How can we improve the user retainability of Tasty?
Context: Reiterate Design Hackathon by IxDA
Team: Palka Dhirawani, Sayli Pednekar
Tools Used: Figma, Miro, Canva
My Contribution: Conducted user interviews, created user personas, brainstormed 5 out of 7 new features, and designed high-fidelity wireframes.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Why choose an app that already has 10+ downloads and a whooping 4.7 stars?
For this competition, my team member and I were tasked with redesigning and improving the usability of one of 5 existing mobile apps by top companies, one of which was Tasty by Buzzfeed. Tasty is an app for the world's largest food network where you can search, watch and cook over 3000 recipes. It was an app that we ourselves would have used if only the UX issues were resolved. The challenge then became something that we genuinely wanted to take on.
The goal for this redesign was to utilize Buzzfeed's popularity and colossal community and emphasize its core characteristics which are fun, engaging, and creative. We aimed to make the app appealing to audiences of all age groups and diverse ethnicities.
INFORMAL USER INTERVIEWS
"The pink is so overwhelming!"
Due to a lack of time, we called up a couple of friends and family members to gather their opinions about the app. We asked them questions about whether they had used other recipe apps before, what would be their primary purpose for using one, what would keep them from using Tasty, and how the app as a whole or a particular screen made them feel.
CRITICAL POINTS
- Difficulty in accessing some features or having to memorize how to access them.
- The search screen is cluttered and difficult to read.
- Unable to save multiple recipes all at once. One has to open the individual recipe page to save it.
- Unfamiliarity with some of the ingredients and difficulty with using the US metric system.
- No option to edit the recipe collections automatically made by Tasty on saving a recipe.
- Need a feature to filter out recipes by particular ingredients.
USER PERSONAS
To better comprehend what kind of new features we could integrate, we created realistic representations of our 3 key audience segments in the form of user personas.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
After understanding the user pain points and crafting user personas, we wanted to understand the relative strengths of other competing recipe applications.
On realizing that Tasty’s favorability comes from its plethora of recipes and YouTube popularity, we decided to keep the recipes as its primary focus point. Tasty was more convenient to navigate than all other applications, which we wanted to enhance. We also identified unique value propositions that Yummly had over Tasty. It was evident that we had to include some innovative features to improve Tasty’s user retention.
NEW FEATURES
Bringing something new to the table
After noting down the paint points, we decided to bring some novel features which would improve the user experience and retention.
Random Recipe Selector
A random recipe will be selected every time the ‘GO’ button is clicked. Sometimes when there are many choices, it could be overwhelming for the user when they want to shortlist one. Since tasty has an immense database of recipes, this feature solves the problem of having to choose.
Ingredient Information
Extra information about each ingredient is provided along with images and substitutions incase some ingredient is unavailable or unknown to the user.
Filter by ingredients
The user can filter out recipes according to all the ingredients they have available at home. This feature can also be used to exclude any ingredient from recipes.
Personal Notes
For users that don't know a particular ingredient, they can click on the info button and basic information about the ingredient, along with its picture and a substitute will be displayed
Following Filter Tags
A user can also select filter tags that they want to follow. Once they select these tags the user will get a notification every time a new recipe with that tag is added on the app.
Tasty Blog Section
After noting down the paint points, we decided to bring some novel features which would improve the user experience
Customizable Collections
The user can create customized recipe collections according to their needs and also mark the recipes they’ve made before.
COLOR SYSTEM
Color can set people’s expectations about any product
Warm colours like red and orange are usually associated with food and induce a passionate hunger in people. The overbearing pink was replaced by a more subtle and contextual orange, while the Tasty brand's blue colour was maintained as an accent colour.
BEFORE
AFTER
Information Architecture
To amalgamate our added features with the existing ones into the app, we devised an information architecture to decide how to best organize and structure all the components.
