CookStudio
Mobile app case study
Project overview
CookStudio is a mobile application designed to help users quickly find recipes tailored to their dietary preferences and available ingredients. The app focuses on simplicity and reducing clutter, providing users with a seamless and enjoyable cooking experience.
Discover
The Discover phase for CookStudio involved user interviews to understand the main pain points and needs of home cooks, and performing a competitor comparison to identify gaps in the market. Key insights revealed users' frustration with cluttered recipe apps, the need for quick and easy meal planning based on available ingredients and a desire for features that support cooking skill improvement.
Define
The Define phase focused on creating detailed personas, Tomoko Nakamura and Michiel Brouwer, who represent the target users for CookStudio. These personas highlight the need for a user-friendly app that offers personalised recipe recommendations, efficient meal planning, and support for users with varying cooking skills.
Develop
During the Develop phase, the focus was on transforming the insights and requirements identified earlier into design solutions. To start, a mockup design system was made in Figma.
The mid-fidelity prototype was then tested with the personas Tomoko Nakamura and Michiel Brouwer. These users interacted with the prototype, performing tasks like finding recipes, inputting ingredients, and planning weekly meals. Feedback was collected during these sessions, offering insights into the prototype's usability and overall user experience.
Suggestions for improvements, such as enhancing the search functionality and unclear difficulty levels (“using star rating looks like user rating”) were made.
Based on this feedback, the prototype underwent several iterations and refinements. The search functionality was improved, and additional guidance features were added. The design system was also updated to reflect these changes.
Deliver
In the Deliver phase, the focus was on finalizing and refining the design. A design system was created, with text and color styles to maintain consistency. Due to the frequent use of image-based recipes, these elements were nested into reusable components, allowing for easy updates and modifications. Variables were used to change images and recipe text, closely mimicking the real product experience.
This finalised version was then tested again with the target personas and gave valuable feedback. Minor adjustments were made based on their input to further improve the meal planning and filtering functionalities, making them easier and more intuitive to use.
