Blendit!

Roles: UX Designer, Graphic Designer

Team: Katherine Phung, Nasreen Obeid, Cinta Adhiningrat, Chelsea Park, Nure Shamlou, Blair Diamond

Timeline: 10 Weeks (April - June 2023)

Tools: Figma, Google Suite

Result: Placed 2nd out of 9 teams

Project Overview

Design @ UCI is a student run club which hosts quarterly project teams where students work together in teams of six to design and prototype a product based on a theme. Over the course of nine weeks, students attend weekly workshops hosted by the project team coordinators and are taught the UX process of creating a product. The theme for Spring 2023 was “Food” and we we created a smoothie recipe mobile application which we presented at the end of the quarter to a panel of judges.

Problem & Solution

How might we aim to empower individuals with increased nutrition knowledge and facilitate preparing food using existing ingredients?

We designed a mobile application to help users create smoothie recipes based on their desired ingredients in order to reduce food waste and to keep track of their nutrients.

The Product

Createit!

Users will be able to create their own smoothie recipe based on their selected ingredients. Users will be able to see the amount of measurements needed as well as a set of instructions to make the smoothie.

Exploreit!

Users will be able to explore existing recipes by using specific categories. Users will also be able use the search bar to find smoothie recipes as well.

Saveit!

Users will be able to save any smoothie recipes found within the application. Users can filter through their saved recipes based on smoothie type.

Trackit!

Users will be able to track their smoothie consumption by inputting when and what type of smoothie they had. This allows users to track their nutritional intake.

Research

Research Goals

1. Investigate the impact of gamification on user engagement and motivation in a smoothie app context

2. Explore user preferences and attitudes towards smoothies and a healthy lifestyle

3. Understand the users nutritional goals and values

Surveys

We surveyed 30 participants and asked them questions regarding their interest in smoothie making and nutritional health. Through their responses we found that:

86%

Of respondents find maintaining their nutritional health important.

75%

Of respondents are interested in finding more smoothie recipes.

79%

 Of respondents want recipes based on ingredients they have at home.

Prototyping

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

Style Guide

Usability Testing

We conducted usability testing with three participants where we asked them to complete a series of tasks within our application. After collecting the data, we implemented their feedback into our application. Their feedback showed that we should:

  • Add a “popular recipes” category under the Exploreit! page

  • Update button text from “view all” to “view results”

  • Remove excessive animation transitions from page to page

  • Round the edges of the buttons on the Exploreit! page to be consistent with the shape of the buttons on the Createit! page.

Final Prototype

Takeaways

This project taught me a lot about working with a full team of designers. I learned that it can sometimes be difficult to agree on an idea but we were able to put trust in each other's decisions allowing us to each contribute our own unique ideas to create a prototype we were happy to present at the end of the quarter.

This project also taught me the importance of creating a well themed application and being able to maintain this theme through stylistic choices such as color scheme, font pairings, and graphics.