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Website Redesign

Food.com

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About Food.com

Food.com is a website where people can find their favorite recipes over 500.000 dishes created by users called "Home Cooks".

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Project Overview

Hungry for good food and great conversation? Grab a plate and join the fun!

Why this redesign?

This is a school project, and there is no interaction with the company and other related stakeholders.

The goal of this project was to design an intuitive product that is easy to use, efficient, and attractive.

Solo UX/UI Designer​

Cross-platform Web App

Eating healthy food-bro.png

Figma, Miro, and Photoshop

Website Redesign

Food.com

hero image.png
About Food.com

Food.com is a website where people can find their favorite recipes over 500.000 dishes created by users called "Home Cooks".

Project Overview

Hungry for good food and great conversation? Grab a plate and join the fun!

Why this redesign?

This is a school project, and there is no interaction with the company and other related stakeholders.

The goal of this project was to design an intuitive product that is easy to use, efficient, and attractive.

Solo UX/UI Designer​

Cross-platform Web App

food5-min.gif
Eating healthy food-bro.png

Figma, Miro, and Photoshop

Problem

Food.com is a famous recipe website in the US, but

  • the design does not help users find and save their favorite recipes smoothly;

  • users did not know that Food.com is a social food platform where they can follow and interact with their favorite cooks; and

  • users did not know they can upload their special recipes. 

Solution

I based my design process on the Design Thinking methodology which includes 5 stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Following the Mobile First strategy, I eventually created an interactive and responsive prototype for the mobile web where: 

  • people who don't like cooking be able to easily find the recipe for their favorite meal;

  • foodies find a variety of recipes, choose and cook the most appealing ones; and

  • professional home cooks can follow other cooks, get inspiration for their future unique recipes and upload the ones they are proud of.

​

Organizing my thoughts

In the beginning, I didn't have a full understanding of this product yet. Hence, I decided to do an in-depth analysis of the website first. I wanted to understand the functionalities, overall architecture, and navigation, as well as have some initial ideas on how to improve it.

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Website Analysis

Through the analysis, I was able to identify some clear usability issues and pain points. I listed all of them to validate them after my User Research:

 

  • The information architecture of the site is a mess.

  • The User Experience is confusing and there is no unified structure.
  • It is difficult to understand the concept of its social food platform.
  • ​The UI looks outdated​​ - It is disorganized and cluttered, with too many colors which caused problems in legibility and readability.

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The home page of the current version of the website.
Process
Empathize
  • Analyzing cooks' profile
  • User interviews
  • Usability test on the current website
  • User journey map
Define
  • User Personas
  • Point of view
  • How Might We
Ideate
Prototype
  • Paper sketching
  • Task & User flow
  • Low-Fi wireframes
  • UI Kit & Design system
  • High-Fi wireframes
  • Prototype
Test
  • Usability test
  • Iterations

1. Empathize

Understanding users

Since I did not have access to real users, I started to review cooks' profiles on the website. It helped me to have an initial view of one user category - those who regularly upload their recipes. 

"Evan & I enjoy eating out at fine restaurants and then trying to re-create gourmet meals at home!"
"I cook, I write, and I eat. I have the best job ever!"
"I am at home in any kitchen and totally relaxed. Cooking makes me HAPPY. and I love to cook for others."
User interviews

I started my user research by conducting user interviews with 8 participants, which vary from daily active users to infrequent users for cooking to define their "jobs to be done".

​

Interview questions were open-ended to understand users' motivation for using online recipes, sharing them, as well as their cooking journey.
I conducted some phone interviews while some I ran in person. The male interviewees’ age ranged from 24 to 35 years old, while all 4 females ranged from 27 and 32 years old.​

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To analyze the interviews, I ran Thematic Analysis in Miro to be able to categorize qualitative highlights said by potential users.

Key insights from interviews:​

  • all of the participants used the "search" option to find their favorite recipe;

  • they chose their favorite recipe by selecting the one with the most appealing photo;

  • they wanted a clear list of ingredients and equipment to decide whether to cook it or not;

  • they used their mobile phones during the journey

  • they had been in situations where they forgot some ingredients while shopping.

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An example of the Thematic Analysis
For privacy reasons, notes are not readable.
Usability testing on current version

After the user interview, I asked all of the participants to open Food.com on their mobile browsers and

  1. find their favorite food recipe

  2. save that recipe, and find it on the Save page

  3. add their own recipe

Key insights from the first usability:

  • it took ~8 seconds to find where they could start.

  • all of them used the search icon to find their recipe.

  • no one understood they could add their recipe.

  • one user quit the website after 30 seconds as they found the website so overwhelming.

  • all of them did not understand they can follow cooks

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A usability test with a foodie-type user
User journey map

Following insights from previous steps, I crafted a user journey map for the potential users, to structure how they interact with the current website and what they might find helpful or frustrating. 

User Journey map.jpg
User journey map
Empathize

2. Define

Meet Robert, Angela, and Sophie
Having analyzed the interviews, I divided the user profiles for Food.com into 3 personas:
  1. Robert who doesn't like cooking! He only cooks to survive and spends less budget on eating outside;
  2. Angela who enjoys cooking and cooks on average 4-5 meals a week. She usually tries to cook new foods using online recipes; and
  3. Sophie who is a professional home cook and gradually shares her recipes with people. She uses online resources to get inspiration, and also interacts with other cooks through tweaks and comments.
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Robert
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Angela
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Sophie
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Point of view

Now it was time to clear up my mind and define a problem statement that clearly and coherently explains what problem my design process aims to solve.

 

[Angela is a foodie who wants to cook a new food for the first time] needs [To have access to a recipe resource to easily find her favorite meal recipes and save them without creating an account] because [She wants to eat new homecooked healthy food and avoid spending too much money on eating out.]

"How Might We" questions

 After defining the POV, I wanted to link what I had done so far with the ideation phase. Therefore I shaped "HMW questions" to reframe and open up my design challenge to inspire productive ideation step.

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How Might We questions

After understanding the users' problems and needs, and crafting the "How Might We" questions, I went through several hours of brainstorming on how I could redesign the existing website to perfectly address users' concerns and also the business value proposition.

Define

3. Ideate

Ideate
Sketches

Having brainstormed ideas with myself and some peers, I started sketching out initial ideas for Mobile Web. These paper sketches were a quick and efficient method for visualizing the most important task of a user which is to find their favorite recipe. 

Paper sketches
User Flow

Since the majority of users were Angela(s), to simplify the project, I put her at the heart of my design process and constructed Task Flow and User Flow considering Angela's journey.

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Task flow.png
Task & User Flow

4. Prototype

Low-fidelity wireframe

Following up on the sketches, I started crafting low-fidelity wireframes in Figma, translating the sketches to a digital form, and preparing for early usability testing. My main goal at this stage was to design Angela's experience when trying to find her favorite "Beef Burger" on her mobile phone browser.

Next, I had a couple of iterations on the designed wireframes, and I ran 2 usability sessions to make sure it is the solution to users' needs.

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Examples of Low-fi wireframes designed in Figma
UI Kit & Design System

Finally, I created a Design System to ensure that the visual design remains consistent in the design process.

To have a unified design, I used the Atomic Design method and:

  • Selected orange as the primary color to evoke the tastebuds and grab attention. I used green as the secondary color to deliver a sense of health and nature.

  • Applied the Roboto Sans-serif typeface to follow the minimal design and deliver a joyful feeling.

  • Designed a responsive product, and defined 3 grid systems for iPhone SE 2020, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPad Mini.

  • Chose round corners for buttons and inputs that illustrated the soft edges of foods.

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My Atomic Design structure in Figma
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High-fidelity wireframe

Next, I designed the initial high-fidelity wireframes to add color, images, and all visual elements in order to give the users a sense of a real product for the usability test.

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Initial High-fidelity wireframes
Prototype

5. Test

Usability test

After prototyping the initial wireframes, I set a couple of rounds of usability sessions with an overall of 9 users and the following tasks were developed:

  • Find their favorite recipe

  • Save (share) that recipe

In order to evaluate the design, I asked users to complete tasks on the prototype using the Maze platform to be able to measure KPIs such as timing and touch heatmap.

Iterations

After each usability session, I iterated my design, and the major iterations shown below:

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Final High-fidelity wireframes

Food.com is a website where people can find their favorite recipes over 500.000 dishes created by users called "Home Cooks".

food5-min.gif
Test
Home Page
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Search pop-up
Search Page.png
Result page
Result Page.png
Recipe Page
Recipe Page.png
Filter & Sort pop-up
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Reflection

What I have learned from this project

I learned how to design an Atomic Design System from the scratch. Furthermore, I  learned how to apply the "mobile first concept" when I have different platforms to design.

Atomic design system

As a business with a digital product grows, its digital platforms must evolve to support this growth. Using atomic design helps simplify the challenge of designing and updating digital assets by providing a structure to work in.

In this project, I learned how to design a complete design system using the atomic design method.

Mobile first concept

Following the Mobile First concept to design a responsive product, I put myself under a challenge and chose iPhone SE which has the smallest screen to start. 

I learned that mobile screens differ from desktops, which offer enhanced functionality in many cases compared to desktops.

Thanks for your attention

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Maryam Dalil
UX/UI Designer
SEE MORE OF MY WORK:
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