Design an ordering experience for a local meal-prep company in Austin.
Project Overview
As a start-up meal prep company, Bento’s Kitchen currently takes orders through only phone calls or messages, which is very inefficient and inconvenient.
This project is dedicated to designing a smooth ordering experience, providing an easy and convenient ordering experience for Bento’s Kitchen customers.
Timeline
4 months
My Role
User Research, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, Brand Design.
Project Kickoff
Bento’s Kitchen is a local Asian meal prep business, funded in 2017. They intent to provide a sustainable diet in an easy way for the local market here in Austin.
After Kickoff meeting with the founder Ben, I discovered these interesting information about Bento’s Kitchen as a business:
• Unique Asian healthy recipe • Funder as a fitness influencer on Instagram • Targeting at Austin local meal prep market • Cook for friends & friends’ friends like their family
User ResearcH
User Research Plan
A User Research Plan was created right after the meeting to layout the whole research process.
First of all, I dived into secondary research, including market research and competitor research, to gain helpful data based on existing online resource. Then, I conducted primary research, including Email survey and user interview.
User ResearcH
Secondary Research
Check out what I found out about the market.
🔍 Insight 01.
Booming Market
81% of the Americans who responded believed that kits are healthier than food prepared in restaurants.
🔍 Insight 02.
Millennials
29% millennial respondents had used a service, which is a highest compare to 26% Generation X, 12% Generation Y and Baby boomers.
🔍 Insight 03.
Word of Mouth
90% of the meal kit service subscriber referred others to the service to which they had subscribed.
🔍 Insight 04.
Unique Business Value
only Bento’s Kitchen provide cross interests of Asian Cuisine and fitness. There is no comparable or similar meal prep business in Austin metropolis area.
User ResearcH
Primary Research
1. Email Survey
Taking a closer look at users helps me to clarify both business goals and user goals.
Lucky Ben has an existing customer pools we can include. So, I set up a google survey and asked Ben to send it out to his existing customers. We also included some of the business future users.
All the information from the user research including both survey and the interviews are collected in empathy map container.
Then the same group of stickers is classified into groups in affiliate mapping activity. This helps me to prepare the feedback and information better for the ideation process.
🔍 Pain Point 02.
Re-order & Customize
92.9% of the customers are Ben’s friends, Out of that 71.4 % order every week regularly. Users want access to easily re-order their last order and customize their meals.
🔍 Pain Point 01.
Inefficient Order Process
Users annoyed by repetitive and inconvenient order process through phone. They need an easy and accurate way to view the menu and order from it.
🔍 Pain Point 03.
Lack of Branding
Users have sketchy feeling towards the service when they first hear it from friends. They do not trust the service due to lack of branding.
ResearcH synthesis
User Journey Map
define & ideation
The Problem Statement
define & ideation
Competitive Audits
Competitive audit allows me to learn what competitors do well and what they could improve, which also inspires my design.
How might we help Bryan order easily and smoothly?
define & ideation
Define the Scope
Plotting all the ideas from previous process helped me to visualizing what should be the scope for the MVP product. The quadrant of both important for business and users will be the focus in this phase of the project.
define & ideation
Define the Solution
design
User Flow
Task: Order meal-prep from Bento’s Kitchen
Testing & iterate
Usability testing (a) _ Mid-fi Prototype
Usability testing on mid-fi prototype helps me to gather feedbacks and insights before I create the hi-fi mockups.
• Testing Prompt
Participants were asked to accomplish these 4 prompts in an unmoderated environment.
“Add to cart” flow in item detail page need to be fluent and complete.
3 out of 5 participants find it hard to follow what they ordered through the ordering process; 2 of the new participants are surprised by adding 4 of them all at once.
🔒 Challenge
Limited serving options as a start up company
Due to the limited resources available to the business, the founder decided to only sell bulk bentos, like a set of 4 or 8 each kind. And the delivery will only be happening during Sunday night.
Testing & iterate
Usability testing (b) _ Hi-fi Prototype
• Testing Prompt
After completing the hi-fi prototype, usability testing again helps me to validate the solution I proposed first time and iterate more.
Prompt 1
Explore & Sign Up
Prompt 2
Item Detail & Customize Bento
Prompt 3
Re Order & Checkout
Prompt 4
Add to Cart & Checkout
Testing & iterate
Iteration_Usability testing (a)
🔒 Challenge
Limited serving options as a start up company
Due to the limited resources available to the business, the founder decided to only sell bulk bentos, like a set of 4 or 8 each kind. And the delivery will only be happening during Sunday night.
❓ Challenge VS. Opportunity
How can we deliver the information in a friction free way?
Instead of marketing material, we want to explain “how it works” upfront; Make it clear about price for a set of 4, instead of each meal; Give detailed information about delivery time.
design & Iteration
Final Design
💡 Feature 01
Explore & Sign Up
Educational walkthrough content creates friction-free onboard experience. it turns start-up challenge into business opportunities.
💡 Feature 02
Customize & Add to Cart
Price matching with expectation. Create opportunity for customization cater to customer needs. Give repose and confirmation to user “add to cart” action.
💡 Feature 03
Add to Cart & Checkout
Give detailed information about delivery time. Build expectation in advance along with the walkthrough content to avoid confusion.
💡 Feature 04
Re-Order & Checkout
Provide easiest and fastest way for loyal customers to order Bento’s Kitchen while the subscription feature is on its way.
🎉 Impact
End user approved ordering flow.
The last round of usability testing on end users showed the significantly increased the task success rate. Unfortunately, due to the limited resources, the founder never get to build the project.
⏭ Next Step
Design strategy changing along with growth the business.
The design strategy or challenges should be constantly changing, effect by many factors, like the scale of the business, the change of demographics of the end users.
design & Iteration
Style Guide
Retrospective
Takeways
📂 Business
Company’s business type and phase play an important role throughout design.
For startup company, limited of resource require UX designers to work around it. Sometimes, challenge can be turned into opportunities by differentiating the business.
🎨 Design
Usability testing helps designers to explore the product from different perspectives.
No matter how UX designer design the product, every user has their own interpretation of how it really works. Usability testing really helps designers to jump out of their own boxes and explore what users really thinking in real world cases.
.png)
.png)
.png)
%201.png)