Problem

Savr users are struggling to use recipes that involve many steps, and, or, more advanced techniques due to the timing of instructions, order of steps and difficulty learning new techniques in the midst of carrying out the recipe.

How might we make it effortless for users to accurately and easily follow cooking instructions?

Solution

The Savr app is making it easier than ever to follow a recipe while you’re in the kitchen-hands free. With Savr’s new recipe dictation and voice control feature that reads out each step and responds to your voice as you’re moving through the recipe, you’ll never lose track of your steps again, let alone get your phone all dirty.

Uncertain about a particular step or technique in step? Each step is clearly explained with visual examples with additional video instruction available at the tap of a button, making sure that you get each step right the first time and end up with a delicious dish.

Insights from Research

I was provided with user research about how users experience cooking a new recipe on the app in the form of interview quotes and recordings, which helped me better understand the pain points and goals of the user.

Constraints

Going into the project, I had to work with a few existing constraints:

• Recipes are currently written as text, in numbered and ordered steps

• The solution is for the native mobile app

• The goal is to create a better experience when cooking recipes only

Insights from Savr’s Persona

Savr provided me with a persona, Nick, who is a young professional who likes to cook meals 2-3 times a week at home for himself and his girlfriend.

Pains

• He worries if he has completed steps properly in a recipe

• He has trouble anticipating and knowing when to prep for steps

• If he has disappointing results from a recipe, he’s confused as to what went wrong and how to learn from his mistakes

• He’s stressed by constantly referring to his phone for the next technique or step while cooking
  

Goals

• Follow a recipe with ease and confidence to produce a predictable dish

• Enjoy and learn from trying new recipes 

End-to-End Experience Map

With a good grasp of the problems facing the Savr user, I quickly sketched out possible end-to-end solutions for the experience of cooking a recipe.

Solo Lighting Demos

I began the second day carrying out a solo-version of lightning demos, where I looked at how competitors have solved a problem similar to the one I was tasked to solve for Savr.

I looked at the Nike Training app for inspiration cues because of the way that exercise routines share similarities to performing a recipe. On the Nike Training app, exercise routine steps are clearly instructed, making use of audio, visual cues and descriptions, when playing a multi-step routine. I also looked at a recipe website, Spruce Eats, and Wiki How, for examples of how multi-step instructions are more effectively communicated when visual references are provided alongside instructions.

Crazy 8’s

Distilling the inspiration from my lightning demo and end-to-end experience maps, I sketched out 8 possible solutions to my most critical screen: starting a recipe. I chose to begin with this screen because following the steps of a recipe is where my user encounters many pain points.

Solution Sketch

Selecting my strongest solution from my crazy 8’s exercise, I sketched out a solution featuring the critical screen and the screens that come before and after it.

Solution Selection

Reviewing my sketches from the previous day, I decided to move forward with my solution sketch because it involved multi-sensory step-by-step instructions: audio dictation, voice commands, written instructions, and visual step examples, all of which would help the user easily follow a recipe-hands free.

Storyboarding

Expanding upon my solution sketch from the previous day, I sketched out a 13 panel storyboard to use as a lightweight, sketched wireframe, for when I moved to prototype the following day. The storyboard begins with an existing user selecting a recipe to cook and following the recipe through every step.

Act-Five Interviews

With my Figma prototype and VUI audio clips in hand, I was ready to test the prototype on prospective users. Going into testing, I was curious to understand whether users liked the idea of interacting with a VUI while cooking a recipe and if they found the recipe in this format to be intuitive and easy-to-use.

Using the Act-Five Interview technique, I interviewed 5 people who cook at home and frequently use recipes online to cook meals. I gave the participants a scenario-based activity to complete, which was to cook a roast chicken for a dinner party, and they were prompted to talk through how they would use the recipe in their kitchen to make the dish. As the participants went through the recipe steps, I played VUI audio clips for the steps when they gave a voice command.

Findings

Overall, the participants were able to complete the activity given to them. They quickly validated the concept of a VUI for recipe instruction, praising that it was easy to understand the steps, and it would allow for a hands-free cooking experience. However, they did encounter initial confusion to understanding the audio components to the recipe experience and struggled at times to use the timer feature.

Key Findings:

• When asked for microphone permission when starting the recipe, users were initially confused about why the app what asking this

• Learning how to use the VUI was a bit confusing for users to get a hang of initially

• Buttons and labels when steps involved the timer feature were confusing at times

Reflection

The GV design sprint helped me to gain further experience in applying UX methodologies to problem-solving at lightning speed. Being quick on my feet, I approached each day with an open mind, and I was surprised by the range of solutions I generated and the resulting prototype I could get real feedback on by 5 day. Overall, I found my first GV design sprint to be an energizing and a highly valuable process to problem-solving and solution finding. I look forward to going through a design sprint in a team setting in the near future.

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