📋 Overview

I designed a mobile application that improves customer interactions in areas such as viewing store menus, ordering for pick up and delivery, setting up a meal plan, accessing the rewards programs, and much more. The result -- a more accessible and convenient mobile experience that facilitates customer engagement and retention. Consequently, business growth and brand presence.



🕴️ Role

UX Research, Strategy, UI/UX Design

💾 Project type

Solo

⌛ Timeline

July - Sep. 2022 (12 weeks)

📲 Deliverables

Power Plate Meals conceptual app prototype



📇 The process

Lennon's design process

Prototype






Key Features



.01

Meal Voting

Allows customers to vote for a meal that they would like to see on the next menu.

Customers are more likely to purchase a product they have already voted for.

Over time, voting data can help uncover meal refinement opportunities.

In-app Power Plate Meals meal voting

.02

Reviews Section

Allows customers to see what others think about meals, interact with other customers, and provide their own feedback.

These insights can aid customers in deciding which meals to purchase and assist Power Plate Meals in improving their products.

In-app Power Plate Meals meal voting

.03

Customer Rewards

This page provides customers with rewards details and allows them to redeem different products using their accumulated points.

A section near the bottom of the page allows users to earn points for engaging with Power Plate Meals social media platforms. Fostering brand visibility as result.

In-app Power Plate Meals meal voting
Convenience. Noun. the state of being able to procced with something with little effort or difficulty


What is Power Plate Meals?

‍Power Plate Meals is a nutrition-based meal preparation company that primarily sells low calorie-high protein prepackaged meals (a mouthful, I know). Power Plate Meals also sells pizza, beverages, and healthier alternatives to common snacks. Their goal is to make healthy eating accessible to all.

Power Plate Meals employee helping customer

🚩 The problem

Convenient mobile experiences are essential for customer satisfaction and business growth

• Power Plate Meals does not have a dedicated mobile platform that allows customers to access ALL of its core services.

• The current mobile version of the Power Plate Meals website does not consider customer accessibility and is often difficult to navigate.

‍• In this digital age, it has become increasingly evident that in order for a business to facilitate growth, it must be able to EFFICIENTLY provide its services on as many platforms as possible.

App store without a Power Plate Meals app
Power Plate Meals brand color had poor contrast when used on user interfaces

📱 Questioning the potential solution

Why even design an app?

Americans spend 88% of the time on their phones using apps and only 12% browsing the rest of the internet (insiderintelligence.com)

Bitmoji image of Lennon on toilet using his phone

On average, mobile apps are 1.5 times faster than websites, allowing for an accelerated data retrieval rate that offers a more enjoyable browsing experience (eiosys.com)

Bitmoji image of Lennon in bed using his phone

The ability to instantly send out push notifications allows businesses to keep customers up to date about new products and promotions resulting in increased customer engagement and potential revenue (onesignal.com)

Bitmoji image of Lennon using a megaphone
North America's projected in-app revenue from 2020 is supposed to more than double from 41 billion to 100 billion
Mobile apps allows businesses to offer instant customer service, build a direct personalized marketing channel, and much more

♟️ I discussed the company's vision, goals, and constraints with Power Plate Meals co-founder and president Seth Houkom

Lennon and Seth Houkom smiling into the camera while giving a thumbs up

Research

Competitive Analysis

After identifying improvement opportunities, my first plan of action was to evaluate the functions, features, and UI of the most popular food apps already on the market through repetitive/comparative benchmarking.

Crumbl cookies competitive analysis
Starbucks competitive analysis

🤝 Empathizing

Customer Interviews

Starbucks competitive analysis

Some things I wanted to learn:

1. 🤷 Who shops at Power Plate Meals

2. 🤔Why customers choose to shop at Power Plate Meals

3. 🤕What pain points customers have experienced when using the Power Plate Meals website

4. 📑How can Power Plate Meals improve mobile device customer experience

5. 📅When customers decide to shop at Power Plate Meals

✏️ Research synthesis

I created an affinity map based on interview insights and secondary research. I compiled the data into four main groups:

1. Low development effort, low impact

2. Low development effort , high impact

3. High development effort, low impact

4. High development effort, high impact

💡 Key insights

Customers want to engage more with Power Plate Meals, however, there lacks a platform to do so

100 percent of customers stated that health and convenience were their primary reasons for shopping at Power Plate Meals.
• There was uncertainty about whether orders had actually been placed due to vague website feedback.
• Customers that had used the website were not aware of all the services that it offered.
• There was no way of knowing about the meal inventory status without calling a store.



The main features that customers would like to see on the app are the ability to:

  • 1. See the newest menu

  • 2. Order for pickup and delivery

  • 3. View rewards and deals

  • 4. Set up a meal plan

  • 5. See meal reviews

⚡ The challenges

• How might we design a platform that allows customers to access all Power Plate Meals services conveniently?

• How might we improve customer engagement?

• How might we increase brand presence + loyalty?

Personas

To better empathize with the customers I interviewed, I created personas that incorporate their characteristics and pain points.


⏱️ The time saver

Persona describing Jeff Dolan, an extremly busy software engineer

🛡️The keen shopper

Persona describing Jessica Caddel, a nurse with that is lactose intolerant and does not eat gluten

Ideation

After gathering the research data, I began the design phase by sketching concepts and paper wireframing.

Initial wireframe prototype

Digital wireframe concepts of Power Plate Meals app

Iterations

Iteration concepts of Power Plate Meals app

Usability test

I conducted a usability test with 5 participants to validate the designs. I showed them a Figma prototype and monitored interactions as they navigated core flows. The main improvement opportunities I gathered were to:

‍1. Add an interaction transition to the order screen when the menu is tapped.
2. Prompt users to onboard AFTER they've been able to look at the menu.
3. Decrease the number of screens required to complete transactions.
4. Be mindful about the over-use of color for the food category tags
5. Increase meal card image sizes.

Bitmoji image of Lennon running an experiment

Flow map

Design system

The typography, colors, buttons, and assets used to create the Power Plate Meals figma prototype
Row of in-app screens

"You seriously did a great job with this. We never even thought about letting customers vote for meals"

- Power Plate Meals leadership team

💭Things to consider


- A Doordash API integration could be used to fulfill local delivery orders.
- Jessica and Jeff would mutually benefit from the review sections and meal filtering.
- The app would: create internal job opportunities(leadership, fulfillment, kitchen expansion, retail store expansion) and eliminate the need for customers to call stores or physically visit them in order to determine store inventory.
- The most important KPI is to KEEP PEOPLE INTERESTED, which this app would succeed in doing.

✍️ Reflection


This project was challenging, fun, and taught me a lot of things, some of which include:

1. Balancing business goals and user needs is what makes a great product .
2. Using impact to prioritize; it's all too easy to fall into the trap of implementing every feature discovered through research.
3. SILENCE IS OK during user interviews, it's were most discoveries are made.
4. You did not fail; you simply discovered 10 ways that did not work - now pivot.

🙏 If you're down here, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to live through this journey with me!

Let's stay in touch, don't be a stranger!

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