mypantry

MyPantry

MyPantry is a web app designed to help you find recipes with the ingredients you already have at home.

UX Team Members

• Todd Lange
  • Worked On: competitive analysis, persona and scenarios, wireframes, usability study
  • Phase I Report: executive summary
  • Phase II Report: write-up for informal user feedback
  • Phase III Report: write-up for usability study
• Ethan Nguyen
  • Worked On: competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, persona and scenarios, sketches, wireframes, usability study, prototype
  • Phase I Report: write-up for competitive analysis
  • Phase II Report: annotation and write-up for wireframes
  • Phase III Report: write-up for usability study
• Dylan Wright
  • Worked On: competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, persona and scenarios, diagram and sketches, wireframes, usability study, prototype
  • Phase I Report: write-up for heuristic evaluation
  • Phase II Report: executive summary and write-up for cognitive walkthrough
  • Phase III Report: executive summary and write-up for prototype

User-Centered Design Artifacts

• Personas and Scenarios
• Sketches and Diagrams
• Wireframes
• Prototype

Phase I: Analyzing Users, Competitors, and Initial Designs

Executive Summary

In many households, regardless of any size, there are two common problems that tend to arise:

1. Organization of food and ingredients in the household.
2. Determining what to eat, when to eat it, and how to prepare it.

The team for MyPantry has performed some analysis and evaluated that there exists an opportunity to improve user experience by providing a unified solution to these problems.

• The market for an app like ours is highly satured, but limited in scope. Our competitive analysis provided us with the following user insights:
  • Users would like to create their own recipes.
  • Users would like a product that is cross-platfrom.
• When evaluation a specific competitor, SuperCook, it was found thaat the product was generally easy to use, however it lacked error reporting and documentation.
• More information about what is desired of our application have been envisioned through new personas and scenarios:
  • The desire for an application with a high degree of user freedom in the form of niche filters and features.
• We were also able to apply insights gained from findings to our sketches and diagrams:
  • Increasing learnability by including a getting started pop-up.
  • Clarifying system status by separating different tasks and notifying the users of errors.
  • Increasing user efficiency by adding shortcuts for experienced users.

Full phase I report

Phase II: Refining interaction and designing wireframes

Executive Summary

Using insights gained from phase I, the team for MyPantry has designed wireframes with the goals of increased versatility compared to current competitors in the field.

The team has performed more analysis and evaluated that our original vision was too broad, and we have given new clarity to the direction of the product.

• A need for a new major feature was determined through informal user feedback:
  • The combination of a food journal and recipe catalog is a new space in the market with little to no notable competition.
  • There is a demand for this service.
• Cognitive walkthroughs provided usability insights for improving wireframes:
  • Feedback reinforced the need to narrow the scope of our product.
    • The ability for users to label ingredients as belonging to a specific person was scrapped.
  • The current design does a good job of directing the user through their interaction.
• With this new direction for our product in mind, we have adjusted our personas and scenarios accordingly:
  • Geoffrey and Trey have had their personas changed.
  • User story “Trey’s Roomate Situation” was removed.
  • User story “Stomach vs. Trey” was changed.

Full phase II report

Phase III: Prototypes and User Testing

Executive Summary

Using insights gained in both phases I and II, the team for MyPantry designed and ran a usability test on a prototype of the web app in order to further improve the user experience of the product.

• To improve clarity, tabs will be renamed to emphasize their purpose.
  • “Pantry” tab will be renamed “Ingredients”.
• Documentation for the app will be separated out from the carousel on the “Home” page.
  • This will improve learnability, allowing the user to understand how the product works prior to using it.

Suggestions from the participants of the study have also influenced our design changes.

• “Food Diary” will be completely redesigned to be a timeline.
  • Users will add recipes or notes directly to this timeline.
• The “Recipe Creation Form” will undergo a UI redesign to make certain buttons more salient.
• “Browse Recipes” will undergo a UI redesign to improve clarity on what filters do and what their current status is.
• The “Grocery List” page will receive a couple additional features:
  • The ability to have missing ingredients presented in a list format.
  • The ability to import all missing ingredients into a user’s pantry.

The study also revealed that the most liked features were the “Grocery List” and “Food Diary,” indicating that the change in direction in the previous phase was necessary to differentiate our product.

Full phase III report