Interview Research

We conducted three semi-structured interviews with college students. Our team came up with a standard interview protocol with ten questions that gauged the level of cooking experience participants had and their overall feelings about cooking. We were able to identify insights that narrowed the scope of our project and highlighted users' needs.

Prior to these interviews, our team had only identified our target users - new or somewhat inexperienced cooks as well as some consideration for example potential dietary needs. This informed us about the kinds of questions we asked such as, "What do you look for when looking for a recipe?" and "What kinds of resources did you use to learn to cook?". After the interviews, we gained a better sense of users' pain points which allowed us to create personas.

Insights

1. Fear of failure: The user felt held back from trying new dishes for fear of improperly cooking them which would prevent them from enjoying the meal.

2. Different modes of learning: Sometimes only descriptions of the recipe aren’t enough so the user prefers to watch YouTube videos to follow along visual cues.

3. Convenience is the most important factor: Convenience in the form of quick recipes, accessible ingredients, minimal clean-up, and easy cooking techniques were factors the user prioritized when deciding what to cook.

4. Inexperience: There were many things the user didn’t know how to do such as how to grocery shop, how to cook for themselves, and how to search for new recipes because they didn’t know what they would like.

5. Learning to meal-prep: The user hopes to learn how to meal prep healthy foods so they can take it to work - saving time and money.

Personas

We created two user personas that captured common behaviors and attitudes college students had about cooking which were largely derived from our user interview findings. Through affinity diagramming, we discovered different motivations and challenges participants had. We kept these users in mind when deciding what features to include in the Chefy app.

Takeaways

1. Users with more cooking experience want to step outside their comfort zone and try new recipes from different cuisines.

2. College students have limited access to time, money, and kitchen equipment.

User Journey Map

Our user journey map explores one of our persona's actions and thought processes during various cooking stages. We also tracked the users' emotions which helped us to identify specific points that could be improved. We used the user journey map to gather an understanding for how our users currently feel while cooking in order to positively affect the cooking experience with our Chefy app.

Takeaways

1. Users have high levels of anxiety when deciding what to cook.

2. Users get frustrated by how little time they have to cook more creative meals.

3. Users wishes they were better at meal prepping.

4. Users dislike the amount of time and energy it takes to cook and then clean up after their meal.