Foodtech
app
SDG

FoodFancy: UX Case Study on designing an app that allows homemakers to earn by cooking in their comfort.

It is opening new horizons of the household economy by cooking for those who need it. This platform will enable the office-going people to order homemade food that is personalized for them, which is cooked by another person who has extra time to do so.

Project Overview

Foodfancy is a platform to sell homemade daily meals upon request. The project is making the opportunity for the people who have extra time to cook requested meals, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for those who are busy professionals and want healthy homemade lunches in the office.

The goal of the project
Design mobile apps for people that enable them to upload menus, accept cook requests, deliver the cooked food to the rider and get the payment.
My role and responsibilities
UX designer designing a mobile app for selling homemade food on demand- from concept to delivery. My responsibilities are:
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● Conducting interviews,
● Paper, and digital wire-framing,
● Low and high-fidelity prototyping,
● Conducting Usability Studies,
● Accounting for accessibility,
●Iterating on designs,
●Determining information architecture,
●and Responsive design.
My target audience
The target audience of Foodfacy is people who want to earn money by cooking healthy foods on request and want complete control of their schedule. Those between the ages of 20-65 are familiar with mobile apps. The characteristics of these people include:
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● They are generally good at making regular foods, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
● They have extra time to do so in their little kitchen.
● They need the freedom to stay offline and accept or don't accept requests at their will.
● They love to get paid immediately.
● They have a small kitchen, so can't handle multiple items at once.
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Key challenges and constraints
There were some challenges and constraints that made it harder to implement the design of the product how I wanted to. The significant challenges include:
  • Resource constraints: I needed companies like Foodpanda and UberEats to refine my idea and design. I could not manage one.
KIckoff

In Foodfancy's design process, I opted for the Design Thinking framework to make a seamless user-centric design. This framework helped to find the user's pain points, conduct several usability studies, summarize and synthesize study data, and bring changes accordingly.

Research conducted
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I was designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research was people who stay at home, have free time to cook, and are passionate about cooking.

This user group confirmed initial assumptions about Foodfancy's users, but research also revealed that the entry barrier was not the only factor limiting a user to sell homemade foods.

Other user problems included the order accepting system and delivery system. Also, the payment method and delay in payment are some other contributing issues.
User painpoints
Product
Existing products like Foodpand and Uber Eats primarily focus on restaurants and cloud kitchens. So, their business model excluded my audiences.
Process
The process the existing platform offer is not compatible with the freelance cooks. There are restrictions and difficulty handling multiple orders, making it harder to proceed as a freelance cook.
Financial
Existing products pay the cooks in intervals of 15-40 days. Our research found that the user finds it illogical to get paid 30 days after hard work.
Accessibility
Existing products are not accessible to users. A person without training finds it hard to operate these apps.
Design Strategy

Finding the insights from the foundational research, I jumped into the design process. I made empathy maps, personas, user journey maps, and problem statements to get critical insights.

Initial ideation and design strategy
My research at the Empathy stage made it clear that present platforms like Foodpanda and UberEats DID intend to include these target groups. But their strategy made this aspect inaccessible because these platforms aren't aligned to the users and elements they want. I started by making personals to bring my users in front of me to keep them in front and center.
Meet the Users
Khadizatul Kubra (29)
- Intermediate
- Middle-class economy
- Lives with husband & 2 kids
- Housewife, have extra time
Problem Statement
‍‍
Khadiza is a stay-at-home mom who needs an easy way to earn money by cooking because she has to send her boy to a private school.
Raiyan (52)
- Currently unemployed
- Not that much tech-savvy
- Stay-at-home father
- Good at cooking
Problem statement
‍
Riyan is a stay-at-home person who needs an app so that she can earn money by freelance cooking because he finds it hard to get into the existing apps.
Mapping a persona's user journey revealed how helpful it would be for users to have an app that will allow them to prepare and sell homemade food and earn money.
Competitive audit
The competitive audit helps me understand the existing apps' upside and downside. I conducted the audit on five competitions, of which three were direct, and two were indirect.

The Audit Goal: Compare the accounting experience of small businesses in each competitor's app

The key things of the competitors I have compared are:

● Who are your key competitors?
●What are the type and quality of competitors’ products?
● How do competitors position themselves in the market?  
● How do competitors talk about themselves?
● Competitors’ strengths
● Competitors’ weaknesses
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The gaps the competitors failed to address are
Foodpand and Uber Eats excluded my target users because they focus on restaurants and cafes, not individual and casual cooks.
Cookups and Foodpanda made a high entry barrier for individual cooks to onboard.
None of the competitions pay the cook instantly, what my target audience wants.
Foodpanda and UberEats have lower flexibility in handling orders. The orders are placed automatically and multiple at once, which is not suitable for individual cooks to take.
Opportunities I can parsue
Make the onboarding as easy as possible and equitable for individual cooks.
Give the users the freedom to set their menus and pricing.
Give the user freedom to cook or not to cook, keeping in mind that they also have to do other things besides cooking.
Make the payment immediately after the food delivery to the requester.
The users can handle one request at a time because the target audience cannot handle multiple requests because they have average kitchens.
Wireframes and sketches
As an integral part of my process, I drew paper and pencil wireframes for the initial structuring of the screens and ideas. It helps me make a lot of iterations on the quick thoughts and explore many wild ideas.
The workflow
The workflow shows the overall interactions of the platform cross apps.

● The workflow contains how a request is placed and what happen at the cook's end.

‍● What happen if the cook cancel the request.

● How and when the notification of jobs knocks the rider nearby and track the request.
Paper wireframe
Paper and pencil wireframes helped to ideate many layouts quickly. Working through a couple of really preliminary sketches, I realized some of the ideas and layouts that I was thinking of just wouldn't work. Also, I looked into more inspirations to find out better versions of each screen. Only after finalizing the low-fidelity paper wireframe, did I move to the digital wireframe.

Low-fidelity wireframes and prototype

Picking ideas from my finalized paper wireframes, I jumped into the digital wireframe to make the functionality a life. The lo-fidelity prototype significantly helps me to make actual structures of the app. Then I made low-fidelity wireframe of the functionality to conduct the early usability study of the future design.
Interaction prototype
The core functionality of the Foodfancy app is to make manus, accept customer requests, track delivery, and receive payment. I made the interaction for that. It shows how the cook gets a request, agrees with it, and hands over the food to the rider through the app.
Final design
I kept the visual design minimal and simple. I choose the blue color scheme because this color represents trust. I made the CTA's significantly different from other components. The simple design and functionalities will make it more accessible and enjoyable.

Accessibility considerations

For an accessible, equitable and inclusive design, accessibility consideration is a must.
I made my project accessible in two ways:

• I put the language option to choose between Bangla and English. I placed the language option beside the logo, the most prominent place after it, so that users can easily find it.

• The dark version of the app is intended to help users with visual impairments and colorblindness.
Takeaways
The app brought new hope to the eye of the people who are good at cooking but have been excluded from mainstream platforms.
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- The broad your target is, the easier you should make your app to use.
- If you keep an accessible and equitable design in mind, you have to sacrifice a lot of features.
- We should not make the app inclusive but equitable.
Participant

“It will bring revolution because if I can earn so much money by staying home, why should I keep my family and child away?”

I'm a UX Designer passionate about creating easy-to-use products for startups solving problems for the next billion users.

mafruh.faruqi@gmail.com