Foodie Fanatic

A service that strives to provide useful content for the home chef such as recipes with easy to follow instructions, cooking classes, and kitchen equipment rental services in order to make the process of cooking accessible for users while enhancing their experience and relationship to food.

The Project

Tools used:

For our Introduction to Information Architecture (INFO 331) class, my team of five was tasked with creating the Foodie Fanatic website mockup over the course of nine weeks. While I contributed to all aspect of the project, my main role was the Taxonomist.

Planning

Timeline

One of the challenges we faced during the making of Foodie Fanatic, is that this was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. All university classes were held online, and many international students were forced to leave the country. Because most members of my team were in different time-zones, we had to adapt to each others schedules to make sure we meet on a regular basis. One of the ways we were able to do so, is by setting up a timeline of goals to be completed within each week.

User Needs

My team and I conducted user interviews from multiple sources, both online and in person, to identify the most common pain points and what our target audience is looking for. We identified the following most desired user needs:

Easy navigation of the site
An effective search function
Understandable content for all literacy levels
Cooking tutorials and classes
Cooking equipment they may not own
Quick, easy, and approachable recipes

Business Strategy - The 3 E’s

In addition to selling products and classes, we aim to provide a subscription service for customers.
Subscribers to rent high-end equipment for short durations.
If they choose, customers can purchase the equipment for a reduced price (if it’s a rental unit) or full-price for new units.

Mission Statement

Foodie Fanatic strives to provide useful content such as recipes with easy to follow instructions, cooking classes, and provides kitchen equipment rental services to users in order to make the process of cooking accessible while enhancing their experience and relationship to food.

User Personas

In order to understand our users better, I created five user personas of potential customers from different locations, backgrounds, age, budgets, availability, etc. This helps us gain empathy and create a product that is personalized and fits the needs of a diverse audience. This also helped us recognize potential pain points from a variety of perspectives.

Design Process

Site Map

In order to help us organize key pages and their hierarchy, as well as eliminate unnecessary pages, my team and I created a site map. To indicate different levels of the site, we color coded the different levels to the site map to maintain a clear visual of the hierarchy.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Using Figma, we created low-fidelity wireframes to test the usability of our website interface. This gave us a better idea of how the website will look, and allowed us to depict what changes need to be made.

Taxonomy

As the Taxonomist, my role was to provide the user with as many tag options as possible. Therefore, I created a taxonomy diagram showing the tag options.

Key Pages

Some of the key content types Foodie Fanatic has to offer are also some of the main services that are included, such as exciting new recipes, a subscription service, and a rental equipment service. These services support Foodie Fanatics mission statement and fulfills diverse user needs.

Recipe Page

The recipe page contains an eye catching photo of the dish, followed by detailed step-by-step instructions and ingredients. This insures that the recipe is approachable for any type of customer.

In addition, on the right of the page there is a “recommended for you” section that is personalized to the user based on their activity, and encourages them to remain active on the website.

Subscription

Users have the option to subscribe to the services. The subscription options are flexible depending on the user needs.

Equipment Rental

In addition, Foodie Fanatic offers the option to rent equipment to users. Cooking should be available to all, regardless of what equipment a user owns. This gives them the opportunity to rent new equipment that they may not have had the chance to use otherwise. If they like the equipment, the user has the option to purchase it as well at a discounted price.

Next Steps…

Conduct usability testing with real stakeholders.
Create high fidelity wireframes.
Create a working prototype.