Whisk

(Worked completed while a student at General Assembly)

Assignment : Develop a app to assist or solve some problem of one of my fellow classmates.

Research : Being my first UX project, the focus was as much about learning the process as it was developing an app. The process started with getting to know Theresa, my partner for this project. We each identified three areas we could use help in and talk those through until one stood out.

For Theresa this problem was that she was bored by cooking the same few meals every week and would like an app that could help her find some new meals to fix.

To better understand how she fixed foods currently and what it is she would really like, I wrote out a long questionnaire covering many facets of her diet, daily life and her preferences or tastes.

Having the answers from the questionnaire I had a much better understanding of what Theresa wanted and what were the limitations that existed.

I also found that beyond the stated problem of cooking the same few meals every week, there was an additional problem behind the problem which was that she purchased the same few ingredients at the grocery store every week, which of course lead to her repetitious meals. So if I wanted to solve the stated problem, I would first have to solve the unstated problem.

Sketching and Iteration : With a clear direction set, I began the sketching and iteration phase of the process.

Once the wireframes started to look more like what I wanted, I began exploring the app through site maps and user flows, looking for any dead ends.

Using my paper prototypes I tested out the site on Theresa, making little changes here and there until it was something that she was comfortable using. At this point I put the prototype into InVision and in just one week I had a clickable prototype for the app Whisk : to mix it up, you have to mix it in.