Mealit
Planning meals, buying groceries, and finding the time to cook are difficult for students.
This app aims to help students plan their weekly meals in advance while building a community that encourages the habit of cooking.
Mobile App
SUS Score - 85
Timeline
3 months, 2023
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Role
UX Research, UI Design, Usability Testing
FINAL PRODUCT
HIGHLIGHTS
Cook At Home, Eat Healthy
Plan Meals and Groceries
Buy ingredients and get meal suggestions based on your pantry.
Unlike other meal-planning apps, our approach aligns with the dynamic shopping style you follow.
A Collection Of Easy Meals
Share and
Save Recipes
See what your friends are cooking. Learn and share new recipes—motivate others around you.
RESEARCH
Identifying The Problem
Considering students' academic schedules, job workloads, and numerous other commitments, they often struggle with the challenge of maintaining a healthy diet. Due to this, they often resort to unhealthy options.
College students eat fast food 70% more often than
non–college-attending adults.
SURVEYS AND INTERVIEWS
Discovering User Needs
User Survey
21 Responses
It focused on understanding the meal planning habits of the users, asking questions such as—how frequently they plan meals and go grocery shopping, the factors influencing their meal planning process, and the features they would prefer within a meal planning app, etc.
User Interview
3 College Students
This helped me directly interact with the user through questions that were focused on gaining insights into the participants’ weekly meal planning process, including questions like—how frequently they order in or dine out, their previous experience with meal planning apps (if any), and why or why not they would use one.
81% of participants have not used any app to plan their meals before.
64.7% of participants plan their meals 3 or more times in a week.
"What are the top 3 features that you’d like to have in a meal-planning app?”
“I just want to be able to track my groceries and plan my meals around that.”
“I’d love a fun app, teaching me new meal prep ideas and maybe a way to keep me motivated.”
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Comparing The Market
Despite challenges with healthy eating, most students avoid using the meal-planning apps on the market. Why?
Discovery
Existing apps lack the fun factor and constant motivation that students need to keep going.
HMW, MOSCOW, USER FLOW, SKETCHES
Brainstorming Ideas
The Challenge
How might we design an app that helps students plan and cook healthy meals while also keeps them motivated to stick with it long-term?
Categorizing user-suggested features helped me identify the user needs and organize it into three main categories. ↓
Shared Community
Meal Planner
Grocery Planner
I prioritized the features based on its demand and efficiency to deliver an optimal experience, using the MoSCoW model →
PROTOTYPE
Designing The Final Product
Get Started
Easy Onboard
A step-by-step journey that considers your health and dietary preferences followed by the Add People tab to connect with your friends on the app.
Like, Share, Save Recipes
Shared Community
See what your friends are cooking, along with recipes, and share your own.
This feature encourages motivation and interaction, allowing you to like posts and save friends' recipes.
Get Meal Suggestions Based On Your Ingredients
Weekly Meal Planner
Search or browse through meal with filters that let you refine your search by ingredients in your pantry.
Enjoy spontaneous grocery shopping and plan meals based on your purchase. Unlike other meal-planners, our approach aligns with the dynamic shopping style you follow.
Track Ingredients
Pantry And Shopping List
Track your ingredients with alerts for upcoming expirations, automatically add items to your shopping list based on planned meals, and customize your list as needed.
Create Your Own Recipe
Your Account
Create a collection of personal recipes or access the ones you saved when your friends shared.
Set reminders for planning and cooking meals.
USABILITY TESTS
Testing The Product
3 Participants
3 Scenarios - 2 Tasks Each, Followed By Post-Test Questionnaire
→ Complete the onboarding process
→ Explore the app for 3-4 minutes while thinking out loud
→ Look up a specific recipe and save it for cooking later
→ Add a specific recipe to the meal planner for a specific date’s lunch
→ Post a picture of a meal they cooked with its recipe
I’d definitely download this app! It feels really familiar, even though I’ve never used it before.
System Usability Score
85%
Net Promoter Score
+66%
Areas of Improvement
Users found it inconvenient to add meals to Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner with a single "Add" button.
Users were confused between 'Saved Recipes,' and 'My Recipes' in the search tab.
The 'Meal Added' confirmation message was not easily readable due to the image in the background.
Meal tabs did not appear clickable, leaving users unsure of how to access the recipes.
ITERATE
Design Improvements
01
ISSUE
Users found it inconvenient to add meals with a single ‘Add’ button.
IMPROVEMENT
Added three separate plus icons for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, removing the unnecessary step of 'Add to meal plan'.
02
ISSUE
The ‘Meal Added’ confirmation message was not readable due to the background image.
IMPROVEMENT
Replaced the confirmation message for improved visibility.
03
ISSUE
Users were confused between ‘Saved Recipes and ‘My Recipes’.
IMPROVEMENT
Renamed 'Saved Recipes' to 'Saved' and 'My Recipes' to 'Personal'.
04
ISSUE
Meal tabs did not appear clickable, leaving users unsure of how to access the recipes.
IMPROVEMENT
Added depth and stroke to each meal tab to make it look more clickable.
WHAT DID I LEARN
Learnings
Introducing a new concept of building a community on the platform taught me the importance of introducing novel features to users and helping them acclimate with minimal learning curves.
