3 MINUTE READ

Brief

Discover

The challenge for this sprint, was to identify something that my user Holly struggles with, and design a mobile app that helps her with the issue. In this instance,
I focused on Holly’s dislike of cooking.

GAINING INSIGHT INTO THE PROBLEM

User interview

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After interviewing Holly about cooking, I distilled her pain points into three key problems.

1. She’s always confused about the process to follow when cooking.

2. She hates choosing a recipe.

3. She feels overwhelmed by the whole process, from choosing a recipe to buying ingredients and cooking the dish.

DEFINING THE FOCUS GOING FORWARD

Problem statement

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From these pain points, I created a problem statement:

Holly needs a way to access (1) step by step cooking recipes that are (2) provided for her, because she is (3) overwhelmed by choices she’s faced with, and the complexity of timings and stages during cooking.

EMPATHISING WITH THE USER

User experience map

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In order to empathise further with Holly, I created a user experience map to show her journey from deciding to cook, through to serving the food to a friend/partner, and how each stage made her feel.

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I needed to find a solution that raised her mood on each end of the map, so she could enjoy the experience of cooking and start to do it more often.

Define

VISUALISING HOW MY APP COULD HELP

Storyboard and outcome statement

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I created a visual storyboard to highlight the way in which an app could help Holly through her journey. From this, an outcome statement was developed, to help guide some of the decisions for the app going forward.

• Situation (1) Holly is a young woman living in London, and enjoys socialising with her friends and partner.

• Problem (2) Holly rarely cooks because she finds it overwhelming to choose a recipe and follow lots of complicated steps and timings.

• Solution (3) She uses a mobile app that instantly suggests a recipe for her, and gives her a simple step by step guide to cook by.

• Outcome (4) She feels confident and calm and is able to cook for her friends and partner without being overwhelmed.

Develop

DESIGNING THE APP IN MORE DETAIL

Creating the user journey

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The next stage was to create a user journey, that detailed how the app can help Holly in the bigger context of her journey.

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I began with the user flow - showing the path she follows from deciding to cook, through the use of the app, to serving the food.

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I then developed some simple wireframes to add to this journey. They detailed the key path Holly would take through the app. The task analysis was added under these, to show the breakdown of tasks she needed to complete when interacting with the app.

QUICK WAY OF TESTING THE USERS' JOURNEY THROUGH
THE APP

Paper Prototyping

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Next, it was important that I created paper prototypes that could quickly and easily be tested on different users. This was helpful in ironing out any immediate issues faced by the user when working through Holly's journey.

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I tested three users, giving them three simple tasks to work through in order. 

MAKING CHANGES BASED ON USER FEEDBACK

Iterations

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I made various changes based on the patterns, issues and opinions that the users displayed during testing.
Some examples include:

Users expected the refresh button to refresh the recipe, rather than take them back to the homepage, so I created a second recipe to add into the journey.

Users tried to click on the Tips, but they aren't buttons. This was ironed out in later stages.

Deliver

CREATING A CLICKABLE PAPER PROTOTYPE TO TEST USERS INTERACTIONS ON SCREEN

Clickable paper prototype

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After refining my wireframes, I then proceeded to create a clickable paper prototype for my app. This would help me to test Holly’s journey through the app further, and iron out any issues related to the completion of the tasks set for her.

Insights

As this was my first experience of a UX sprint, there were many opportunities for learning that were really useful for me. 

• Experiencing user testing for the first time. Refining my ability to balance asking questions, listening and recording the right information all at the same time.

• Learning not to follow assumptions. There were various decisions that I made in the early stages based on assumptions. When I realised this I had to remove them from the designs, which was frustrating. Learning to keep the user in mind constantly, and develop each stage from findings alone was really interesting for me.

• Following this process was really rewarding. As a graphic designer I’ve learned to skip a lot of the initial stages in this process, and then make complex decisions based on little research. This sprint taught me the value of research and the ability to distil findings in order to proceed to the next step. This was a really enjoyable process that I’m excited to learn more about!