UX Designer
Chef
Brief
Design and create an experience that grocery stores could use to support the engagement and delight of grocery shopping, while encouraging in store shopping.
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Personal Contributions
In this project, I conducted interviews, analyzed data, created sketches, and collaborated on enhancing the app's user experience. My efforts focused on improving engagement and delight in grocery shopping, ensuring the final product was intuitive and user-friendly.
Overview
COVID-19 shifted grocery shopping habits, with many preferring online shopping and delivery or pickup services. While convenient, this reduces in-store foot traffic, negatively impacting grocery stores. This project explores ways to re-engage shoppers and make in-store shopping more appealing and enjoyable.
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Brainstorming
My team started by brainstorming ideas that we thought would bring people in store. From there we all interviewed people to figured out what people like and dislike while grocery shopping.
Interviews
After conducting a few interviews, we found that people enjoy shopping online because of its convenience and efficacy. We also found that some shoppers prefer in-store shopping due to the flexibility of choice and the sense of control. We also found that many inexperienced shoppers find in-store shopping intimidating, often causing them to buy a lot of the same items and refusing to branch out to new ingredients.
Common responses from interviewees:
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Enjoy efficacy and efficiency
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Prefer shopping with lists
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Prefer to see & pick out their own produce
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Prefer to compare prices/brands in person
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Solution
Based on our research and interviews with college students, we chose to focus on grocery shoppers who want to cook or try new foods in a flexible, informed way. Our app enables users to easily explore and save recipes and ingredients, helping them discover new options in-store while learning about ingredients, recipes, and cooking tips.
Considerations: after determining our user group and proposed solution, we brainstormed features and personalization options for our app to address some of their main needs.
Sketches
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Early sketches to brainstorm what features we want to add,
as well as visualization of the user-interface.
Task Flow and Wire Framing
Creating a task flow and wire framing chart helped my team map out the user's journey while using the Kroger Chef app. This helped us ensure our design was seamless and intuitive to our user experience by identifying potential usability issues and provide a framework for testing and refining the app's design.
Our task flow diagram that helped us determine what screens we needed to create for the wireframing and our final prototype.
Further exploration of the app’s user interface through more detailed wireframing.
Evaluation ​
Desk Review
Post-pandemic trends:
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Increase in people trying out new foods or recipes that they see online
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Increase in health consciousness and food transparency that has led to more people cooking at home.
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The graphs shown above shed a light on the positive effect recipe apps will have on the food market, based on data from approved websites such as Verified Market Research and Food Navigator USA.
Research indicates that cooking and grocery shopping remain highly popular in 2023, with continued growth in the use of recipe apps. Projections suggest that the market for these apps will expand by 759 million users. This underscores the ongoing demand for innovative cooking solutions, making the Kroger Chef app a valuable addition to the market.
Final Design
Kroger Chef is an inclusive cooking app that helps inexperienced cooks and recipe explorers. Users can browse a wide variety of recipes, save items to an online cookbook, and easily add ingredients to their shopping list. The app also offers cooking tips, ingredient substitutions, and helpful advice, making it a one-stop shop for all cooking needs.
Final Prototypes
These are some examples of some pages shown on the Kroger Chef app. User can easily personalize their feed and view recipes. While in store they can pull up their checklist to make sure they get all the ingredients needed for the preferred recipe.
Re-Imagined StoryBoard
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Results
- Kroger Chef will help inexperienced cooks and those eager to learn about cooking.
- Unique features like food restrictions and serving size set us apart from competitors.
- Our app fosters confidence in cooking for novices.
- An easy shopping list streamlines recipe experimentation.
- Peer feedback helped pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, enhancing our design.
