Peace Love & Cooking

Role

UX Research & UI/UX Design Lead

Highlighted Skills

Design Facilitation

Product Definition

Interaction Design

User-driven Product Development

After 4 years of contributing to an online, Vegan cooking blog utilized predominately by friends and family, my client recognized a desire to expand their brand and monetize their digital presence. They brought me in to help conduct discovery phase research to better understand users. I ultimately facilitated defining the product with the use of mental models, wireframing, and high-fidelity designs.

How do we provide value to people considering more plant-based, eco-friendly lifestyle choices?
How could we attract more users?
How do we create more reliable revenue streams?

Research Goals

Gain better understanding of potential users, including identifying pain points, assumptions, beliefs surrounding plant-based lifestyle and resources
Define user stories and assist in prioritization

Steps Taken

With these key questions, I developed a Formative Research methodology, consisting of a survey with a sample of 20 people. Questions addressed people's behaviors, patterns, and interests in relation to plant-based lifestyle choices, as well as inquiring into their pain points around finding information that they are most seeking on the topic. General demographics and questions regarding current favorite websites and brands were also included to help bring life to these users and support empathy building. I utilized multiple choice, opinion scales, ranking, and short and long text questions.

Artifact from Analysis: White Board with Assumptions, Initial Product Ideas, and Affinity Diagramming

With the data, I conducted an analysis to identify pain points, trends in user behaviors and interests, and overarching themes in user characteristics. Based on initial conversations with my client, I also did preliminary Proof of Concept analysis to test initial assumptions and validate product ideas. See white board artifact for analysis.

Following this initial review of the data, I conducted research on trends in consumer behaviors around plant-based products. Considering the wealth of vegan and plant-based products, there is significant research available to compare our initial findings against - and be able to understand the scalability of our insights. This research yielded identification of a growing market that has only been increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, now with 6% of US consumers citing they are vegan. Additionally, research shone light on the demographics of those interested in plant-based foods, including the over-index of people of color, higher levels of education and income, and households with children.

In order to address my client's needs around understanding their users in order to brainstorm ideas, I created a user persona. This resource draws in the insights from the survey analysis, empirical research studies, and articles to highlight motivations, feelings, and beliefs. See Persona.

After facilitating a brainstorm with my client (with this reviewed analysis), I created wireframes and an MVP, of which I tested both with users to gain feedback and lead to conclusions around product direction. See Image Gallery.

Challenges

In working with my client, many of the challenges small business owners face emerged, including the difficulty in determining how and where to spend resources. My client wants to make prudent decisions when prioritizing capital, thus struggled with allocating funds to research efforts. This struggle ultimately led to small sample size for the survey, and how to best take advantage of the research findings. Similarly, when determining how to prioritize the insights from users, my client faced conflict around the personal interests of the team and how to best to balance these inputs. I found I had to coach them through not falling into a "build it and they will come" mentality, but rather digging into empathizing with the user in order to build out the strongest product. The persona was especially helpful to continually remind the team that we are creating this with someone in mind, which is solidly grounded in listening to our users.

Results

Armed with research, the team determined to move in the following directions:

Brand update
Greater incorporation of "household" versus sole focus on cooking
Increase connection between user motivation and practical tips
Increase "budget-friendly" content and solutions
Consider working with collaborators to identify and create culture-based dishes and recipes that are vegan