About the Project

FoodRX is a meal delivery service that has based it's research and recipes on the ketogenic diet. The core belief is that while chemotherapy battles the cancer in their bodies, cancer patients need the nutritional support in order to strengthen the body that needs to fight the cancer. In other words, the chemotherapy will fight the weeds, but the rest of the lawn must not be ignored.

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Challenge

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Create a menu and ordering system that reduces friction and allows freedom in ordering options.

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This work flow should include the full process of selecting food and the checkout flow. We decided to add subscription service functionality that could be useful to their users. During the kickoff meeting, the stakeholder requested to have a way to let users know that there will be a $1 deposit on the glass containers that the meals will come in.

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Research

In this project I did user interviews, stakeholder interviews, baseline usability tests, heuristic review of the current site, as well as comparative and competitive analysis. I wanted to discover what the health goals of the users of FoodRX are. I wanted to discover if the current design works, and how it can be improved. But first, we had to discover who her target audience is, and who her potential audience may be.

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I would like to discover the pain points that the current users may have with the current menu/ordering system that would dissuade them from completing their order, as well as difficulties throughout the checkout process.

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Target Audience

The target audience of FoodRX are cancer patients and the caregivers of those patients. The recipes that the meals are prepared with come from a ketogenic diet cook book. In thinking holistically of the product, the audience could really be anyone seeking the nutritional benefits from that diet and wants the convenience of using a meal delivery service.

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Interviews

The challenge I ran into was FoodRX does not have a very large user base, and their current users are cancer patients. Understandably this is a very sensitive subject, so it was difficult to find users that were willing to participate in our interviews. However, one of their users -- who was a caretaker for her mother who has cancer -- agreed to an interview with our stakeholder.

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In order to overcome this challenge of finding users willing to participate I decided that it would be best to create some proto-personas. I needed to conduct a stakeholder interview about her current customers. Few things I learned:

• Majority of her current users are the cancer patients themselves or their loved ones who are taking care of them.

• Users are often too weak and tired to prepare their own meals.

• Many of her customers found FoodRX valuable because it’s the only meal delivery service that’s based on the ketogenic diet.

• Most of her customers experience these 4 symptoms: leukopenia, nausea, diarrhea and sore mouth.

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Baseline Usability Tests

I conducted baseline usability tests with the current website in order to discover pain points that users may encounter with the current ordering system. My target audience were people who have used meal delivery services in the past. I tested on 4 users and discovered several issues in the flow and functionality of the menu system.

• Users found it confusing that the current system had the ordering on one page and the selection of menu items on a different page.

• Users would be able to add a package to their cart, but they had no idea how to specify the items in the packages until they get to the checkout page. Then they were frustrated that they couldn’t see the menu selection from the checkout page that they were on.

• Users did not know what would happen if they picked a package and did not make meal selections, but were able to complete the order.

• Users were surprised by the delivery charge when they went to checkout.

• Users were confused how to set the delivery date and time. Requires too much effort.

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Comparative / Competitive Analysis

I found the competing services as well with websites that offered comparable meal delivery services and broke down the services into smaller elements and features, in order to compare what is currently being offered in the market, as well as what opportunities are there for us to set FoodRX apart from their competitors.

 

I highlighted the features that only had 2 check marks or less as an area of opportunity, and I highlighted the features that had mostly check marks, but FoodRX is not currently offering as areas that FoodRX would consider implementing in order to keep up with the competition.

Task Analysis

I created a task analysis in order to really get into the shoes of the proto-personas that I created, Lila. This helped my team design solutions that would solve some of the issues that our persona Lila may encounter. I have to note that the flow as you see it here will evolve and change as my team and I work through the user flows.

User Flows

This was a pretty complex user flow to develop, because I wanted to develop a very open way of purchasing that I did not see in the competitive analysis. Our competitors either had the option of ordering a la carte or selecting a meal plan, and did not have the option of using the automated "chef's recommendation" selection. Based on the stakeholder interviews and the user interviews, I felt that FoodRX should be able to serve all of these different types of people.

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Before the user even gets to see the meals, I wanted to assure that they are in the delivery area. FoodRX uses courier delivery services, they only serve in certain areas. I included a zip code entry input for the user to check their delivery area. This will prevent the error of users going throughout the whole process only to find out they just wasted their time, because they are outside the delivery area.

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FoodRX has a rotating menu, so depending on the date you want your food delivered, you will have a different selection of food. I felt that it was important to first split the menu up by date. The user will select the delivery date from a list, this will load in the menu selection for that date. The original flow had the menu on one page and the ordering system on a different page. The menu page had various dates on the list of items, which would lead to errors in ordering, because customers would order items that are not for the delivery date that they intended. My thought is that separating the menu items by date first will prevent that error from occurring.

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I wanted to incorporate the chef's recommendations selection, because I thought about someone going through Cancer treatments and chemotherapy, and tried to consider how loss of appetite and motivation would make it difficult to make those decisions. Before the system goes through the automated meal selection, I would devise a way for those patients to set their medical and dietary preferences for their meal selections.

 

During checkout I will include options to return used FoodRX glass containers from your last order. My team and I decided that it would be best to incorporate the cost of the container fee into the cost of the meals, this way users will not feel that there are 'hidden fees.' When users return their glass containers, they will get credited money. This gives users an extra incentive to return to the website to use their credits on new meals.

 

Another option in the the checkout will be to make the order reoccurring. I felt that if a user really enjoys the service and the meals, it made sense to make it easy for them to continue having that convenience and enjoyment every week.

Validation

In order to validate some of my ideas, I took the prototype that I created and conducted usability tests. I tested my prototype on 4 people and I had them think out loud as there were going through the test. I was pleasantly surprised when all users were able to pass the test without issues. There were minor changes that I implemented into the final design, but the menu and ordering system were very intuitive for the users to navigate through.