MICA Master's thesis case study - UX Research, UX Design

Making connections through cooking & streaming with

OpenKitchen

Project Overview

Initially, I wanted to find ways to bring people together to increase their empathy and understanding across different backgrounds and perspectives.

The best stories and connections are made over a shared meal- especially if the meal also has a story. For this project, I spent time looking at the problem space around increasing empathy amongst strangers by creating a solution that could bring people together, in person, to cook and eat meals together. A pivot point came when realizing that many in-person meal sharing organizations became unsustainable and inactive due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A greater problem that needed to be addressed became clear.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic halted gatherings and devastated the food service and meal sharing industries as well, leaving people isolated and increasingly lacking connection with their fellow humans.

How might we facilitate people to come together while cooking when they can't directly meet in person safely?

My contributions

UX researcher & designer: Initial research, discovery, ideation, prototyping, user interviews, and user testing, iteration, high fidelity prototyping, analysis of feedback for prioritizing next steps.

‍Project Manager: Planning and agile adaptation to new findings as they develop on a weekly basis.

‍Branding Director: Developing a strategy for the brand and deliverables along with the prototype.

‍Visual Designer: UI design and micro-interactions.

Humans have come together over cooking and sharing meals together since the dawn of humankind. We share stories and bond over our meals made and eaten together, increasing empathy and understanding between people. The culture and history of food are all around us, and could serve as an easy source for people to connect and relate to each other. Considering the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on in-person meal sharing orgs, my focus shifted to alternative ways for people to share their culinary knowledge and expertise.

I researched several factors in building a business case and solution that would answer my problem statement: the devastating effect of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, a booming digital sharing economy while folks stay at home more often than usual, and the popularity of food content especially as more people are cooking at home and seeking new ideas and recipes.

These were all research-based factors I worked with to conceptualize my idea- the next step was to ideate and build up a prototype to get in front of some users. Below, you can see a mind map I created to help define my problem space when I was considering in-person meal sharing solutions, as well as a few early ideation sketches of solution layouts.

Background

Gathering the Ingredients

A mind map describing my initial problem space for in-person meal sharing

Mind mapping the initial problem space.

Sketches of potential layouts on desktop and mobile screens.

I began wireframing the solution in Figma shortly after sketching out layout ideas - I needed to work quickly to build a convincing prototype to get into user testing as soon as possible. The images below illustrate a quick transition to a branded, content-filled prototype.

Ideation & Iteration into Early Prototyping

Building a Recipe

The progression from low fidelity to high fidelity prototyping in Figma.

I started reaching out to potential users by creating a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) survey that would help me gauge their habits around food-related content, following recipes, and buying ingredients online. Out of the survey respondents, potential users were selected to test the prototype, being asked complete a few simple tasks. I created an affinity map to help gather and prioritize my next iteration phase (below, left), and started adjusting my interfaces to help meet user needs (right).

User Testing

Making Tweaks to Taste

An affinity map created from user feedback during interviews and prototype testing, next to some examples of adjustments made to the recipe interface.

I adjusted features in my prototype to fit user needs after creating personas from the main themes that I found in my user testing. Users had a lot of input on recipe features, and how they would utilize recipe videos live and after streams were over. I noticed a divide between wanting to cook along with streamers live and just watch the streams for entertainment while saving the recipes and videos to watch later. I also noticed a divide between buying groceries online via OpenKitchen, and wanting to save the ingredients to a list to take to the grocery store in person. Building features based on user persona needs enabled me to consider multiple uses for OpenKitchen beyond just sharing recipes in a live stream format.

OpenKitchen has now become a tool for users to:
• Share recipes and the stories behind them, live
• Save recipe streams for later, with step markers linked in the video timeline - and in the written steps below the video
• Have private "kitchens" where anybody can start a live stream and share it privately
• Have bookings available for private sessions or even classes
• UI options for users who are cooking along and have messy hands
• UI options for users who want to save lists or steps to their phones

Check out a video demo of OpenKitchen below:

High Fidelity Prototype

Creating the Dish

A video demo of the OpenKitchen prototype.

High fidelity prototype screens highlighting the sign up experience, the personalized main page, the user's home page and dashboard, a public stream page and the recipe below it, and some of the grocery ordering experience.

Hey there!

I'm Shannon.

I'm a weird, creative yet science-driven artist-type who comes from a graphic and visual design background. I love combining research and logic with creativity - and I'm a huge nature nerd!

My experience:

I'm a senior UX designer working to design and connect broader cross-product experiences in the IT/managed service provider industry. I have journeyed through the lands of motion, production, visual and web design to finally arrive at UX design as my destination, where I've found my happy place in making experiences easier and more intuitive for people to go through. I'm proud to have a Master's degree in UX Design from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) - and yet, I'll always be a student as I seek to constantly learn and apply findings as I go.

Webflow

Graphic Designer

April 2014 — Mar 2015

Webflow

Web Designer

Apr 2015 — Mar 2016

Webflow

Visual Developer

Jun 2016 — Jul 2017

Webflow

Dictator

Aug 2017 — forever