Lifestyle Mobile App Stovemate
(UX Mobile)
Lifestyle Design
Mobile Design
UX/UI Design
User Research
Type
UX/UI | Studio Project
Software
Figma | Illustrator | Photoshop | Sketch | Principle
Timeline
4 Weeks
Tags
Best Design Mockup | Spring 2024
Best Life Style Design | Spring 2024
Overview
This is a group project where we created the ultimate kitchen assistant app that pairs seamlessly with your oven for effortless cooking, remote heating, and hassle-free maintenance. With OvenMate, you can preheat your oven from anywhere, access a wide range of recipes with step-by-step guidance, and schedule automated cleaning cycles to keep your oven in pristine condition.
This app was created to serve a whole community of budding chefs that are learning how to cook meals for the first time at college! This app will provide peace of mind to the students who cook while studying with the utmost cooking experience.
Project Event
01
Team Members
Gabriele Basa (Graphic Design)
Hannah Berg (Graphic Design)
Janea Johnson (Industrial Design)
My team created the ultimate kitchen assistant app that pairs seamlessly with your oven for effortless cooking, remote heating, and hassle-free maintenance. With OvenMate, you can preheat your oven from anywhere, access a wide range of recipes with step-by-step guidance, and schedule automated cleaning cycles to keep your oven in pristine condition.
Project Mission -> This app was created to serve a whole community of budding chefs that are cooking or learning how to cook meals for the first time at college. This app will provide peace of mind to the students who cook with seamless flows and guides.
Design Process
02
My team created the ultimate kitchen assistant app that pairs seamlessly with your oven for effortless cooking, remote heating, and hassle-free maintenance. With OvenMate, you can preheat your oven from anywhere, access a wide range of recipes with step-by-step guidance, and schedule automated cleaning cycles to keep your oven in pristine condition.
My responsibilities
Determine our goal for the app and brainstorm with my group members on deciding what app niche would suit our mission
Potential target audience interview and analysis for primary research gathering
Three main tasks: Community section, advanced recipe filter with subtitution options, comprehensive step-by-step cooking guide
Additional tasks: dashboard and cooking/tutorial feedback page
Solution
🌟 Our solution prioritizes the user’s comfortability in meal prepping. It provides various recipes and tips based on difficulty and availability, and encourages users with any level of cook. All accommodations with non-daunting interface, safety tips and technologically advanced stovetop are curated in one app to help everyone feel helped.
Key Problem
🔑 Lots of college students express frustration about allotting time between classes, work and cooking. They deal with complex recipes and would like a stove that could aid in abridging time consumption, accommodative oven features for complex recipes and upkeep tips to keep an oven clean and safe.
Research
03
Every successful design project is rooted in a well-structured research and iterative process. For StoveMate app, our approach was centered around collaboration, feedback loops, and constant refinements to ensure we met our needs to align technology and efficiency on a daily basis.
The team wanted to ensure an organized and as legitimate as possible resources as a foundational parameter into creating a user-centric app. The team conducted preliminary interview sessions among college students for both undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
✅ Target Audience
Age range 18-30
Use stove when cooking
Undergrad and graduate students attending college
Use a high-traffic appliances that need to be maintained by multiple people especially in one household
Recently changed lifestyle that requires consistent cooking (e.g. recently switching from dining hall to cooking at home)
🧑🏻 Understand scenarios and user group
The goal of the app was to create an inclusive beginner-friendly platform where users from various cooking experience have time flexibility to cook in their time at college.
As part of the primary research, we conducted user interviews that navigated students’ feelings and experiences in meal prepping while in college. Interviewing intended target audience helped us better understand potential users’ day-to-day basis in meal-prepping as college students. The team also analyzed participants’ behaviors and pain points to gather potential tasks that could ease their pains.
Data Analysis and Framework
04
After gathering and analyzing primary and secondary resources, the team began to create hypotheses, framework and value propositions on how Stovemate addresses users’ pain points and gains as college students.
Lack of skills
Lack of info
Lack of confidence
Time Constraints
Key Problem
🔑 Lots of college students express frustration about allotting time between classes, work and cooking. They deal with complex recipes and would like a stove that could aid in abridging time consumption, accommodative oven features for complex recipes and upkeep tips to keep an oven clean and safe.
User Journey Map
a
We started the user journey map to illustrate the experience of a typical user interacting with our planned smart stove app, from initial discovery through everyday habit, highlighting key touchpoints, actions, and pain points to elaborate design decisions.
Value Propositions
b
After breaking down the most common obstacles and challenges in meal-prepping as a student, we shortlisted some features to be the main highlights of the app. Moreover, we start commencing our design direction and propose users needs in a smart stove app.
Final Proposed Features
🔑 Our key value propositions for the StoveMate app include:
Time-saving features for busy college students
Simplified cooking process with step-by-step guidance
Remote oven control for convenience and energy efficiency
Safety tips and reminders for novice cooks
Maintenance scheduling to keep appliances in good condition.
Affinity Map & Information Architecture
c
Post value proposition decision incorporation, we broke down the information architecture, detailing out the main features and micro-interactions for a polished centered main menu.
User Flow
d
Before finalizing design directions, we went through numerous user flows refinements to ensure a structured and cohesive interface and structure that highlights the value propositions. The team crafted directional four main flows that will showcase the step-by-step guide for new and current users.
Sketches & Ideations
e
The team began with some supporting questions to braindump some potential additional or supporting features that will foster the main propositional values. In this stage, the team started to consider the importance of accessibility and how the app could implement this element to realize the project’s mission to create a user-friendly and inclusive platform.
❓ Supplemental questions:
What’s the landing page after logging in or signing up?
what is the first page to customize after signing up? (first thing user looks for after signing up)
what is the first thing or page user checks after logging in?
top features on navigation barhow user close or move from one tab to another? (could be home button or pop-up tab -> ok and cancel buttons)
Is dark mode necessary?
Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech-to-Text (STT) -> for users who may have difficulty typing or navigating the app for maintanance steps, cooking, remote control instructions
High Contrast and Adjustable Text Size -> users can adjust the text and contrast to accomodate readability preferences
Voice feature -> like siri
Alternative Descriptions for Images -> descriptive alternative text for images
Error Handling and Feedback -> Provide clear and concise error messages with suggestions for resolution, aiding users with cognitive or learning disabilities.
Lo-Fi Prototype
f
The team generated 30+ lo-fi screens and countless wireframing refinements ensuring the app would have all the necessary key features and support to facilitate users from various technical and care issues.
Key Feature (Oven Remote Control)
g
The rise of digital app has extensively shifted people’s view and mechanism of managing their daily routine and habits. StoveMate wanted to offer its users a centralized platform where they could not only manage their cooking routine but also have the convenience in controlling their kitchen appliance with leisure and flexibility.
Oven remote control is one of our staple features in Stovemate. The devlopment of oven remote control allows users to control their cook remotely and prevent overheating or burnt food potential. The automatic heating system will shut down by itself when the range exceeds the required temperature from recipe integration.
Another upside of the feature that it lets users to multitask effectively without hvaing to hyperfocus or worried about their food getting burned.
📋 Problem Statement
Users often forget about their heated oven and leave their food burnt. Another problem is often times users are unsure about the appropriate temp for certain dishes.
✅ Solution
Built-in smart oven remote control alerting users about current heating foods in the oven, with the option to start, cancel, edit or snooze the reminder
User Task Prototypes
i
Sign In
Sign in task for current user of Stovemate.
Add Device
Add a device task for new and current user of Stovemate. The task can be done in two ways; through ‘Oven Scan’ button in profile tab and through ‘Add a device’ in accordion.
Cooking with preferences
Cooking task with Stovemate’s elaborated filter recipe feature to cater user’s preferences, healthy and diet restrictions. Stovemate will sort recipes out as thorough as possible fulfilling user’s filter options.
Range Occupancy/Use
Alert for a used range and how to heat a new range with an integrated recipe or recipe recommendation’s heat. Range occupation can also be observed in range section.
Oven Heating
Oven heat task for general use/cooking task with no integrated recipe. Heating mode is determined with numerical options for the need of precision.
User Rate
Post-cooking and post-tutorial user feedback to improve Stovemate app’s future improvement. User has the options to snap pictures and type down their commentary for Stovemate’s future improvement.
Design System
05
Preview of Stovemate’s design system.
Accessibility Report
06
The team was determined in the intention of Stovemate, to not only be handy app, but also accessible. Besides having a text-to-speech (TTS) in our recipe page, Stovemate’s design system passed almost all of its elements.
The team increased the error font size and text color to increase the ratio of the color contrast rules. The team wanted to make sure that user experience is enhanced in as much crucial aspects as possible.
Key Takeaways
07
StoveMate app initiates to bridge the gap between students and college lifestyle. Through progressive iterations and innovative solutions, our team managed to tackle challenges head-on, producing an interactive and user-friendly interface. Key features include a structured design system and inclusive features to cater user’s needs and convenience, all backed by constructive user feedback.
💡 Key Contributions
Preliminary brainstorming session for ideas dumping
Advocated for multi-level recipe feature and made sure the menu was user-centric
Worked with users to understand and solve their problems
Created an accessible and comprehensive design system
Future Improvement
08
StoveMate app was initiated to control a smart stove remotely with a mobile device. To accommodate a reciprocrative system, StoveMate interface could be responsive to smart watch and built-in screen on a smart stove. Another possible improvement lays towards user’s convenience of a more advanced tech facility. To cater student’s limitation, a smart scan will be a handy feature where it will enable users to tailor recommended recipes based on the ingredients they capture.
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