Research for health cooking app

Discovery steps for a new cooking app

For my final project in the UX Research Foundations course at allWomen, I focused on addressing the lack of awareness among individuals regarding healthy ingredients and cooking methods. To tackle this issue, I plan to develop an app that informs users about these topics, helping them make informed and guilt-free eating choices. Through problem framing, competitor research, and user interviews, I identified user needs and pain points, laying the groundwork for a successful app.

The project aims to bridge the knowledge gap, provide a seamless user experience, and empower individuals to lead healthier lifestyles through informed dietary decisions.

Hypothesis to test

Main hypothesis:

The level of consumer awareness regarding the impact of ingredients and cooking methods on their health is insufficient.

Side Hypothesis:

Certain companies deliberately conceal health information related to their food products, making it challenging for consumers to comprehend the impact based solely on calorie counts or arbitrary numbers.

Who is this app for?

The target audience for this project is individuals aged 25-60 residing in Europe, who engage in self-cooking activities at least four times a week.

These users often experience feelings of guilt when consuming stereotypically unhealthy dishes, and they may also struggle with confusion regarding how to prepare meals that align with an overall moderate level of healthiness.

Scope

This project focuses solely on qualitative research to gain insights into the users, develop archetypes, and identify needs and pain points related to the general topic. Due to time constraints, I made the decision to exclude quantitative research for the time being.

However, I acknowledge the importance of incorporating quantitative research in future development to validate hypotheses.

My role in the process

With a solid background of 7 years in UX research and product design, I embarked on a formal research project to gain a comprehensive understanding of the key aspects and benefits of a structured process. Over a period of 6 weeks (not full time), I took charge of the entire research process, dedicating focused attention to each step and leveraging my expertise in the field to tackle the problem in the most efficient manner possible.

Working independently on this project provided me with a valuable opportunity to fully comprehend the efforts and time required for each research step. It allowed me to dig deeply into the process, honing my skills and expanding my knowledge as a UX Researcher and Product Designer.

Process

To adopt a user-centered approach, the initial step involves identifying the problem.

In this project, I employed design thinking and lean UX methods, such as the 5 Whys technique, within an agile framework. These approaches facilitated a thorough exploration of the root causes and allowed for iterative problem-solving, ensuring that the solutions were aligned with the needs and expectations of the users.

Competitors Analysis

Next, I dig deep into various research methods and conducted a comprehensive competitor analysis to uncover potential gaps in the market. This analysis encompassed diverse competitors offering distinct solutions to different customer segments, including both direct and indirect competitors.

It was revealed that no direct competitors specifically focus on cooking methods, with most emphasizing general healthy lifestyles and the impact of individual ingredients. To further enhance my understanding, I extensively explored various cooking methods and their effects on people's health. Through an extensive literature review, I discovered several studies highlighting the significant influence of cooking methods on the taste experience of ingredients and the varying levels of healthiness they can provide.

Research Plan

To complement my desk research and validate my hypothesis, the subsequent step involved engaging with individuals directly. To accomplish this, I developed a Research Plan for conducting interviews, with the primary objective of uncovering their authentic needs and frustrations. By directly interacting with users, I aimed to gain valuable insights that would inform the development of a more user-centric solution.

Interviews and Analysis

After conducting the interviews, I gained a deeper understanding of the users' needs. However, it was essential to collect and analyze the information effectively. To accomplish this, I selected an Affinity Map to analyze the results, it allowed me to cluster and organize all the observations related to the relevant topic. This process helped me uncover the main insights derived from the research, enabling me to identify patterns and prioritize key findings.

Insights

Cook vs Go out / Cooking methods

When deciding to eat, participants often consider time, and/or food available at home, making the healthy food a secondary topic for them. This causes a fast selection of non-healthy food outside, or a quick meal at home, normally not too healthy.
When cooking at home on the weekends, participants often have more time to decide and cook, causing a good quality of ingredients, but not of cooking methods. This makes the healthy dish they thought are preparing actually not good for their specific needs.

Healthy own perception

When people that cook often rate themselves, they often go to the middle rating-area, because they are not sure if they are doing right. This might cause insecurities and confusion about their health.
When people that cook often rate themselves, they often don't trust themselves to say they are not healthy at all, because they feel the presure of the recent social media standards. This causes them to try to eat only raw food, which is also not healthy for their specific needs.

Calories perception

When buying food, participants that cook by themselves, often check the calories but don't understand the real meaning of it, leading them to misunderstand the definition and how to use that number. This might cause some users are restricting themselves or allowing themselves too much or too less according to what is important to them.

Attention to food quality

When going out to restaurants, the social participants often pay attention to the quality of the restaurant, trusting them when choosing the ingredients. Making the restaurants not forced to be transparent about their food quality
When buying in the supermarket, the participants more often check the quality of the ingredients rating them by the information they observe on the packaging. This makes products that have more transparent information more prompt to be bought.

Prepared food

When buying food for a quick dinner, participants buy frozen food because is convenient and quick, causing them to reduce their healthy level perception. This makes the perception of frozen food as not good and restricts themselves on what is good for them or not.

Archetypes

Lastly, through the culmination of this research, I successfully identified three key archetypes. This user-centric approach guarantees that the resulting product will effectively attend to the distinct needs of these archetypes, ultimately enhancing their experience and satisfaction.

Outcomes

Through this research project, it became evident that users strike a balance between dining out and cooking at home for various reasons. However, when it comes to cooking at home, they lack awareness of the differences between various methods and their impact or benefits on their overall lifestyle. Nevertheless, the ingredients part is pretty clear for them, making the cooking methods topic a way more interesting topic for app development.

The findings also revealed that individuals who enjoy cooking but are not experts face numerous uncertainties. Additionally, social pressure plays a significant role in influencing people's dietary choices and their emotional state while consuming certain foods.

Through my personal experience in this project, I have discovered that conducting a thorough analysis of the results can be time-consuming. However, the key takeaway is the importance of crafting a well-defined research plan. When you have a clear understanding of what needs to be validated, it allows you to focus on actively learning from the participants. I was pleasantly surprised by the high level of engagement exhibited by the participants, particularly when I followed up with different questions and maintained an open approach to learning.