Savr recipes Design Sprint

Springboard Design Sprint Project

Create a Cooking App with a Voice User Interface (VUI)

My Role
• User research (UX)
• Prototyping

Timeline
Five days

Tools
• Adobe XD, Invision
• Naturalreaders.com
(voice recording)

Summary

*This case study is based on a fictional startup

Savr receipt was my first design spring project from start to finish in five days. The design sprint is about a cooking app with a voice user interface (VUI). The prototype improves convenience for users to follow the receipt with any question while their hands are busy.

— PROCESS

Here is the overview of stages and methodologies for the project.

— PROBLEM STATEMENT

Savr Recipes is a new startup that wants to provide a more convenient experience for people to follow new recipes and cook good meals at home.

They have an active community of users who rate and review recipes for other users. Recently, Savr recipes have received some negative reviews about recipes that involve many steps with unclear instructions, or more advanced techniques which are hard to execute. My task is to run a design sprint to create a solution that helps people feel easy and successful to follow a new recipe for Savr recipes. 

— LEARNING

Context & Research

Savr Recipes provides a challenging brief with interview snippets, insights, and a persona. 

1. Interview insights and quotes
It is inconvenient. While the users use Savr app, they need to drop what they are doing to wash their hands to refer back to the phone.  

2. Persona & pain points

• Sometimes Nick is unsure that he’s “On the right track” halfway through preparing the meal.

• Nick isn’t always clear on “what’s next” and how he can prep a few steps ahead. The inconvenience often causes a lot of time wasted with mistakes.

• If the dish doesn’t come out as expected, Nick doesn’t know where he went wrong, and he feels disappointed with the outcome.

• Nick gets stressed out trying to refer to his phone every time a new technique or step.

Finding
After I map out the touchpoints flow, I find out the pain points mainly happen to the stages while people are cooking and need to go back and forth to check the recipe’s details, ingredients, and new techniques.

The repetitive processes to drop what people are doing to use their phone may make them feel lost on track and stressed out trying to refer to their phone often.

Pain points Scenarios

After learning the product’s touchpoints and pain points, I finalize three main scenarios.

— SOLUTION

Add Voice User Interface (VUI) function to the product

After learning the inconvenience and stress of using phones while cooking, I realize a GUI (graphical user interface) design can't fully achieve users' needs by touching or clicking around.

However, if the product adds a conversational UI function, the user can be involved in a literal conversation by words and intonation (voice UI). Voice UI will resolve the inconvenience and stress of dropping everything to use phones. Next, I will explore the voice user interface (VUI).

— EXPLORING

Interview: Explore potential conversations

After coming up with the potential solution, I decided to conduct interviews to explore how users usually need help or reminders while cooking. Those data will help me to map what users could say during cooking by keeping the advantages of conversational design in mind.

Participants of interviews
I recruited 5 participants through acquaintances and Springboard community. Requirements were:

• At-home cooks enjoy cooking and try different receipts sometimes.
  

Data Collection method for interviews

• All interviews were finished in person and followed a simple script. Interviews were recorded by Zoom video conferencing or mobile phones. Interview questions explored:

• What are the priority things while cooking?

• What does bother them the most while cooking?

• What and when do they need help while cooking?

• I created and read Voice User Interface (VUI) scripts to ask for interviewers’ feedback.
  

Finding
Convenience: Users enjoy talking to the phone without tapping or touching the phone.

2. Analysis of the question statements: Users have some feedback about the questions they will ask for VUI while cooking.

• While preparing ingredients, users want to know:

  • What are the different steps?

  • How long does the receipt take?

• While starting to cook, users want to know:

  • What is the next step?

  • How long does this step take?

  • What are the ingredients? How much do I need for this step?

• Before/during/after cooking, the users might want to know:

  • What is the receipt review?

  • Change serving scale for X person.

  • What is the nutrition for the receipt?

Full Conversation

With the findings from the exploration, I connect everything into one conversation. 

Next Step

Use a low-fidelity Wizard of Oz prototype to test scripts

In the design sprint, I discovered the potential solutions for adding the VUI feature to the SAVR app. Overall, the feedback from interviews was positive about the VUI feature. I also came up with potential scripts while cooking.

My next goal is to test and refine scripts during further testing. 
I will test the scripts using the low-fidelity “Wizard of Oz” method. Also, I will have a team of moderators acting as the computer, and participants interact with them from behind a screen to roughly approximate a human to computer interaction.