Users need a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to purchase and cook preplanned meals.
Young adults and parents of small families have increasingly looked for and tested meal planning and meal kit services such as Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and Home Chef. These users are looking for unique dining experiences without a large time or financial investment.
Despite the attraction, these services have very low retention rates; with recent studies putting it around 12%.
I set out to understand why users discontinued these services and craft a new solution.
User Interviews
Competitive Analysis
Market Research
Retention rates of mealkit services aren’t consistent because users only love the convenience until they feel it becomes too expensive.
Environmentally conscious users have reservations about the packaging and shipping of produce as delivery of dinners doesn’t reduce trips to the grocery store.
Users have reused recipes by purchasing the necessary items from their grocer at a significantly reduced cost while retaining the flavor profile.
Users enjoyed recipes that were simple and had good variety. They also enjoyed cooking with reduced food waste.
A cost-effective subscription with unique recipes that orders the necessary ingredients for pick-up from the user’s store of choice to reduce shopping time while optimizing the necessity of going to the store.
An application that provides weekly recipes, produces a grocery list based on the user’s preferred grocer, and transfers the list to the grocer for pick-up.
Weekly recipes that can be swapped by interest, searched for, or favorited.
Algorithm designed to give users more of what they want while also introducing them to new things.
Enjoyable, digital cooking instructions that are easy to follow during the commotion of cooking a meal.
Grocery lists that are premade based on weekly recipes with considerations made for purchasing larger quantities while reducing food waste.
Grocery lists that can be altered to the user’s desires with options such as: organic, budget-friendly, vegetarian, etc.
Grocery lists automatically transferred to online ordering at user’s preferred grocer.
The initial concept quickly fell apart in the first stages of wireframing due to usability and user flow issues. This concept focused on the Home page being the hub for several features. This made the other pages more supportive instead of having a clear function.
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Concept two restructured the content by spreading the features across more pages. This improved the user flow for scheduling new menus, simplified the actions on the home page, and made the preferences more understandably discoverable. The overall result was increased usability through an improved navigation.
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Each page was sketched and designed in low and mid-fidelity wireframes. Throughout the early stages of the process multiple iterations were produced to develop and improve the final concept.
The final product essentially comes down to a meal assistant. A little wordplay and the Kitchand brand was created.
Visually, the goal was to stand out in the overly-green mealkit market. I designed a soft color palette that exemplified relaxation, health, and joy. These ideals blend together seamlessly through the use of gradients in the product and marketing. Finally, a simple, personable wordmark was created.
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The home page was crafted as a simple menu that will lead daily users into the meal of the day and the subsequent instructions. If the suggested meal of the day doesn’t feel quite right, users will be able to search through the other remaining meals in the pantry. The suggested meal will then be cycled back into the rotation.
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Confirming and customizing the upcoming week’s menu is a simple three-step process. Users will start by checking the calendar for the pickup date. They’ll then view their upcoming meals and makes any changes if the meals aren’t to their liking. The last step is to view and confirm the grocery list. Users can choose what store they’d like to order from and the quality of the items using settings such as: Standard, Organic, and Budget.
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If users are wanting to have more control of what meals are added to their menus they can search for recipes and cuisines on the Recipes page. They’ll be able to view ingredients, nutritional facts, and other user’s ratings. If they discover a recipe they’d like to try they can add it to their rotation, and it will show up in their next menu.
A key feature of the product is the cooking instructions flow. The interface of this flow is optimized to make following instructions during the hectic experience of cooking as easy as possible on a digital device.
All recipes will give a quick look at important info, and a full list of ingredients. The quick look will specifically address allergy and nutritional preferences that have previously been set.
