colors.
Many users stumbled trying to find the ‘skip’ button in onboarding, lost track of what filter they applied to the recipe results, and didn’t always understand what the color-coding meant when sorting the pantry by expiration date.
This caused us to move the ‘skip’ button down below the other buttons in onboarding, add a tag showing what filters have been applied to the top of the recipe discovery page, and add a key to explain the expiration date colors.
Live prototype in action.
What our supervisors think.
But how did we do? Take a look at some of the feedback from the experts.
More importantly, what parents think.
Pantry wouldn't just benefit parents.
Making the cooking process more efficient from start to finish would be great for anyone who would benefit from more time in their day, such as college students, any adult working long hours, beginner cooks, and more.
Not only does Pantry help reduce food waste by helping users cook with what they have before it goes bad, but it reduces users’ time wasted on mundane tasks, like staring at the fridge trying to figure out what to make that night. This leaves more time to spend on the things that really matter.
Not only does Pantry help reduce food waste by helping users cook with what they have before it goes bad, but it reduces users’ time wasted on mundane tasks, like staring at the fridge trying to figure out what to make that night. This leaves more time to spend on the things that really matter.
This project was also published in Bootcamp, a Medium publication affiliated with UX Collective, aiming to amplify the most influential case studies.
Why stop there?
Next: Making Spotify accessible for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.