Extremely practical. Deliciously fun.
BrainStation UX Bootcamp | Capstone Project | Case Study
Dbox is a food delivery service focused on healthy, balanced and fresh pre-made meals for kid's lunchboxes.
The service has an ordering app where parents can choose the meals weekly and has a gamified experience to engage their kids in choosing their own meals.
My Role:
User Research, UX and UI Design, Branding and Product Design.
Method:
Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking
Duration:
11 weeks.
July, Aug, and Sep 2021.
Figma:
Figma, Figjam, Invision, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Power Point and Google Slides.
The Problem
Parents feel overwhelmed and stressed when preparing their kids' lunchboxes.
Across the country, parents struggle to balance their kids’ tastes with their nutritional needs. And the challenge seems particularly tough when it comes to school lunch: A 2017 survey showed 85 percent of parents feel stressed while preparing school lunch boxes. Parents feel overwhelmed by the time commitment that can come with making meals and the prospect of their children not liking new foods.
School lunch had not always stressed parents out so much. For a long time, people didn't have access to the massive volume of information about nutrition available today. And before the rise of dual-income households, there were more stay-at-home parents who were easily able to prepare and pack school lunches. Families in the past also faced fewer food allergies and sensitivities among kids.
Design Thinking and Human Centered Design
Before creating a solution for the problem space, I first had to understand the issues parents face when preparing their kids' meals and snacks for school through research.
The research encompassed children's eating habits, parents' routines, among other information.
Discover & Empathize
Desk Research
For the Primary Research, I searched information on Reports and News.
Here are the main findings.
4.92 million
of parents felt that providing their children with healthy food is expensive.*
71%
of parents felt that providing their children with healthy food is expensive.*
52%
felt that it was time consuming.*
85%
parents feel stressed while preparing school lunch boxes.**
Online Survey
I also ran a Survey in order to have more quantitive information.
Survey posted on Facebook in mom’s groups from Metro Vancouver, for 2 days.
There were 12 people responses in 18h
Goals:
How many moms/dads are full-time workers
Average kids in school age per household
Average pain points
How many parents feel stressed by preparing the lunch boxes
Level of planning
Level of kid’s participation
Average of picky eaters
Main Findings
The interviews brought a more in-depth understanding of the problem, as well as new perspectives and insights.
Interviews
Method
Four one-on-one 30-minute semi-structured interviews via Zoom video calls
Criteria
Parents (Mom or Dad) involved or responsible for preparing their kid's lunchbox.
Working and Non-working parents
Parents whose kids go to school
Canadian Residents
Canadian and Non-Canadian
Kid’s tastes change
Parents get stressed by their kids' volatile foods tastes or picky eating habits.
Feelings
Other negative feelings other than stress, such as guilt, frustration, and failure, lay on parents' shoulders.
Planning & preparing
Although people don’t make plans, they understand that a little bit of planning could help.
Lack of ideas
Parents feel uncreative and stuck.
Concerns
Parents don’t worry only about nutrition. Other factors influence their decisions.
Kids engagement
Even though kids give their parents feedback, they don’t really participate in the process.
Define
Reframing the problem
How might we help parents provide tasty and healthy lunch boxes to their kids so that they feel less overwhelmed, and their kids are healthier and happier with their food options?
Main Insight
After reframing the problem, I saw the situation from a different perspective, which brought me many insights. The most relevant though, was that to solve the problem, the solution must encompass parents and kids engagement and a service that provides high-quality pre-made meals focused on kids.
Engaging parents and children in planning the lunchboxes and a weekly delivery service for fresh, healthy food kits for kids could increase the chance of success in food consumption. Consequently, parents would feel less overburdened and guilty.
Persona
Before designing a solution for my reframed problem, I created a Persona based on the interviewees' pain points, motivations and behaviours. Persona is a powerful tool to understand users' needs, wants and expectations. It helps us visualize our target audience more efficiently. Meet Carol.
Carolina Falkner
The working mom
39 / Married
2 kids: 6 and 11.
Administrative Coordinator
Lives in Vancouver
"I feel so guilty my kids don't eat well enough"
GOALS:
o Provide her kids tasteful and healthy meals and snacks for school.
o Thrive professionally without giving up her family time
o Being able to have more quality time with her family
PAINS:
o Balancing career, taking care of the house and the kids.
o Very little time or patience to cook new dishes for her kids to try
o No energy to try new ways to make their lunchboxes healthier and more appealing
FRUSTRATIONS:
o Noticing her kids are not eating what she's preparing
o Wasting food and money
NEEDS:
o More time
o Inspiration
o Healthy and tasteful choices
o Something that relieves her from the frustrating tasks of a daily routine
MOTIVATIONS:
o Sustainability and environment
o Career Success
o Being a good parent
o Travelling and culinary
Carolina is a Brazilian immigrant who works as an Administrative Coordinator at UBC's Sustainability Department, where she coordinates a team of 5 people. She's very engaged in her work and sustainability causes.
She's a loving mother of the 6-year-old Jackson and the 11-year-old Mariana. She and her husband both work hard and divide doing the house and family chores, but Carolina is responsible for cooking and preparing the school lunchboxes for the kids daily. Her youngest kid is a picky eater, so he never tries other things than the usual apple and a sandwich, and her daughter eats reasonably well, but she has picky phases.
After a long day of work, she cooks dinner and spends a little time with the kids. After putting the kids to bed, she is tired and frustrated because her kids eat the same thing every day or don't eat what she sent.
Bright / Loving Dedicated / Focused
Experience Map
To identify the pain points and opportunities I built the experience journey map
Scenario: Carol needs to plan her kids’ lunch boxes. She must make a grocery list for the week, including the meals and snacks they already eat and adding something new for them to try.
Her goals: Provide her kids tasteful and healthy meals and snacks for school.
Frustrations: Noticing that her kids are not eating well at school as the lunch bags return full, or they eat only the same things every day.
User Stories
After defining the whole service flow, I started breaking it up in smaller pieces, building the User Stories and grouping them by Epics.
Task Flow
PERSONA: Working Mom
EPICS: PLANNING, ENGAGING AND ORDERING
USER STORIES:
As a mom, I want to be able to visualize all the options for the week so that I can select the ones that I believe my kids will like.
As a kid, I want to choose the meals and snacks I want for the week so that I could earn points and get special prizes.
As a mom, I want to select the meals and snacks for the week so that I can order the box and receive it on time to send to school in the next week.
Develop
Ideate
After gathering all the information, having a deeper understanding of the problem, and having some insights, it is time to create solutions in the ideation phase.
Concept sketching
The concept sketches for this app focused more on the kid’s Gameplay interface. How to build a gamified experience that is practical and at the same time, it’s engaging.
Inspirations came from games like Guitar Hero, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Pokemon Cards and Pokemon Go.
The other pages followed successful industry standards but with some differences to make it more appealing.
Main Sketches
The sketches demonstrate the ordering flow considering the child’s involvement through an Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt + Cards Games, like Pokemon Go.
Task flow: Planning, Engaging and Ordering.
Wireframes and low fidelity prototypes
After sketching some versions, I built wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes to layout content and functionalities defined in the proposed task flow.
User Testing
As part of the DBox design process, I conducted two rounds of usability tests with five users each to obtain practical, real-time feedback that could be incorporated to improve the design to provide a more optimal user experience.
User: Registered Parent
Summary:
o The user is registered in the app and had used the service previously
o Familiar with the App
o App is the Main touchpoint with the food box delivery service
o Goal: to order the next DBox.
Conclusion:
The app still has good acceptance and most of the user's found it easy to use, intuitive and relevant, but some raised some questions about the app's practicality for parents.
Changing the task flow to include the meals in the box may simplify the usage and reduce the steps.
Branding Development
To accomplish the goal that is to engage both parents and kids, I decided that the Dbox brand personality should reflect attributes like happiness, fun, optimism, playfulness, among others.
Dbox is
silly
happy
fun
playful
optimistic
light
bold
The Brand Archetype: The Jester
Motto: You only live once
Core desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment
Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world
Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny
Talent: joy
The logo concept reminds us of the playfulness of the service. The goofy eyes appeared in one of my studies and I fell in love with them. So started playing around and placing them in the box. The Box became a character.
Following that direction, I started testing some round and geometric fonts to compose the word-mark.
But soon I realized that I could use the icon as a starting point to designing the word-mark itself.
Main logo
Application Icon
The logo icon is flexible enough to adapt to the different operational systems.
User Interface Inspiration Moodboard
DBox User Interface must be clean but cheerful, as it has to please both parents and kids. In addition, the interface needs to build an emotional connection with parents in order to make the experience delightful.
Deliver
User Interface Design
With all functionalities prototype and tested, it's time to flash out the digital application, starting building the UI visual elements.
Typography
Clean, elegant and modern.
Color Pallet & Gradients
A warm and bold colour palette and gradients to reflect the brand’s playfulness.
UI Elements
Round corners, ultra-soft, light shades and colour elements.
Characters concepts
Kawaii illustrations and Pokemon inspire the AR Game Characters. Funny and cheeky names to provide a more significant engagement.
For this prototype, the illustrations are photoshop collages inspired by the following illustrators.
Melissa Mathieson
Rebecca Tell
Putting everything together
User Interface Layouts
High Fidelity Prototype
Websites
DBox Platform is both web and app-based.
The Mobile Application allows users to play Foodkins Hunt using Augmented Reality, whereas on the website, the game is a simplified version, yet super fun!
The website is both marketing and functional. The site has a restricted area where users can log in to order and edit their information. The non-restricted area works as a marketing tool.
Alternate Platform
The restricted area has all the features the digital app has, except for the AR Game.
Marketing Website
The main site is responsive and works as a marketing tool, highlighting the product features, how it works, and parent's testimonials to create a connection with other parents.
Key Learnings & Conclusion
I learned so many valuable lessons from this project. Acknowledging how the Design Thinking process works as a foundation for any design project and user-centred Design is key for creating meaningful and o highly usable, and accessible products for people.
User-centred Design
Unique, original and meaningful insights.
User testing
To validate the design decisions and fix usability issues
High Fidelity Prototyping
It’s rewarding to see the concept flashed out!
Thanks for watching! Bye.
My work
