Type
UX Research
Tools
Miro, Otter.ai
Role
UX Researcher
Duration
10 weeks, Sep - Dec 2024
The goal of this project is to address the common challenges faced by busy professionals and individuals in meal preparation, including time constraints, decision fatigue, and a lack of inspiration. The project aims to develop a solution that simplifies meal planning, reduces food waste, and promotes healthier eating habits.
Many professionals and individuals who regularly buy groceries struggle with preparing meals due to their demanding schedules. This often results in reliance on takeout or pre-packaged meals, which negatively impacts both health and finances. Research from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration highlights that 30-40% of food in the U.S. is wasted annually, underscoring the need for efficient meal management solutions.
Methods
For this project, I employed a combination of semi-structured interviews and photo elicitation activities to explore the meal preparation habits and challenges faced by busy professionals. The use of these methods allows me to gain deeper insights into the decision-making processes, time constraints, and emotional responses participants have toward meal planning, cooking, and food waste.
Interviews:
I conducted semi-structured interviews to explore participants' daily routines around meal preparation, including how they balance cooking with their demanding schedules, their reliance on takeout, and how meal planning fits into their week. I also focused on decision fatigue—how participants decide what to cook, how often they feel overwhelmed by choices, and what role convenience and health play in their decisions. The interviews allowed for flexibility, enabling participants to share their experiences openly while also ensuring that key topics related to meal preparation, food waste, and health-conscious decisions were covered.
Photo Elicitation:
In addition to the interviews, I used photo elicitation as an interactive activity. Participants were shown images related to various meal preparation scenarios, such as well-stocked or empty fridges, cluttered kitchens, healthy home-cooked meals, and food waste. This method helped to elicit emotional and thoughtful responses, enabling participants to express how these visual representations compared to their own experiences. By asking them to reflect on their feelings and routines in relation to the images, I was able to gather deeper insights into their attitudes toward meal planning, time management, and food waste.
Through these methods, I aimed to gather detailed insights into participants' experiences, habits, and frustrations with meal planning, cooking, and grocery shopping. The combination of interview questions and visual prompts allowed us to better understand the decision-making processes, challenges in maintaining healthy eating habits, and potential areas where a simplified meal management solution could offer the most value.
Participants
The participants recruited for this study were five Asian college students (three females and two males), all balancing demanding academic schedules with part-time jobs or extracurricular commitments. They represent a demographic that often experiences time constraints, decision fatigue, and a need for cost-effective, convenient meal solutions. These participants were selected to explore the challenges of meal planning, preparation, and healthy eating within the context of busy college life. By focusing on this group, the study aims to uncover insights relevant to other busy individuals and professionals who face similar struggles with meal management due to packed schedules and limited resources.
Findings
The research uncovered several key insights into the meal planning and preparation needs of busy college students, highlighting common barriers and potential areas for intervention:
Time Constraints and Reliance on Convenience
Insights: Due to busy schedules filled with classes, assignments, and part-time work, participants often struggled to find time for meal preparation. As a result, they frequently resorted to takeout or quick, pre-packaged meals for convenience. Several participants described a pattern of “defaulting” to takeout during high-stress periods, such as exam seasons or assignment deadlines, despite preferring healthier home-cooked options.
Implication: There is a need for a solution that reduces the time required for meal planning and preparation, offering quick and easy meal options that still align with health and dietary goals.
Challenges with Meal Planning and Decision Fatigue
Insights: Many participants experienced decision fatigue when it came to meal planning. The process of deciding what to cook each week, especially with limited cooking skills and recipe knowledge, often felt overwhelming. This led to indecision or repetitive meals, which eventually reduced their motivation to cook. Participants expressed a need for inspiration and guidance in meal choices to help ease the decision-making burden.
Implication: A solution that suggests meal options or recipes based on available ingredients, dietary preferences, and time constraints could alleviate decision fatigue and make meal planning more enjoyable.
Desire to Minimize Food Waste
Insights: Food waste was a recurring issue, with participants expressing frustration over spoiled ingredients, especially during busy weeks when they couldn’t cook as planned. Many felt guilty about food waste but struggled to use up perishables before they went bad. Strategies like freezing leftovers and buying smaller portions were common but not always effective in fully eliminating waste.
Implication: Participants would benefit from a solution that helps them track and manage their ingredients, suggesting recipes that use items close to expiration and encouraging smarter grocery shopping habits.
Emotional Responses to Meal Preparation and Food Waste
Insights: The photo elicitation activity revealed the emotional impact of meal preparation and food waste on participants. Images of cluttered kitchens, empty fridges, and wasted food triggered feelings of stress, guilt, and anxiety, while photos of home-cooked meals evoked pride and satisfaction. Participants indicated that a messy kitchen discouraged them from cooking, while a clean and organized space made the idea of meal preparation more appealing.
Implication: Any proposed solution should incorporate features that help organize and maintain a clean kitchen space, reinforcing positive feelings associated with cooking and reducing the psychological barriers to meal preparation.
Preference for Healthy and Cost-Effective Meal Options
Insights: Participants were generally health-conscious and preferred home-cooked meals for both financial and nutritional reasons. However, time limitations and a lack of culinary skills often pushed them toward less healthy takeout options. While they valued the health and cost benefits of cooking, they found it difficult to sustain healthy meal preparation consistently.
Implication: There is an opportunity to develop a meal planning solution that balances health, convenience, and affordability, offering meal ideas that are quick to prepare, nutritious, and budget-friendly.
User Persona
The user persona, Emma Chen, encapsulates the core insights from the research on students’ meal planning and preparation habits. This deliverable captures key behaviors, motivations, and pain points for Emma, who represents a typical college student with time constraints and a limited budget.
Key Insights
Emma’s persona highlights the struggle between convenience and cost, the lack of time for meal prep, and her desire to minimize food waste. These insights provide a foundation for understanding her decision-making process and areas where support tools could be impactful.
User Journey Map
The journey map traces Emma’s experience from planning a meal to managing leftovers. Each stage reveals her goals, actions, thoughts, and pain points, presenting a clear view of where improvements can be made.
Key Insights
The journey map underscores her need for meal planning assistance, flexibility in cooking, and tools to manage leftovers. It visually connects Emma’s interactions and emotional journey, pinpointing specific opportunities to enhance her meal planning experience.
Relationship Between Deliverables
The user persona provides a high-level view of Emma’s behaviors and attitudes, while the journey map dives deeper into specific stages of her experience, giving actionable insights. Together, these deliverables create a cohesive story: the persona identifies Emma's overall profile, and the journey map breaks down her daily touchpoints and challenges in meal management.
Lessons Learnt
Coverage of Contexts and Scenarios
In this project, I focused on Emma’s experience in the context of her busy academic life, but didn’t explore other contexts where she might interact with meal planning (e.g., social gatherings, holidays). Including these contexts could provide a fuller picture of her planning needs.
Types of Users Represented
Emma represents students with time and budget constraints, but this research might not fully capture other user types, like working professionals or individuals with dietary restrictions. If continued, this project could incorporate personas representing a wider demographic to enhance inclusivity.
Bias and Its Impact
One challenge in this research was avoiding confirmation bias when defining pain points—there was a tendency to focus on time-related constraints, possibly overlooking other influential factors like mental health or environmental concerns. This bias may have narrowed my insights, and in future projects, incorporating a wider range of interview questions could broaden the scope of findings.
Opportunities for Future Research
If this project were extended, it would be valuable to look deeper into how Emma and similar users manage grocery shopping more strategically, as well as how technology (e.g., meal-planning apps) could better integrate into their routines. Further exploration of her adaptability in meal preparation could reveal new insights on supporting flexibility and creativity in cooking with limited resources.