Crave App
Designing an end to end mobile application.
Project Overview
Challenge
The United States diet & weight loss market has grown to a $72.7 billion industry. However, 95% of diets fail. When most people try a new diet plan, they can easily become derailed by persistent cravings and temptations. Diets and dietary restrictions can make you feel like there are so many foods you CAN’T have and the constant deprivation can take a toll.
Solution
Crave is an end-to-end mobile application which aims to make these lifestyle changes more seamless for individuals by recommending healthy alternatives to common “junk foods” — ultimately positioning individuals for success.
Tools
Figma
InVision
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
Role
Lead Product Designer (Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, User Testing)
Timeline
4 Weeks (80 hours)
Key Features
Onboarding & Login
Explore Page & Articles
Restaurant Finder for People with Dietary Restrictions
Design Process
Activities and deliverables for creative problem solving.
Empathize
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
Provisional Personas
User Interviews
Empathy Map
User Persona
Define
POV Statements & HMW Questions
Brainstorming
Business & User Goals
Product Roadmap
Sitemap
UI Requirements
Ideate
Task Flow
User Flow
Wireframe Sketches
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Mood Board
Brand Style Tile
UI Kit
Prototype & Test
High-Fidelity Wireframes
High-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
Affinity Map
Priority Revisions
Research Phase
Before conducting research, I defined my assumptions, goals, questions, and methodologies so I’d be able to determine if my research was successful.
Key Questions
Who is Crave’s target audience? What are their demographics?
What is Crave’s target audience’s goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations?
What has been potential Crave users' experience with dieting?
What has been potential Crave users' experience with healthy lifestyle changes?
What junk foods do potential Crave users like to snack on
How do people educate themselves about healthy lifestyle changes?
Key Goals
To evaluate competitors in the healthy snack subscription industry.
To evaluate trends and threats in the healthy snack industry.
To understand which foods are common diet derailers.
To understand the most popular diets.
To identify the demographics of the Crave’s target market.
To evaluate the goals, needs, motivations and frustrations of potential customers.
To understand why people may or may not have been successful with dieting.
Key Assumptions
People find it hard to stick to healthy lifestyle changes because they feel deprived of their favorite indulgent foods
People find it difficult to find foods they enjoy eating when they adopt a healthy lifestyle change
People would be interested in joining a membership program that introduces them to healthy snacks that fit within their healthy lifestyle change
Healthy alternatives to junk food help people stick to healthy lifestyle changes for longer
People find it harder to eat out when they embark on a healthy lifestyle change.
Market Research
I started with secondary research on the market to understand what’s currently available to customers and gaining insights about industry trends.
U.S. Weight Loss Market
The U.S. weight loss market is now worth a record $66 billion. The total U.S. weight loss market grew at an estimated 4.1% in 2018, from $69.8 billion to $72.7 billion. The total market is forecast to grow 2.6% annually through 2023.
Most Popular Diets
Intermittent Fasting
Low Carb/No Carb (Keto Diet)
Paleo Diet
Mediterranean Diet
Low Calorie/Volumetrics Diet
Vegetarian Diet
Vegan Diet
Whole30 Diet
Clean Eating
High Protein
U.S. Junk Food Market
People now eat twice as many snacks as they did in the 1970s, a time when 41% of Americans never snacked at all. Snacking on junk food is leading to various health issues such as obesity, heart diseases, diabetes and other chronic diseases.
America’s Favorite Junk Foods
Ice Cream
Pizza
Tacos
Donuts
French Toast
Fried Chicken
Burritos
Hot Dogs
Hamburgers
Waffles
Trends/Opportunities to Diets/Weight Loss Industry
The CDC found that 17% of Americans said they were on diets during the 2017-2018 survey period, up from 14% a decade earlier. Over the same period obesity rates rose to 42%.
Per the CDC, about half of American adults have diet-related chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, and that special diets are a way many people try to manage them.
Better-for-you products are purchased by 65% of consumers. “Protein” (39%), “low or no sugar” (37%), “natural” (36%), and “no artificial flavors, preservatives, or sweeteners” (35%) top the list of better-for-you claims that resonate with consumers
51% of consumers say that quality of ingredients is an important factor in choosing healthy products, second to taste and flavor (67%).
Leading obstacles for consumers to stick with diet-related New Years resolutions in the U.S. in 2020
Crave’s Target Demographic
The heavier and more educated people were, the more likely they were to report being on a special diet. The CDC found that 23% of Americans who are obese said they were on diets, compared with 17% of overweight people and 8% of people who were normal weight or underweight.
Among all adults, the percentage of younger adults aged 20–39 reporting being on a special diet (13.3%) was lower compared with those aged 40–59 (19.2%) and those aged 60 and over (19.3%).
The percentage of adults aged 20–39 on a special diet was higher among women than men,
18%of non-Hispanic white Americans, 16% of Hispanic Americans and 15% of Asian and Black Americans said they were on diets.
71% of Millennials are buying better-for-you products (41% say some food and beverage products they purchased in the last month were better-for-you, and 30% say most were better-for-you).
Competitive Analysis
I continued my secondary research by conducting competitive analysis. It allowed me to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Crave’s competitors.
Provisional Personas
With the data gathered from my secondary research, I crafted some provisional personas to summarize my secondary research findings and to help me screen appropriate people to interview.
User Interviews
Now that I had a better idea of the Crave’s target audience, it was time for me to go directly to the user to hone in on their goals, needs, motivations, and frustrations.
I selected user interviews as my primary research method so I could ask real Crave users open-ended questions relevant to their experience with the app.
I interviewed 5 individuals that met Crave’s target demographic
Empathy Map
After my interviews, I documented my observations in an empathy map to determine if there were any patterns in my participants experiences and develop several key insights, from which I determined my users’ needs.
Key Insights:
Users are frustrated that eating a healthier diet is more expensive.
Users are delighted when they create healthier versions of the foods they crave.
Eating out is extremely frustrating for users with dietary restrictions.
Many users have dietary restrictions due to medical history.
User Needs:
Users need to find affordable food that fits their dietary restrictions.
Users need to have foods they enjoy that fit their dietary restrictions.
Users need to easily find menu options that meet their dietary restrictions when eating out.
Users need to avoid certain foods to stay healthy.
Crafting User Personas
After I identified the key insights and user needs from my interviews, I combined my primary and secondary research to create fictional characters whose demographics, goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations represent Crave’s target user group.
Defining Users’ Problems
Now that I had a good understanding of Crave’s potential users I created some Point of View (POV) statements to serve as actionable problem statements that focus on the user insights and needs that uncovered during the empathize mode. Then, I synthesized some How Might We (HMW) questions to open up my subsequent brainstorming session where I explored ideas to help solve the design challenge.
Brainstorming
I used mind mapping to brainstorm ideas that might solve my HMW questions and address user needs.
Strategy
Next, I combined the potential solutions ideated during brainstorming with the Crave App’s business and user goals to generate and prioritize features on a product roadmap.
Feature Roadmap
I used a product feature roadmap to hone detailed requirements and prioritization. This was a key method I used to turn my primary and secondary research into actionable insights.
Crave Appmap
With each feature mapped out, I was able to identify the Crave’s current information architecture and determine where my new features could plug in.
Task Flows
When I began to think outline users’ interactions with the Crave App, it was easiest to break them down into a few key tasks that reflected their goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations. This way, I had a good sense of what to start designing first and the key screens needed in my design.
User Flows
Next, I went into more detail and determined several different paths that users could take to complete tasks in the Crave App and the decisions they might make along the way. Link to full version here.
UI Requirements Doc
Before sketching the screens for the Crave App, I created requirements for the UI and features every screen should contain so I had a good starting point going into the ideation process. Check out my UI Requirements.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
After sketching, I put together mid fidelity wireframes to test the task flows I mapped out earlier.
Building the prototype.
I then conducted usability testing using Invision with my mid-fidelity prototype to see how users would interact with my design prior to investing time into building and testing a high-fidelity prototype.
Objective
Test how easily users can use the Crave app features to accomplish the user needs-based tasks outlined below.
Participants
3 female and 2 male IOS users, aged 25 - 40. Recruited participants remotely via Prolific.
Test Methodology
Evaluative Research - remote, moderated task elicitation and documenting observations with the thinking aloud testing technique to gain insight into users’ feelings while using the site.
Usability Testing
During testing, participants were given the following tasks. They were able to complete these tasks with a 100% completion rate and a 93% error-free rate.
Key Tasks:
Complete the onboarding questionnaire to get personalized recommendations.
From the explore screen, view a recipe and healthy snacks article.
Find a gluten-free, dairy free pizza restaurant and view the reviews.
Usability Test Results
After conducting testing, I compiled an empathy map to uncover user frustrations.
User Frustrations:
3 out of 5 users were confused when they couldn’t find the dairy-free option on the same page as the gluten-free options.
3 out of 5 users confused the dairy-free dietary restrictions with other dietary restrictions (i.e. vegan and lactose-free).
3 out of 5 users expressed disapproval at some aspect of the kale chips recipe.
Revisions
After uncovering user frustrations, I derived some insights about user problems and prioritize UI revisions.
Priority Revision(s):
Group similar dietary preferences together in the onboarding questionnaire.
Let the users know that they can edit their choices and learn more about diets and healthy lifestyle in their profile at the end of the onboarding questionnaire.
Allow users to indicate if they’re ‘not interested’ in recommended content on the Explore page.
BEFORE - groupings didn’t match expectations
AFTER - grouping similar choices together
Before - lack of user control and freedom
After - let users know they can edit their choices
BEFORE - Users were recommended content based on their profile and preferences
AFTER - Allow users to indicate that they’re ‘not interested’ in certain content
Brand Logo & Style
Now that my prototype was revised, I wanted to craft Crave’s brand identity so it could be applied to my high fidelity designs. I stated by creating a moodboard before creating a style tile based on the following brand attributes: Healthy, Helpful, Approachable, Knowledgeable, Empowering, Trustworthy, Positive, Balanced, Modern
Check out the brand logo variations I included on my style tile below!
UI KIT
Before building my high fidelity screens and prototype, I compiled UI components into my UI kit so they could be easily applied throughout my design.
High Fidelity Wireframes & Prototype
Now that I had my brand identity, I applied it to my mid-fidelity wireframes to create a high-fidelity prototype.
Reflection
This project taught me the importance of user control and freedom, even in cases when you use an algorithm to recommend content based on a users profile and preferences. There can be cases when the algorithm gets it wrong and users should be able to indicate that they’re not interested in certain content so they can be recommended more appropriate content in the future. You can see examples of this in Instagram’s explore page and YouTube’s homepage and I was able to incorporate it in my revisions.
Additionally, this project emphasized the importance of proximity in design, or the importance of grouping related items together to emphasize their relationship. Because I didn’t incorporate this principle throughout the onboarding quiz, users sometimes struggles to complete it but I was able to fix the issue in revisions.
All in all, Crave is an app that makes it easier for people with dietary restrictions to find foods they enjoy!
Next Steps
Handoff design specs to engineers using Zeplin.
Continue to iterate using the design thinking process and begin implementing lower priority features.
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