Exchange a Meal

The Idea

In this UX design project we were tasked with helping users connect with local culinary artists, fellow busy people, or people with similar diets. Users can sign up to share or exchange meals. Help users save money, cut down on waste and connect with each other through food.

Working With a Team

From the start working with a team was an exciting prospect for me. Growing up playing team sports as well as having been a part of different film sets, working in a team environment is always fun. In our team, we had a wonderful balance due to the age differences we had between team members. This helped bring the different perspectives for the foundation of how we would build the app.

The Problem

The problem we found is people got tired of cooking every night of the week, they wanted to have new recipes, and they wanted to be able to be more involved in the community. Finding a way to do this while trying to maintain saftey was another issue the user was concerned with. On top of all that most people had never heard of a meal exchange program.Talking to people I knew they had an idea of what the concept meant, most likened it to a potluck dinner. When searching the internet, the closest thing I found was a college meal exchange in Canada. The college students to set up a garden on campus and sell what they grew in one of the school cafeterias. The issue was not having a real base on where to start because there was nothing out there like what we were trying to build.

Research

We began our research with a simple google search, we did this to help find any reference points. What I found most challenging was having nothing out there that was comparable. With that in mind we built our survey based off of things we believed to be important with the app we had in mind.

We came up with twelve survey questions we believed would help us when it came time to build our user story map, build our persona, and site map.

Once we had our survey questions we posted on social media. This was particular tough for me because I have no social media. Luckily for me the great team I was able to work with had all the cool social media. I was able to post to Slack to get it out there and do my part.

We got twenty-two responses from the survey. If there is on continuing theme that our team found out was no one seems to have heard of a meal exchange program. This was evident by our very first survey question and the response we received.

No one had heard of a meal exchange program. To put it another way we couldn’t go anywhere but up in what we were trying to build. This gave us a lot room when it came to thinking about how we want the app to look like and what we wanted to be inside the app.

Two other things that came to our attention with the survey was what kept people from preparing meals. It would be very tough to exchange meals with someone who wasn’t going to cook. Another thing we found to be a concern was who would be the people you’d be exchanging with and not trusting them with what you would be eating. These last two questions would be the toughest to fix.

Persona

When we got started building our persona, we quickly realized we were going to be working with someone who was not a culinary artists but a normal everyday person. Based on our survey answers we thought this would be the most viable person to build the app for, mostly because during our research phase these were the type of people who had responded to our survey.

User Story Map

During our discussion we kept realizing how many different things we could do we this app and yet we had to figure out what our MVP was going to be. This was a much more difficult task than I original thought it would be, because I enjoy thinking of the bigger picture. I will say it was fun talking with the team I was working with and you’ll be able to see that when you see our story map.

We did have a lot of fun. Of the things I learned during this process is how new ideas will overtake the old ones and how valuable that can be to the ending product. Using miro, streamed lined our entire story map. We could all be using it at the same time and discussing ideas that could be instantly put down on the story map.

Site Map

Using a site map allowed me to learn how to really see the user flow experience. I had had the images in my head of how I wanted things to go but creating the site map, I began to see it visually for the first time. The one thing we did as team was to also think about how a website for the same idea would begin to work. We created a small outline of the website on our site map as well.

I think we could have flushed out our site map a bit more by going deeper into the details of what the app would intel, however the parts we did have gave us a great springboard to getting wire framing started. Looking back out the site map now it’s crazy to think that we from what you see above to what we eventually came up with.

Ahhh, Wire Framing

This is when it really began to feel and think we were actually creating something. I think the thing I learned most from this portion of the project was how different we all thought certain parts of the app should look. Our team was amazing though at being able to communicate what we liked and didn’t like about each other’s wire frames. A piece feedback I received was abut my font, it was a tide much for the sizing of the boxes. This gave us the freedom to share, when you knew the other people were going to give you feedback that was only going to enhance the experience of the user in the end.

These are a couple of the original wire frames we had come up with. My responsibility was to come up with the preferences which are in the bottom right part of in the wire frames above. The process I used was simply to look at preference pages from other apps and mold it to the types of preferences we wanted our user to be able chose. As we continued to work through our build, we all discussed what should change and what should be added. All of our wire frames grew as we received feedback from one another.

Changing Course

After stepping away from the app for a couple of days I began to think about one of the original premises of the app, which was to allow culinary artists to exchange meals. As I let this idea marinade I realized I wanted this to be the change I wanted to make to the app. When I first thought about the time it would take, I started to procrastinate as any good creative person would. At first it seemed like a daunting task because it was going to require me to complete a whole new section of the app without much research or feedback from the team I had been working with. After about a week of thinking, sketching, and watching a lot of movies, I began to formulate the new section of the app.

New Idea

I started thinking about how someone like our persona would engage with culinary artists, as well as those in her own community. This is not an idea that is my own by in measure it is something we as a team had discussed and I wanted to explore more deeply. With that foundation I came up with this premise. Someone would be able to locate culinary schools in their area that would be willing to participate in exchanging meals with community members.

The thinking behind this was to allow these culinary artists to get feedback on their own meals while being able to test taste home cooked meals, being able to identify what the person used and how they could better their recipes. In my mind it would give everyone the opportunity to share what they make as well as create community engagement. This would not keep anyone from exchanging a meal with community members, that portion is still a big part of the app. These are all the different ways and groups I thought of with whom someone could exchange a meal with through the app. This the wire frame for the selection of who you would exchange with.

Along the way I decided to add several other choices for who someone could exchange meal. Below are all the areas of the exchange a meal app. For my purposes I focused on the one we had done as a team which was local, the other was the culinary schools.

Visual Design and Feedback/Advice

After completing my new wire frames, I began to receive feedback from user testing as well as from people within the UX and graphic design industry. The one thing people said is how they liked the original teal blue font I was using but there were times when it was tough to read. That was one of the first changes I made as to change to a simple black and white for clarity and easy contrast.

I really wanted to people to navigate the culinary page to see if it had good visual design as well as to see if they could understand the process behind the idea. Another feedback I received was text size. Granted the user testing I was able to do was with people in a demographic that has tough time within text that isn’t in seventy-two font size. Yes, I user tested senior citizens. The main reason I wanted to use them as my testers was, I thought if they could navigate the app then most others wouldn’t have an issue. One of the main reasons I wanted to test senior citizens was many don’t want or can’t cook as many meals as they once they did, the app would allow them to get meals for the week without having to cook everyday.

I took their feedback and increased the text size but not to seventy-two. I too found it to be to small once I went back to look at the wire frames on my phone. Getting advice and feedback from a visual design from a friend who is a graphic designer was extremely helpful. He noted my margins needed to be fixed, as well as not disconnecting the pictures and recipes from one another. He said it looked as if somethings were off floating by themselves.

Another thing that was pointed out by everyone was the navigation bar. I had messed around with not having one or trying different places for navigation and it just didn’t work. There was no consistency from one page to the next and that would upset the flow for the users’ experience. Having these things pointed out made a drastic difference in how the visual and user experience worked with in the app.

Final Thoughts

What would be considered the final draft is hardly the final look I was hoping for in the design of the app. I shouldn’t say the look, but I don’t think I was able to complete the idea fully. I think for the complete creation of this app would take months and lots of partnerships with different parts of the food industry as well as the global community.

I believe the foundation that was laid from the start with the team helped me in the final product and final usability of the app. There’s little doubt in my mind about the influence that working with those on the had on the ability for me to create the app.

For me I would want to go back and do a much larger more varied group of usability testing. I think that would change certain flows about the app. as well as change parts of the layout. I think I grew a lot from where I started with my original wire frames to where I ended. One thing I want to continue to work on is the consistency of navigating within the app. I think that will come in time with more awareness of what is needed.

Lastly, I would say that overall not having many reference points for a meal exchange program, we did a great job of creating something that would be a real possibility to open people’s eyes to at least the possibility of exchanging meals with others and creating a community feel around food.