Project Summary
Your kitchen is an app that helps the user to organize their kitchen. It helps the user in finding recipes with existing items, creating shopping lists, reminders and shopping. This app also helps the user in finding specific ingredients or an item in their kitchen with an innovative, seamless user interface. My role was to research, architect, design, and test all UIs related to the project.
How it all started
Few days ago in my class we were discussing about the apps which are helping in our daily life. We also discussed about apps which could be helpful if they existed.
One of the idea is about kitchen. There are apps out there which gives recipes according to the ingredients available in your kitchen, shopping apps, reminder apps, to do list apps, but there is no such app with the combination of all these uses. So I decided to design an app for kitchen which can satisfy the user needs for their kitchen accessibility.
Personas
Because design doesn’t exist in a vacuum, I decided to understand our product from the customer’s perspective through the user personas. I had users go through interviews, and learned about the situations they undergo in finding things in their kitchen was eye-opening for me. There was no such app in the market for their problems.
Users
Madhavi Jonnavithula
Married, two kids, housewife, 44 years old, cook almost every day.
Frustrations
Although she cooks every day, sometimes she forgets to use ingredients/veggies in the kitchen. So they get expired or spoiled.
End goals
She needs an application to keep track of items that are available in the kitchen and remind her about the things that are going to expire soon.
Sarath chintalapati
Single, No kids, software engineer, 26 years old, cook once in a while.
Frustrations
Since he cooks once in a while, he does not remember the ingredients available in his kitchen. He buys some ingredients again and again. He also doesn’t like the part where he cannot shop directly from the app.
End goals
He needs an application to be able to see the items available in his kitchen from his workplace or while traveling. He also likes to keep reminders, updates and directly shop from the same app.
Problems
Based on the perspective of the potential users, I believe the apps available in the market do not provide the solutions to user needs. Some of the problems the users are frustrated about.
buying the same ingredients again and again.
No idea of where the specific ingredients/item available in kitchen.
Finding recipes with the available ingredients.
Expiring ingredients.
Unable to share grocery list with family or a friend.
Unable to shop directly from the app.
Design solutions
This app can help the user in the following ways:
Organizing the ingredients/items
Showing the available ingredients
Remind about expirations and refills.
Recipes with the available ingredients.
Creating grocery lists and sharing them with family or a friend.
Shopping directly from the app.
Information Architecture
Wire frame
Mock UP'S
List/Shop Page
Reminder, Share, Settings
Learning Recap
I learned the process of creating an IOS app. Designing a mobile app is both complex and fun!
During the user persona interviews, I was surprised by the fact, what the user's actual needs are. The user needs, an app that can help them in organizing the kitchen but they also need something like creating shopping lists and should be able to share with the family member, finding recipes with the available ingredients and shopping directly from the app. My challenge was to fit all the user needs like organizing, searching, creating grocery lists, shopping, recipes with available ingredients and reminders. While the whole project was a huge learning experience, I especially loved iterating on designs and testing those new designs on users. This tight feedback loop helped take the ambiguity out of my designs, and it felt good to produce designs with the confidence that users would enjoy and understand it. Without my classmate’s feedback and support from my teacher, I would not have been able to complete the design of this app.
