Project Overview:
Many give up going vegan because of obstacles like social isolation and difficulty cooking. This app combines the solutions to these issues into a one stop shop for beginner vegans to learn and cook with friends.
My roles:
User research
Usability tests
Research synthesis
UX and UI design
Content design
Tools used:
Home
Users are first brought to the home screen where they see a timeline of meals posted by friends, as well as reviews of recipes being shared by friends.
Here, users also post their own meal by clicking one of the three circles at the top.
The user generated content is very important to the experience of the app, so the home screen was designed visually forward so as to draw the user in as quickly as possible.
Leaderboard
Users earn points for posting meals, sharing recipes, and locating ingredients in stores. Users can also earn extra points depending on what unique challenges they choose during onboarding, to personalise the experience.
Here, a user can see their ranking amongst friends, as well as global rankings.
This points system provides an external motivation for users without emotional or intrinsic motivations to go vegan.
Recipes
To help users plan meals and find new vegan recipes, Veganish has a bank of recipes written by chefs that users can browse, organise, and save for later.
In Explore, users learn about novel vegan ingredients and cooking methods, to help them navigate new recipes they might not have been familiar with before going vegan.
In For You, users browse unique recommendations based on their behaviour in the app. Users can save and organise recipes into moodboards, to make it easier to find food they love later.
Start Cooking!
To make cooking vegan recipes easier, this app displays ingredients and methods slightly differently.
Ingredients are shown with images, and can be added directly to a shopping list.
Methods are shown as previews that a user can collapse or expand, to decrease the cognitive load of long recipes.
When users Start Cooking, an overlay opens that allows users to swap between ingredients and method with one swipe, and only one step at a time is shown.
Tapping an ingredient in bold also reminds users of the measurement they need.
Shopping List
When going vegan the supermarket can become overwhelming to navigate. Veganish includes a shopping list feature to help users on this part of the journey. Groceries can be added manually or directly from a recipe.
Toggling between Aisle or Recipe modes allows users to organise their list how they like while in store. Aisle mode keeps everything in the correct order to avoid going back and forth between sections in the store. Recipe mode shows the user what each ingredient is needed for, and reminds them of how much they need to get.
When users start their shop, a widget can be added to the home screen so that they can quickly open the list from the home screen.
Empathise
Interviews
Body storming
Experience prototype
Conceptualise
Design
Design technicalities
Interactive prototype
Conclusion
37%
of Irish people are willing to go plant based
4%
of Irish people identify as vegan today
88%
of vegans eventually give up on the lifestyle
I conducted 8 different interviews, with 3 different groups of people: those who are curious about going plant based, those are really don’t want to go plant based, and those who currently eat plant based. I wanted to learn about their attitudes and hesitations, and to get some advice about how to go vegan successfully. Besides doing academic research, I interviewed people I personally know as this topic of research is so personal and unique to each individual, and so felt a more human centred approach was necessary.
1
People think that vegan recipes are hard and time consuming to make.
2
People think that vegan recipes do not taste as nice as traditional meals.
3
Current vegans recommend adjusting to the diet gradually, and having fun with new foods and recipes.
Following on from the advice and feedback I got during interviews, I moved onto bodystorming. For a week straight I attempted to get serious about going vegan.
I felt it was an obvious way for me to really get into the mindset of a potential user, and that I couldn’t possibly move forward with the design until I did this.
Knowing that not only would I find this challenging, but also to get a wider range of perspectives to help inform the next stages, I asked some begrudging friends to get involved in this with me. So, at the start of the week I launched what we have since dubbed the Vegan Experiment.
Spoiler alert, it ended up being a disaster.
Social isolation
Most of us live with non-vegans, and none of our friends are vegan. This meant that we constantly felt left out, and had to fend for ourselves at meal times.
Lack of recipe inspiration
Everyone, including myself, found that we quickly ran out of ideas of what to cook, and relied on old comforts.
Strength in numbers
Doing it together as a group meant we kept each other accountable, and eating meals together was easier.
I knew that my product would probably inherently require a user to log things that they were eating daily, for a certain period of time. Because this is actually a lot to ask of a potential user, I wanted to test out this type of experience.
I did this by asking (even more begrudging) friends to stay vegan with me again for another week, but this time to send me photos of every meal they eat. To make things easier, I ended up adding everyone to a group chat to keep all the photos and messages in one space.
Even though I did it through a group chat by chance, it started revealing some really interesting things, and I ended redoing this prototype 3 times, each one iterating on its predecessor.
1
A competitive spirit emerged when points were introduced and was a strong motivator for those without intrinsic motivations, and kept users engaging with the exercise much more than without it.
2
In a visual medium where everyone could see each other’s meals, users got inspiration and delight. People found it fun to see what others were eating and plating their food nicely for the group.
3
A sense of shared community knowledge emerged. Tips, recipes, and suggestions occurred naturally.
Each iteration of this prototype taught me new things, and inspired features that were to be included in the final product. I now knew that I had to create a tool in which the social aspects of eating were facilitated for, that included recipes and tips, as well as competition in the form of a points system to keep users motivated.
To begin developing early concepts, I created an experience map detailing the user journey when trying to go vegan. Below is a simplified version for easier reading, with my targeted touchpoints in bold.
Every design story starts with research in the form of sketching wireframes for me. This helped me to conceptualise and iterate quickly. Some aspects of these early concepts made it into the final prototyped concept. Many other aspects were either changed or discarded based on user feedback.
During the experience prototypes, I was constantly developing and updating the product according to user behaviour and feedback. Feedback from usability tests, interviews, and card sorting exercises informed the next stage of design into a high fidelity prototype.
New features were added in order to meet the needs reflected by experience prototype participants and which were expressed during interviews and usability tests.
Shopping List
Interviewees expressed a desire for help around the supermarket, as they were new to the vegan food scene and some ingredients were unfamiliar. I observed how they navigated the supermarkets when following a shopping list and made some discoveries.
Items should be listed in groups of similar aisles, to help users avoid going back and forth throughout the store.
Measurements should be included to help users make sure they got enough for the recipes they’ve saved.
Locate ingredients
Many users did not know where to buy these unfamiliar foods at all. In the experience prototypes, participants asked a lot of questions about what certain ingredients were and where to buy them.
I added a feature in which users could locate difficult ingredients in their meal uploads.
Other users can see these ingredients and the most popular stores they have been located at by other users.
Features removed
Many features did not provide the value to the user that I expected them to. As such, they were removed, which also helped to avoid feature bloat.
Vegan restaraunt options
This feature was removed for a number of reasons.
The user flow for this feature was slightly too complicated, and therefore didn’t test well.
People’s mental model of finding vegan menu options first rather than restaurants first did not align well.
Because Google Maps and other restaurant apps already exist in abundance, users did not get the value from this feature as I expected them to.
Your impact
This feature existed at the mid-fi stage to help remind a user of the “good” they were doing every time they went vegan. However, this was scrapped in favour of a more simple user profile.
People who decide to go vegan already have their own reasons for doing so, and didn’t really need reminding.
Other users who are less emotionally motivated to go vegan did not respond well to a feature that felt “preachy” or that it put pressure on them.
Features changed
Veganish went through many changes to its visual style. In the end, I decided to encompass a more minimalist, clean and sophisticated look, with neutral tones and less visual noise.
Below are just some of the main visual changes I implemented in the final design.
1
User generated visual content was changed to take a more front and centre position. Meal uploads on the timeline now take up almost the whole screen, one at a time.
2
Colours were reduced to simple black and white in most cases, so as not to distract from the photos uploaded by users and the recipe images.
3
The same font, Poppins, was used throughout the entire design system. This ensured simplicity and cohesiveness, so as not to overload the user visually.
Design
