Spice Master
A smart spice rack improving cooking efficiency, encouraging users to cook at home and solving the unique problems in home kitchens.
OVERVIEW
Do you come across the following cases?
If you find it hard to find the right spice, the right tool for measurement, or not easy to remember the storage of spice, then the idea in this project may help you. I designed a smart spice rack to solve these THREE pain points in people's daily life.
MY ROLE
Product Designer
UX Designer
UR METHODS
Survey & Interview
Competitive Analysis
DESIGN METHODS & TOOLS
User Story Telling
Information Architecture
Lo-fi & Hi-fi Wireframe
Interactive Prototype & Animation
DURATION
Three Months
Feb - May, 2018
Competitive Analysis & Surveys & Problems & Goals
In the current market, there have been several ways to deal with the issues above. However, there are also some disadvantages to these solutions.
In order to verify and refined the issues in the process of adding spices while cooking, I created an online questionnaire to collect related data. There are 26 participants taking my spice rack user survey. They are from diverse countries, of different ages, and even have different professions. According to the data. I discovered the following main points:
USER RESEARCH
61.5% of the participants cook according to the recipes. Among them, there are 68.8% measuring the exact amount of spices using tools, such as teaspoon(100%), spoon(27.3%) and cup(63.6%). And over half of them have the tools on different scales.
• Measure the accurate amount of spice
88.5% of participants use original packing to store the spices. Over 75% of the participants never checked the expiration date or knew the best storage method clearly.
• Moisture-proof storage and expiration date
There are 50% of the participants who have more than 10 kinds of spices in their kitchen. This percentage increases to 64.2% among American participants. Nearly one-quarter of the participants ever added over 7 kinds of spices in one dish. And 34.6% of the participants think they need over 5 minutes to add all the right spices in the dish.
• Find the location of the right spice
Overall, measuring the accurate amount, locating, taking effort, storing problems exist in the use of spices in people's daily life.
Top 1: It takes much effort to measure the amount of each spice accurately during the cooking.
Top 2: Some of the spices may be mistakenly placed in damp places, some may run out and go expired without perception.
Top 3: It is hard for users to locate the right spice in their kitchen quickly.
• Problems •
According to the problems that were identified in the user research, I refined the goals of this product.
Encourage users to cook at home
⁃ The system can provide and update the recipes which include cooking steps and have pre-set amount of different spices. When users choose a recipe, the system can prepare the spice mixture automatically.
⁃ The system can interact with users through the voice assistant, like Alexa, teaching users how to cook the meals step by step.
No need for users to measure by themselves
⁃ If users cook something out of the recipes. The system can measure the amount accurately and automatically according to the input, and also provide the mixture in a container finally.
No worry about the storage problems
⁃ The physical spice rack is moisture-proof. The system can remind users the expiration date.
It is easy for users to get the right spice
⁃ The product can replace the packages in various shapes and sizes. The right spice can pop up in manual control mode.
• Goals •
ITERATIVE DESIGN
Use Story & Information Architecture & Paper Sketch & Lo-fi Wireframe & Hi-fi Wireframe & Interactive Prototype
Based on the data I collected from the online survey and the interview in person, and in terms of the four goals I summarized, I created four user stories which correspond to the following four-brunch features, to describe the issues in the real using context.
For each brunch feature, I built an information architecture to solve the problem in each user story
• User Story & IA •
• Paper Sketch •
This is the initial sketch of my idea. There is a digital screen on the physical spice rack. Under the screen is an exit of the spices which is foldable by pressing. The spice jars in different sizes are water-proofed and could be filled with different spices depending on user needs. They can be popped up either by manual pressing or by system controlling. Also, there is a light notification from the bottom of the spice race for each of the spice jar, as the expired and refill reminder.
• Lo-fi Wireframe •
- There are three columns in the Recipes page and four columns in the Measurement, Refill and Add New Pages. Is it too small to display the recipe name or the pictures on the limited size screen?
- How to enter the amount or date of the spices? Entering or typing on a small physical screen is not as easy as that on a smartphone.
- Where are the recipes come from? Is there another app or an independent library. How does the recipes update?
Using this lo-fi wireframe, I made a prototype in Marvel and tested 3 users. According to their feedback, there are THREE MAIN PROBLEMS as follows to be solved.
• Hi-fi Wireframe •
- Change the Recipes page from three columns to two columns and the Measurement, Refill and Add New Pages from four columns to three columns.
- Use "+" or "-" button instead of typing.
- Connect to a mobile app called Tasty by QR code, synchronizing the recipes with the account of Tasty.
- Although the text and the pictures could be seen clearly in the secondary pages after the columns were reduced, they looked similar, monotonous and hard to tell
- Use "+" or "-" button instead of typing was a good way to avoid showing a small digital keyboard, but the button was too small to tap correctly. Also, it could be slow to adjust the date and the amount.
According to the problems from lo-fi wireframe, I made some changes correspondingly.
However, in the test of this hi-fi version, some problems were solved while the others were not.
• Animations •
Finally, let's go through this project.
REFLECTION
This is an individual project in the Interaction Design class. I went through the whole process of the development of a product, from brainstorm an idea, to user research, to lo-fi wireframe and hi-fi wireframe, to prototyping and final animation. The most impressive things are that before stepping into the design process we were required to refine the problems and goals again and again, as well as edit the user story and information architecture again and again. Our design was iteratively changed according to the suggestions of the professor and the classmates. And this iterative process ran through the whole project so that we don't deviate from the goal and our design can solve the problems in a targeted manner. Also, I felt very excited that I learned how to use Adobe After Effects to make animation. I think this is a very good way to present the interaction between the product and a user.