Baking Expert - a personalized baking experience
CareerFroundry | UX Design Certification ProjectAs part of my UX Design certification with CareerFoundry, I designed the Baking Expert app, focusing on the world of baking. This app brings together baking enthusiasts and experts, offering a unique solution for hobby bakers to improve their skills and successfully make delicious treats.
In the crowded online culinary space, while general platforms touch on baking topics, they often provide limited guidance. Baking enthusiasts face challenges and seek help elsewhere. Baking Expert aims to fill this gap by providing baking-specific features and personalized guidance from industry experts, making the journey for baking enthusiasts more enjoyable and successful.
Problem Statement
Our baking enthusiasts need a way to get expert bakers’ advice because they want to improve their baking skills and successfully make their desired recipes in an efficient and personalized way. We will know this to be true when we see baking enthusiasts relying on our app to assist them and successfully complete their recipes.
Hypothesis Statement
We believe that by creating a comprehensive baking app that facilitates interactions between baking enthusiasts and experts, we will see that users increasingly rely on our product in their learning and practice of baking, and show higher app engagement and satisfaction.
Research
In order to test out the initial hypothesis, it was essential to use a combination of research methods so as to get a holistic understanding of our potential users, identifying user needs and pain points to build a solid foundation for design decisions.
Personas
The User Research allowed the extraction of key insights about our target audiences and inform the creation of our personas Toby and Elena. They represent two distinct groups of users: Toby, the relaxed user that seeks clear and easy guidance, and values conveniency and flexibility. Elena, the busy user that values efficiency, and seeks alternatives to fit their dietary preferences.
Toby, the easygoing hobbyist
User Interviews - Affinity Map
Elena, the busy multitasker
User Journeys
The next step was to draft user journeys for our personas.
Toby‘s user journey
Low-fidelity wireframes
User Surveys - Insights
Elena‘s user journey
User Flows
Given the scope of the project, I then focused on the main persona Toby, the easygoing hobbyist. to set the user flows for some of the core features of the app.
Flow 1 - Find and save recipe
As an easygoing hobbyist, I want to find and save a recipe that fits my preferences, so that I can easily refer to it when I want to start baking.
Flow 2 - Interact with expert
As an easygoing hobbyist, I want to interact with an expert, so that I can easily get custom advice while baking.
Flow 3 - Adjust serving size
As an easygoing hobbyist, I want to adjust the serving size of a recipe, so that I can bake the amount that suits my needs.
Competitive Research
Our competitors include established cooking platforms Kitchen Stories and Tasty (by Buzzfeed). While they target a broad culinary audience (dominated by Millennials and Gen Z), they also provide a wide range of baking content that makes them among the digital destinations for baking enthusiasts. They both showcase well-crafted user experience design and engaging content.
Although both are solid competitors, baking is but a limited part of their offering, as their product focuses more on adding more content to their recipe catalog and developing shop or community based features. So, there is opportunity in creating an app tailored to the baking niche. By providing baking-specific features, an intuitive and delightful baking experience, and offering direct interaction with baking experts, our app can distinguish itself from competitors, and offer unique personalized guidance and content to baking enthusiasts.
User Research
The goals of User Research aimed to uncover user attitudes and behaviors related to baking, gather opinions and pain points on existing apps, identify desired tasks within a baking app, explore the contexts in which users engage with such apps, and evaluate preferences for interacting with experts and receiving advice.
User Surveys
In order to gather quantitative data from a larger pool of potential users and get to know more about them, I started out with a User Survey. The survey consisted of 12 questions to gain insights into user demographics, baking habits, preferences and pain points.
The survey results highlighted a millennial-dominated audience (90%), with users often baking spontaneously (72%). Key preferences included clear instructions (90.9%) and visuals (81.8%). Users favored indirect expert interactions like instructional videos (63.6%), while direct interactions were less popular (18.2%). These insights guided the app's design to cater to user behaviors and preferences.
User Interviews
For qualitative data, I reached out to 3 potential users for interviews in order to identify their motivations, challenges and expectations when it comes to baking, as well as their thoughts and experiences on the topic. The interview consisted of 13 questions to get to know the participant, their typical baking process and related thoughts, as well as their positive and negative baking experiences.
During interviews, one notable insight came up regarding participants’ baking context. Multitasking and potential distractions led to the implementation of the Baking Mode feature, offering a focused, step-by-step guided recipe format. Additionally, participants shared the need for flexibility and the criteria they consider when searching for recipes, influencing the integration of personalization features for recipe search and customization through substitution options. Further insights into participants’ routines and preferences when seeking online help informed the expert interaction features, leading to both direct and indirect interaction methods.
Screenshots of Kitchen Stories and TastyInformation Architecture
Using a first version of the Sitemap, a hybrid card sorting was conducted with 5 participants to ensure the best organization for the app. The Sitemap was refined based on the insights generated from the card sorting session.
Sitemap
Wireframes
For the wireframes, I first started with low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the ideas into more tangible concepts. Afterwards, I moved to high-fidelity wireframes to build more details and interaction into the various screens.
High-fidelity wireframes
Usability Testing
Conducting Usability Testing allowed me to observe users interacting with the prototype and identify usability issues early on, optimizing the solutions and ensuring they meet the expectations of the target audience.
Usability Testing - Affinity Map
The usability tests were conducted using a prototype based on the high-fidelity wireframes. The participants reflected our target audience, baking amateurs of various levels of experience in baking. The tests consisted in 20-30 sessions, moderated in-person or remote.
Some of the key design changes that came up with usability testing was the optimization of the booking process, especially the calendar selection, simplification of the expert chat interaction, and added transparency regarding pricing.
Before/After - Optimization of the booking calendar
Before/After - Price transparency on the intro screens
Mockups
After developing the Styleguide and Design Language for the app, the final step in the project was to design Mockups based on the latest wireframe iterations.
Baking Expert Mockups
Learnings
Looking back, this project has been a great learning experience, allowing me to immerse myself in various UX processes and gain valuable insights into user behaviors and preferences in the context of baking. Moving forward, the next steps involve putting our solution to the test, gathering user feedback, and engaging in further iterations to reassess and adjust to meet the needs of our baking enthusiasts. The journey towards creating an effective and user-centric baking companion is ongoing, and the lessons learned will guide us in achieving continuous improvement and success.