Chef Lachelle
Designing a recipe app from scratch for a local chef
My role: Director of research and synthesis, designer of navigation, “Dashboard”, and “Favorites” pages
Collaboration: Project management, client handoff package, various deliverables
Tools:
Figma
Zoom
Whiteboard & sticky notes
Sketchbook & pencil
Adobe Photoshop
Methods:
Kanban board
Competitive audit
User Journey Map
Directed Storytelling
Affinity Diagramming
Usability Testing (Think Aloud)
Client
Chef Lachelle Cunningham is a Minneapolis-based chef who is known for her vibrant energy, cooking globally-inspired comfort food, and for her community involvement. Since 2012, she has started a catering business (Chelle’s Kitchen), helped found a restaurant as an executive chef (Breaking Bread Cafe), and started Healthy Roots Institute. Through the Institute, she curates cooking workshops and retreats, and teaches culinary arts and food business classes. Chef Lachelle believes in food as medicine, and in demystifying cooking for people of all skill levels.
The Problem
Users, particularly in the Twin Cities community, lack a specialized recipe app that encompasses Chef Lachelle Cunningham's unique culinary expertise, adventurous cooking style, and passion for globally-inspired comfort food. Users want to access Chef Lachelle's self-branded digital recipe book, so that they can enhance their culinary skills and engage with a vibrant virtual community centered around healthy, tasty, and soul-nourishing food.
The Solution
The project focused on designing a recipe app that showcases Chef Lachelle Cunningham's expertise, unique culinary approach, and personality/brand. This being the first stage of the app design, we focused on research to gain insights about primary and secondary users, as well as designing key features including recipe catalog, navigation, educational content, community engagement, account creation, and personalization.
What Surprised Me
One thing that surprised me was discovering in research the extent to which people are emotionally connected to food. I was nearly moved to tears more than once when I was interviewing users and learning about their favorite cooking memories and what motivates them to cook. It seemed like for most, food was a symbol of family and love, deeply rooted in the past and growing toward the future.
The Users
The primary user group includes home cooks of a variety of skill levels, who want to improve their cooking skills so that they can connect with and care for their loved ones and community. They also want a balanced and flavorful diet, and want to achieve this by cooking their food themselves.
The Process
User Research
Food is Family, Love, Medicine
For the most part I was in charge of directing research for this project. I decided to use the directed storytelling method for the first round of research so that we could learn more about our users, their past experiences, and their goals. I also included some survey-like questions in the script so that we could gauge interest in certain features, and the app in general.
I wrote the script, scheduled the sessions, conducted 3 out of 4 of the sessions, and synthesized the findings.
I found that the users deeply valued home-cooked food as a means of showing love and care to loved ones. Not only that, but they deeply associated certain foods and food traditions with family members, and many mentioned that food traditions get passed down through generations.
Directed Storytelling User Interview
View user research findings.
User Story: As a home cook, I want to be able to easily follow and cook Chef Lachelle’s recipes so that I can improve my skills, and connect with and care for my loved ones and community.
Some other early research that was conducted by the rest of my team included a user journey map and a competitive audit.
“For Thanksgiving my grandma always made watergate salad.. When she got older she needed help making it, so my sister and I would help her make it. She just passed away this year and we just made it for Thanksgiving and it was just a nice memory, to think of her”
Early Designs
Wireframing as a Team
While I had been absorbed in research, other team members had been collecting design components and building information architecture. Because of this I was able to jump into wireframing, and be mostly consistent between. Each team member was responsible for a key screen flow, and I was responsible for designing the Favorites page and the Dashboard page.
Prioritized features included:
- Recipe catalog and navigation
- Virtual cooking classes
- Personalization (based on dietary preferences, skill level, and/or favorite cuisines)
- Engagement / educational content
- Subscription Model
First Sketches
My Early Wireframes
There was some disagreement in my team around whether we should have a dashboard at all, or just have the Recipes page be the landing page. On the one hand, we knew that app landing pages often take you to the most visited page, in this case Recipes. However, after conducting some additional research into competitor recipe apps, we found that many use a dashboard. The flexibility of the dashboard in this case is particularly useful because it gives our client’s personality a place to shine through, and provides space for cross promotion of her other initiatives. Additionally, the dashboard increases potential for user engagement by displaying unique content, like seasonal or recently viewed recipes.
We knew we were making some assumptions, but also knew that they could be tested during usability testing.
Research-Informed Improvements
One member of my team wrote the script for this round of research, while I conducted half of the tests. While there was mixed feedback on priority of certain categories within the app, there were some solid usability findings that helped us improve the prototype.
Actionable Insights:
Some users want to know whether or not they are signing up for emails when making an account
Most users did not feel that Chef Lachelle’s personality was conveyed well in the app
Some users want to be able to keep the screen from locking while using a recipe
Some users expressed a desire for additional details regarding courses, such as location and prices
Some users wanted more details about the chef, possibly in a dedicated section
Final Iterations
Insightful Actions:
We added an option to opt in/out of receiving emails during sign up flow
We added pictures of Chef Lachelle and a quote to convey personality
We made note for developers of the needed ability to keep the screen unlocked while viewing recipes
How I grew
Team & Project Management: Prior to this project, I had never officially worked on a team without a defined leader. Often when I find myself in this situation, I tend to step into a leadership position if no one else is. I learned to develop strategies to best align the team based on the unique needs and communication styles of individuals on my team.
The tools I implemented in meetings were:
Define meeting start and end times
Define an agenda for meetings and document (whiteboard or shared document)
Document key takeaways
Voice any assumptions that are being made
Delegate tasks and document
Redirect to stay on topic as needed
I found that doing this helped my team stay focused and on the same page. Because of this we became much more efficient and were able to prioritize important conversations correctly.