COMPANY

Abel & Cole

Hackathon - Recipes

Summary

I was tasked by our trading team to consider a future thinking idea which focused on either our product range or our recipes. I had a time box of 24 hours to communicate a future thining concept and was encouraged to think big as possible based on what the data I had at the time, I saw this as an opportunity to think and approach this on a different level in order to continue communicating the importance of UX and UX Research. I wanted to ensure that regardless of the idea, we were trying to solve a customer need. The following outlines the concept and the approach. 

Overview

During my time at Abel & Cole, I’ve been fascinated with our recipe boxes and how they work so differently to the rest of our product range. Our recipes change every week for our customers and we offer up to 15 recipes to choose from for a weekly shop. The box is delivered with a set of instructions on how to cook each meal.

This proof of concept presents a future approach which aims to remove hassle by being present and integrated with the user. I took this as an opportunity to focus on the problems with our recipes and used what fast immediate resources I had in order to meet the timebox. 

Timebox - 24 hours

The Challenge

Through the quantitative analysis we had, it was clear that our customers were progressively abandoning our recipe pages as they went through the sales funnel. This was not to be a project to be prioritised long-term, but it was an opportunity to be experimental and to consider the bigger picture for the future.

Extract of the recipes page

Research

It was not the right time to focus in on the smallest changes we could make to the recipe site as there was a pull from the stakeholders to revamp this entire experience when the timing is right for this to be a priority. Based on this, I was keen to get closer to the problem with our customers and  more importantly, what do our customers actually need - right now, we've decided this page needs to be redesigned, but is it the right thing to do? By this definition, we’re assuming that the current solution in place is not working, but yet we dont have the insight to inform us how we arrived here and why. The caveat to this research was to be aware of what little time I had. 

Timing of the financial year and budgets not be in place for actual tangible UX research, I took to carrying out 'desk research' as the most immediate and effective way of having actionable data to translate and remain informed by what we have today. From collating a wide scope of customer reviews from our recipe product offering to speaking with customer services, I was able to interpret the insights into a customer journey map (assumption based).

Mapping the journey

Pain points

It was clear from the desk research that our customers really struggled to not only follow the recipe as it required the customer to jump between cooking and the recipe card which caused some customers to lose track, but their enjoyment and happiness of cooking was hindered. Now, the assumptions that were being made was that it doesnt matter whether the recipe was in print format or accessible on a smartphone device - the action requires the customer in both contexts to exit and re-enter the cooking process.

From this, I was able to categorise the segments;

Need to be in the know

Participants were often needing to jump from cooking to the picking up the recipe card - because of this, hands were frequently in use and created stops in between the cooking and absorbing the material. This disrupted the flow of cooking for the participants and saw the positive feelings being compromised from developing

Convenience

Difficulty was observed in participants struggling to multitask between finding and picking up the recipe card to establishing when the dish was ready to be served. At times, participants were flick between reading the instructions and focusing too much on the photography to compare.

Utensils

Participants at times didn’t have the correct utensils at the right time or could not find. This communicated the recipe card itself having an overall dominating effect on the participants and the feeling of needing a utensil immediately and now, which again hinders the right and positive emotions through the entire cooking process.

Resources

The level of skill required for the recipes was not clear. The recipe cards assumed that a participant was at a good enough standard to carry out basic tasks and instructions. Some participants would see their confidence knocked when they realised a step was missed or an ingredient was missing.

Ideation

The research carried out indicated how our customers interact with our recipes and clearly demonstrated that we needed to focus our attention on the needs of our customers rather than just continuing with recipe cards. As fundamental as it would have been to conceptualise a proof of concept which addressed all of the pain points that had been documented, I had my time box and it was crucial to be incremental and at the very least, start the conversation of recipes and recipe cards from a different approach. Based on this thinking, I focused my efforts on ideating on key information and time - how could we keep our customers consistently informed, coupled with enabling our customers to be in more control and alleviate any pressure of being interrupted by the need to seek out the recipe card.

Key information (need to be in the know)

• Participants need to keep track of time and how long each ingredient takes to cook
• Participants need to find the step they were on in order to proceed
• Participants need to turn pages
• Participants would often forget what they’re doing vs what they’re meant to be doing

Time (convenience)

• Efficiency and being time accurate to the recipe card was non-existent for customers
• Recipes don’t always state when ingredients need to be defrosted or nod towards how long for
• Difficult to know when it's the right time to move to the next step due to the. erratic nature of jumping between recipe card and cooking
• Managing time from external distractions to cooking

Considering the time box and the requirement to think about the next big idea, the ideas that I generated became focused on interaction whilst remaining non disruptive to the cooking experience. The research clearly demonstrated that participants struggled with multitasking between cooking and taking the action to find the recipe card, engage with the information with a scan at best, and therefore compromised the participants flow of cooking. With this in mind, I moved my thinking to smart cooking and how this might belong in the users context. The following demonstrates the proof of concept.

Learnings

This project / opportunity enabled me to be experimental. Was it the right thing to do? In my opinion, this achieved momentum in driving new conversations within Abel & Cole and our recipe range. The suggestions I could have made would only be valid if we could have directly had a dialogue with our customers. The timebox was 24 hours with no budget and the expectation was a verbal response. This idea considers the bigger picture and demonstrates the importance to take a step back. If I could revisit this and research was granted, I would have encouraged framing our problem and the questions we want to answer before speaking with our customers. Only then, we could identify what is the right thing we should be building in line with the business expectations and goals.