Welcome to Blue Apron
Established in 2012, Blue Apron is a meal kit & delivery service based out of NYC.
Blue Apron's service encourages people to cook pre-built meals. BA currently offers
meal kits in a variety of combinations, taking into account dietary considerations.
Project Brief
Two week sprint
Blue Apron is looking to increase engagement of its customer base by:
1) Allowing customers to create and submit their own recipes
(using guidelines on what makes a Blue Apron meal)
2) Other Blue Apron customers will be able to vote on submitted recipes.
The recipes that receive the most votes may become a featured
Blue Apron meal available for purchase.
Features
• Users should be able to discover & purchase customer designed meal kits
• Users should be able to learn about ingredient sourcing in the meal kit.
Team:
Mendy, Nicole,
Rich and Myself
Target Device
Existing iOS native
app on iPhone
Process Overview: Double Diamond
Process Overview: Double Diamond
Discovery
Competitive Analysis
Our team analyzed the following competitors' websites and mobile app's and we realized that none
of them offer any type of features that Blue Apron wanted to offer. We realized this was fresh territory.
Screener Surveys & User Interviews
We sent out Screener Survey's to be able to interview the most applicable User's.
Out of the 12 respondents, we interviewed 7 of them based on the following criteria:
1) User's cooked a home meal at least once a week or more
2) User's felt confident in their ability to cook
3) User's either followed a recipe, generated their own recipe, or a combination of both
Define l Research Synthesis
Affinity Mapping
After conducting our interviews, we were left with a lot of data to
go through. We used Affinity Mapping to sift through information.
Here are the following insights we reached:
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1. Users are willing to discover new recipes.
2. Users want recipes mostly from trusted sources.
3. Users need recipe filters.
4. Users are enthusiastic about sharing recipes.
5. Voting should be easy & secure.
6. Users love to learn the story behind the recipe
From here, we split
our insights into
2 distinct Personas:
1) Primary
2) Secondary
User Personas
Eddie the Eater
​
Eddie is very confident in the kitchen.
He cooks Blue Apron meals 3 times
a week and enjoys the easy to follow recipes and instructions. He feels the recipes do not always have enough personality/appeal for him to try out.
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Problem Statment
Eddie is having trouble finding easy meals that have some personality and history to add to his current weekly menu. How might we provide Eddie with a new meal experience so that he can enjoy a meal with a story behind it?
Courtney the Cook
​
Courtney is a driven healthcare professional who is also an enthusiastic food blogger when she has the time.
She is always looking for new ways to
gain attention for her recipes and
increase her following.
​
Problem Statment
Courtney has difficulty sharing her original recipes beyond her small following. How might we provide Courtney with a platform she can use to showcase her talents to a larger audience?
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Design
Design Studio
​
We conducted 3 rounds of Design Studio. We kept a strict time limit of 5 minutes each round to come up with ideas. And then after each round took our time to deliberate suggestions - going into a lot of detail.
Round 1
Due to the time limit, we realized that some of us only had time to address one of the two problem statements. We would resolve this issue during the next rounds. Luckily, during this round, some members ended up sketching for problem statement 1, while other members ended up sketching
for problem statement 2. The deliberation portion of the round proved to be very productive.
Round 2
After Round 1, we decided the main focus of the second round was to expand and develop the recipe submission process.
Round 3
For Round 3, we decided that we needed to focus on the logistics of the multiple points of entry for the contest - including the voting process.
Feature Prioritization l MoSCoW Method
Must - Should - Could - Won't
Must
-
Landing/homepage banner (promo).
The banner for the promotion needs
to be displayed prominently. -
Entry point from recipe tab. This allows for an additional opportunity for
users to submit a recipe at a logical entry point. -
Button on landing page to submit.
-
Voting by likes. This is a fun, easy, and engaging way to vote.
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Show number of likes on the actual user submitted recipes page.
This is to give credit to the most popular recipes. This is important as it
gives additional incentive for users to submit recipes. -
Dedicated recipe page.
-
3 entry points for contest: Banner, featured winning recipe, recipe search.
These are necessary because it helps facilitate contest entry and voting. -
Submission of user’s recipe instructions and ingredients. Since, Blue Apron
has these for their own recipes, we added it in to be consistent. -
A list of recipes per contest that voters can vote on. This is necessary as
searching for recipes would be too burdensome for the voters. -
Submit meal photos. Blue Apron has photos for their own recipes so this
was added to be consistent. -
Submit user bio. In order to differentiate Blue Apron’s recipes from user
submitted recipes, we wanted to add more of a personal feel to the latter.
Should
-
Feature the most recent winner on the homepage. This is not necessary as
the homepage already has a banner advertising the contest. -
Producing a video for the winner. This is not necessary because the winner
can be promoted in easier and cheaper means. -
Photo and bio of users submitting recipes.
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A total of 20 recipes (as selected by BA) to vote on in one voting session.
We don’t want to overwhelm voters with too many options. -
Landing page saying that a member can be the next Blue Apron star.
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The history of the recipe that the user submitted.
Could
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Bread crumb trail in the submission process.
This allows for people submitted recipes to better orient themselves. -
Autosave/draft in the submission process.
-
Allow submitter to add links to his or her social media for promotion.
-
Allow the person to add keyword tags to his or her recipe.
-
Final checkout review page for the submission process.
Won’t
-
Having a separate filter/search function for user recipes. It doesn’t make
sense for a seperate filter/search function for a small number of recipes.
It will also confuse users of Blue Apron.
Initial Wireframes
Usability Testing
Click on left and right arrows to view iterations 2-4
Final: Hi-Fidelity Prototype
To view final prototype on Invision, click on the link below. Or you can watch the video to see
how to submit and vote for a fellow chef!
https://projects.invisionapp.com/d/main?origin=v7#/console/14770966/307132496/preview?scrollOffset=0
Next Steps
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While we were happy with our designs, here are next steps we would have loved to consider if given more time:
Social Share
Users can share their recipe submissions, generating referrals and new customer acquisition.
Tell us with a video
During recipe submission, users can upload a short video talking about their recipe and its history.
Seasonal Recipes
Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas treats, and Passover dishes. These are all great other ideas to drive the campaign and bring in new users.