BAKE NOW!
Surprise your kids with a stunning cake today!
UX/UI case study: Perfect recipe app for baking and shopping.
My friends asked me how to make cakes that were the same ones in the photo of the recipe, and they struggled to find easy but professional recipes to surprise their kids. I’ve learned many baking tips from my experience, and one of the most important things is that the recipe does not always help you improve your baking skills unless you learn baking tips for each step. Most baking tips are very small things, and everyone seems to miss them.
I wanted to design a baking app to combine my knowledge of 10 years of experience as a baker and my creative and visual skills with newly acquired analytical, user research, and design process tools & knowledge.
ROLE
TIMELINE
TYPE
Mobile application design
SKILLS
TOOL USED
Two weeks Individual Design Project
UX/UI design
User Research,User Persona, User Flow, Ideation, Visuals, Wireframing, Prototyping
Figma, Whiteboard, Pen, Paper
The Problem
Cake lovers use many platforms or websites to find the recipe they would like to make. Besides, they need to use other apps to get ingredients. I wanted to create an app that would provide recipes with baking tips and allows them to do grocery shopping without adding time or stress to their busy lives.
The Solution
Creating an app allowing users to find an easy cake recipe that includes vegan, Dairy free and Gluten free, and users can send grocery orders directly to the local grocery store to have their groceries delivered or use the shopping list to shop in-store. The mobile application called Bake now! combines the functionality for baking and buying what’s necessary for the users.
User Research
In order to understand the users, I wanted to ask people who use the app or website to find a recipe daily. I performed the interview and asked them about their experience with the baking app to find some pain points. Also, I needed to know how they use the app while they’re actually baking.
When users read the recipe on their phones, the ingredients are usually mentioned at the top or bottom of the page, so they have to scroll up and down the page while they’re baking.
Most users don’t read the explanation of the item or why the recipe uses this ingredient and for what. Users don’t have time to read everything.
Users are interested in receipts, which help them save time.
Hard to decide which ingredients to use to substitute in a recipe.
Sometimes, users don’t know what baking Supplies to use or what items to substitute when they don’t have them in the recipe.
Users tend to forget to put in some ingredients, especially small amounts of items, as they have to scroll up and down.
User Persona
ERIK WANG
“I’m sick of opening many different pages for baking one cake”
Occupation: Sales Manager
Age: 29
Family: Married, one child
Erik Story
Erik is a sales manager who has a busy schedule working and looking after his 2 years son. He loves baking on the weekend and he often bakes a birthday cake for his friends or family. He browses Instagram for inspiration to see a picture of the cakes he would like to make. He also has used a different recipe app to find a recipe. However, he finds it frustrating that the recipe requires him to go grocery shopping or takes a lot of time and effort. Sometimes he doesn’t know what cake supplies to use for each step so he often gives up to start baking something too difficult. He just wants to try new recipes without being frustrated learn new skills and find the recipe easily and quickly.
Needs
Location: London, UK
A simple and easy-to-use platform to find the recipes and save them for the next time
Shopping tool to get ingredients
Baking tips or advice to get new skills
Pain Points
The app needs to be as simple as possible. He doesn’t like to scroll up and down to get the information every time
Having recipes that come from different sources. Making it hard to find them again
Hard to decide which items to use to substitute when he doesn’t have cake supplies
Ideation
Erik and all the notes I collected from other people who gave me insights, I decided to focus on creating an app where users just save the directory of their favourite recipes, or add their own recipes. To make UX more extended, it allowed users to find the recipes by category and get ingredients in the app by using a shopping list for each recipe.
User Journey
I conducted Erik’s journey from when he thought of baking something in his head, to download the app and finally ending with his first bake, I wanted to have a better idea of the issue he might have and try to avoid them in the design. Also, focus on saving his time as much as possible by providing a simple and easy-to-use platform.
User Flow
User Flow helped me clarify the steps involved in the shopping process. After users choose the recipe that they want to make, the shopping list automatically creates a list with the ingredients they need to buy. During the shopping process, the app takes place outside of the app to isolate the different inside and outside factors.
Wireframes
Prototypes
Conclusion
This project's major goal is to provide users with a place to get the recipe they would like to make and learn new skills and allow them to start shopping for things they need. There are still things to improve or add to my first design baking recipe app. I gained valuable insights from the user research to find pain points especially how frustrated to find the best recipe for just one cake as there are many websites and apps out there. I focused on using photos and videos to guide users for each step as simple as possible rather than using many words.
If this is a real project, I would conduct user testing and iterate as much as needed to be. I would also add the tools to the app which are Nutrition info and automatic calculation for servings to save more time and to tell users how many calories, fat and protein etc in each item.