Salt & Serve

ROLE USER RESEARCH · UX/UI · VISUAL DESIGN

An app that gives users a new way to explore cultures through food.

Salt & Serve’s mission is to familiarize users with a variety of cuisines and traditional dishes in a quick and accessible way. In an effort to help people navigate through various cuisines, Salt & Serve wants to provide a wide variety of cultural recipes and informative content on traditional ingredients and dishes. In doing so, they aim to help people become more comfortable with cooking those traditional dishes and seamlessly explore cultures through food.

Problem

There are many existing recipe apps to help people discover recipes and learn to cook. However, I found that while most recipe apps focus on recipe discovery, there isn’t one sole app or product that informs people holistically about a particular cuisine and how to use or find certain traditional ingredients. In my own life, it is a difficult process to learn to cook cultural dishes from a particular cuisine, especially if I don't have a reference of how to use certain ingredients, where to find them, how to cook them, etc. This results in an inefficient use of time and much frustration. I discovered that other people experienced these pain points as well. As someone who loves to explore cultures through food, I felt driven to explore the possibilities around a cultural recipe app.

Solution

A user-centered mobile recipe app that allows users to access cultural recipes and informative content on a variety of cuisines and traditional ingredients—all in one place.

This is a speculative project for educational purposes. Salt & Serve is a fictional company ideated by Mawendo.

Research

I started out by researching demographic information about people who cook at home, how people tend to discover recipes, and general information about cooking traditional dishes. I then analyzed the existing market of recipe apps in order to familiarize myself with the existing products and identify opportunities to better meet user needs.

Although some recipe apps allow users to filter by cuisine, they do not provide a seamless way for the user to gain a deeper understanding of the cuisine as a whole.

User Research: 1 on 1 Interviews

I recruited 7 participants to interview in order to gain an understanding about their experiences cooking new recipes and their behaviors around unfamiliar/obscure ingredients.

100% of participants felt that finding the ingredients—especially obscure ingredients—was the most frustrating and inconvenient part of cooking a cultural dish.

Key Findings

How might we allow users to seamlessly discover cultural dish recipes and gain a holistic understanding of various cuisines in a quick fashion?

Ideate

Wireframe Sketches

Since my interview participants expressed frustration about not being able to find certain ingredients in stores and not knowing how to substitute them, I wanted to make the process of finding an ingredient substitute and store location to be intuitive and seamless.

Usability Test

Using my high-fidelity prototype, I conducted moderated remote usability tests via Skype with 6 participants within the age range of 26-55 years.

Key Findings

Design

Logo Design

Defining the Brand

I chose a peach color for the brand color. I wanted the brand color to be comforting, appetizing, joyful and uplifting. I wanted the colors to excite users to explore the app and also comfort the users when trying new recipes.