Homemade By Jane
iOS Cooking App
Homemade by Jane aims to empower users to reclaim their love for food, find balance in their lives, and cultivate a positive and supportive community. It aspires to be a source of inspiration, healing, and self-discovery for those seeking a healthier relationship with food and themselves.
Roles
User Research
UX Design
Visual Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Tools
Figma
Team
Solo Project
The Challenge
Homemade by Jane seeks to create a cooking app that fosters intuitive eating, body positivity, and a supportive community, while providing personalized recipe recommendations, curated recipe exploration, and an engaging user experience. The challenge is to balance essential features, user-friendliness, and a visually appealing interface to deliver a positive and inclusive cooking platform. The target audience includes females aged 20-40 with interests in cooking, baking, and wellness.
Foster a positive community where users can find inspiration, share experiences, and receive support.
Empower users to make food choices based on their own needs and preferences, free from guilt or restrictions by providing options for all users, regardless of their dietary requirements.
Feature personalized profiles, custom recipe database, demo videos, social media integration, community engagement, and educational resources.
Requirements
User Research
User Interviews - Archetypes - Empathy Map - Personas - User Stories
User Interviews
To gain insights into the users' needs, I conducted several interviews within the target audience. I discovered key takeaways that shaped the app's direction.
Users with specific dietary preferences or restrictions struggle to find suitable recipes.
Users find it challenging to navigate and engage with online recipes.
Users desire a sense of connection, engagement, and support from others.
Users who struggle with negative self-talk, body image issues, and disordered eating patterns may feel triggered or unsupported.
Users may have challenges in developing a healthy and balanced relationship with food.
Archetypes
Based on my research, I identified three user archetypes: The Caregiver, The Explorer, and The Innocent.
The Caregiver: The caregiver is motivated by empathy and compassion for others. Altruism is an important aspect of their outlook on life.
The Explorer: The explorer is motivated by adventure, new horizons, the unknown, independence, and self-sufficiency. They look for new experiences and thrive on freedom and autonomy.
The Innocent: The innocent is motivated by wonder, love, and honesty. They are often free from preconceptions and are drawn to wholesomeness.
Empathy Map
I then turned to Figma to create a more in-depth user profile. Through empathy mapping, I understood their thoughts, feelings, and actions regarding cooking and food.
Personas
Let me introduce you to three ideal customers of the app: Emily Wilkins, Ashley Simmons, and Rachel Sanchez.
I focused on Emily, who represents someone who feels overwhelmed by the abundance of cooking information, struggles to balance health and indulgence, and desires a more personalized cooking experience. Emily's optimistic, open-minded, and empathetic personality serves as valuable insights for shaping the app to meet the needs of the target audience.
User Stories
To address the user's needs effectively, I have identified the users main goal and three user stories. By focusing on these areas, I can showcase the app's value in promoting a healthy relationship with food, providing diverse recipes, and delivering a personalized user experience. My User stories are reflective of the important aspects of the app's user requirements.
High Priority User Stories
USER STORY 1: Users need a positive community where they can find inspiration, share experiences, and receive support.
USER STORY 2: Users need to feel empowered to make food choices based on their own needs and preferences, free from guilt or restrictions.
USER STORY 3: Users need to features and content that promote positive self-talk, body positivity, and self-acceptance
Desgin
Opportunities - Inspiration Remix - Four Step Sketch - User Stories - User Flow - Wireframe
Opportunities
Now, let's explore the opportunities that will guide my app's development, ensuring a compelling user experience.
Inspiration Remix
During my research, I found two inspirational design solutions from other companies that I believe I can remix for my app:
1. Instagram’s Social Feed
The user profile and social feed display on Instagram inspired me. I explored incorporating a similar feature in my app, allowing users to build profiles, share content, and receive feedback from the community. This will foster a supportive and interactive environment for my users.
2. Pinterest's "Pin" and "Board"
This system is a valuable design solution I can also incorporate by implementing a similar concept. Users can save recipes or cooking inspiration to different collections or folders for easy access and organization. This will enhance the user experience, making it easier for them to find and try new recipes.
Four- Step Sketch
Using the four-step sketch method, I started by gathering and reviewing key information that I collected through research, and translated it into rough doodles and initial design concepts to visualize the app's layout and features. Through the Crazy 8s method, I explored multiple variations of solutions to various parts of the app, seeking the most effective and innovative ideas. The best of my ideas emerged, and I refined them further, creating more detailed sketches.
The best of my ideas emerged, and I refined them further, creating more detailed sketches.
Emily’s Story
Emily has recently been struggling with negative self-talk and body image issues as she recovers from her eating disorder. She is seeking a supportive and positive environment that promotes a healthy relationship with food. She discovers the Homemade by Jane app through a friend's recommendation and decides to give it a try. Emily is expecting to find nourishing, plant-based recipes, an engaging and user-friendly interface, personalization and recommendations, clear and concise recipe instructions, and a supportive and positive community.
Personalization is Key: Users like Emily highly value personalized recipe recommendations based on their dietary preferences and restrictions. The app's onboarding process plays a crucial role in creating a tailored experience.
Supportive Community Engagement: Emily seeks a supportive and positive community where she can connect with others who share similar interests and challenges. Community features like comments, likes, and sharing recipes foster a sense of belonging and encouragement.
Balancing Health and Indulgence: Our users, including Emily, desire a diverse recipe database that offers both nourishing and indulgent options. Striking a balance between health-conscious recipes and occasional treats is vital to their positive cooking experience.
With Emily's persona in mind, the Homemade By Jane app is designed to be a source of inspiration, healing, and self-discovery for cooking enthusiasts like her. Let's walk through Emily's experience with the Homemade By Jane app:
User Flow
The app's user flow demonstrates a seamless and engaging experience, allowing users to find recipes, engage with a community, and explore educational resources.
Wireframes
Focusing on my user stories and sketches, I designed the wireframes in Figma. At this point, I focused on determining the most important information to include in the app while also creating a clean and simple layout.
Branding
Style Title - Low Fidelity Prototype
Style Title
After a series of iterations for my wireframes, I felt I had a good base for the design and started looking at the theme and assets. From the start, my aim was to simplify the complex transit system. To achieve this, I utilized a minimalistic and bold approach with the typography, color palette, and imagery to create a clean and easy-to-understand layout.
Typography
I chose to use to work with Mada. It’s elegant and clean design ensures clarity and readability for all text within the app, enhancing the user experience. Mada's modern style adds a touch of sophistication to the app, making it visually appealing. It also provides a consistent typographic system, maintaining a unified and professional appearance throughout the app's interface.
Color Palette
A bright, warm orange is often associated with energy and enthusiasm. In the context of a cooking app, this color choice can stimulate appetite and create a sense of excitement around food. It can make users feel more engaged and eager to explore recipes and cooking tips. Orange is a highly attention-grabbing color. It can be strategically used to highlight important elements within the app, such as call-to-action buttons. This helps draw users' attention to key areas, enhancing user engagement. Orange is also a warm and inviting color. It can convey a sense of hospitality and friendliness, which is essential for creating a positive and supportive cooking community. Users are more likely to feel welcome and encouraged to participate in discussions and interactions within the app.
Imagery
My logo choice immediately communicates the app's focus on home cooking and a personal touch. It reinforces the idea that the app is a place where individuals, like the woman in the apron, can come together to share their love for cooking and food. It's relatable and inviting. Universally recognized icons are essential for user interface design. They provide clear visual cues that users can quickly understand, enhancing the app's usability. Using these icons ensures that users can easily navigate and interact with the app's features. High-quality images of food are crucial for a cooking app. These images not only showcase the app's content effectively but also appeal to users' senses. When users see appetizing food images, they are more likely to be inspired to try out new recipes and engage with the app's content.
Low- Fidelity Prototype
In this phase of the app’s development, I continued prototyping in Figma, refining it from my initial mockup. I replaced placeholder text with real content, labeled links and buttons clearly, and added color and images to convey functionality for my upcoming user test. I also evaluated the product's simplicity based on Maeda's Laws of Simplicity, making sure to remove any non-essential elements.
To ensure a smooth user experience, I conducted an internal trial run of the prototype and implemented the necessary changes. Additionally, I evaluated the prototype's usability using the 10 Heuristic Principles and made final edits to perfect my prototype ahead of testing.
Usability Testing
To prepare for user testing, I crafted a comprehensive guide and interview script. I conducted three user testing interviews and carefully recorded and analyzed the results.
User 1 had a positive reaction to the onboarding process, finding it straightforward and personalized.
User 2 had a mixed reaction, easily finding a recipe but encountering some challenges with the shopping cart feature.
User 3, on the other hand, had a positive experience with their user profile and creation features, finding it fun and simple, which is a great highlight for the app.
Based on the user testing results, I observed that the onboarding process was well-received by the majority of users, providing a personalized experience that aligns with our app's goal of fostering a safe environment. Users had a positive experience with recipe discovery, but the shopping cart feature requird some refinements for improved usability. Lastly, the profile creation feature was a hit, generating excitement and engagement among users, showing great potential for the app.
The Solution
I'm excited to present my final solution after going through multiple iterations and user testing trials. As you can see, I've refined the app to create a user-friendly and empowering experience for my users.
Check out the prototype in Figma!
Key Features
What makes my final solution a safe place for everyone?
First, the onboarding process allows users to input their dietary preferences and health history, ensuring that the app's recommendations are personalized to each individual's unique needs. Second, I offer personalized recipe recommendations, suggesting nourishing recipes tailored to each user's preferences. Third, the app takes into account users' allergies and dietary restrictions, providing warnings and alternative ingredient options to ensure safety and inclusivity in recipe selection. Fourth, I've incorporated daily affirmations custom to each user, to promote a positive and supportive environment. Finally, the app provides relevant educational articles custom to each user, empowering them with valuable and relevant knowledge to support their journey. By incorporating these features, the app caters to users' unique needs and dietary requirements, fostering inclusivity and sensitivity towards their individual challenges, while promoting an empowering cooking experience.
Challenges
As I developed this app, one of the primary challenges I faced was ensuring a safe space for all users, especially those who may be on a journey of eating disorder recovery, like our persona, Emily. It was crucial for me to avoid providing any triggers that could hinder their progress and well-being. To achieve this, one of these decisions was to hide calorie and nutritional information from the recipes for these specific users. Additionally, I considered my client’s desire to include her pilates videos in the app. While it could be a valuable addition, I ultimately chose to prioritize sensitivity and inclusivity in the current version. I believe that by being mindful of these challenges and making informed design decisions, I can truly make Homemade by Jane a source of inspiration, healing, and self-discovery for all cooking enthusiasts.