My role : User Research, User Personas, Conversation design, Script and Flows, User testing, Multimodal prototyping, JS code modifications

Objective

This skill allows users to choose quick meal recipes for a specific meal type and then follow step-by-step instructions to prepare it.

In today's busy world, having time to prepare meals can be challenging. The lack of time, motivation, easy recipes, and all the ingredients are just some of the reasons people rely on fast food and snacks, not realizing they need less time to prepare a healthy meal at home than to a fast-food restaurant.

Quick chef knows recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even snacks. The recipes are easy to make, fun, and healthy. They were created for hard-working professionals, "don't know how to cook yet" teenagers, moms that want to include their children in meal prep, and everyone else who still doesn't know that it is easy to eat healthy food every day.

Research

Before I started my research, I focused on the following questions, that later helped me out to establish the 5 W's:

• How do people generally search for recipes or recipe inspiration?

• How will users navigate the available recipes without visuals?

• Is there a particular audience for the skill?

• How to account for cultural considerations in meal preparation?

• How do people prefer receiving directions for meal preparation?

Who

Anyone who’s interested in quick meal preparation, who wishes for recipe inspiration, and who’s comfortable browsing with and using voice technology. I targeted a subgroup of young professionals ages 18-35, who may want to create a small, simple meal for themselves

Where

Users will use this app at home when preparing meals, but may also access it on the run. For example, they might load it up at the grocery store when thinking about what ingredients they need

What

A digital recipe book of short recipes with preparation directions, available as an Amazon Alexa skill

When

Users will use this app to prepare small meals or snacks throughout the day

Why

To help users decide on and prepare quick, simple meal

User Persona & System Persona

Once I established the 5 W's, and conducted surveys and user interviews, I created two different personas: User persona that will represent voice of users, and system persona, with unique character and skill set.

User Persona

Everyday Activities

• Work from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday to Saturday

• He likes to wake up early to have a coffee and tasty breakfast

• James takes a nap after work, and then study until the time for bed

Environment

• James lives in a one-bedroom apartment in New York City, not too large.

• His bedroom is dedicated to relaxation and living room to socializing with others.

• He has a large TV, perfect for video games he enjoys playing with his friends during his free time. His kitchen is well equipped and well organized

Needs & Goals

• He wants to be able to make at least two meals at once

• James wants to know the necessary ingredients, so he can order and get them delivered before cooking time

• He needs to access to quick, but healthy recipes

Motivations

• Wants to progress in his career fast so that he can enjoy later

• James wants to maintain a healthy lifestyle, even though he doesn’t have time to go to the gym every day as he used to

• James misses his daily workouts, but he is aware that as soon as he finishes studying, he will be able to go back to his old habits

Frustrations

• James is facing one of the most challenging periods in his life, where he has to constantly prove himself at work

• Sometimes he doesn’t have time to cook, so he eats fast food or snacks until the next meal.

About James

• James is a personal banker and lives in New York City. He moved there when he was 18 from a small town and started supporting himself throughout the college

• Now he is 30, with a flourishing career in finances. However, he works in one of the busiest locations in the city and meets up with numerous clients per day. Recently he got an opportunity to be sponsored for additional banking licenses, so after work, he usually goes home right away, to take a nap, and then study for a couple of hours.

• As he doesn’t have a lot of free time and he tries to be as organized as possible. James doesn’t have time to go to the gym, as he used to every day, so he relies on balanced nutrition to remain healthy in this busy period

• He gets his fresh food delivered every week and plans his meals

• James loves to cook and consider himself quite advanced, so even complicated recipes inspire him, but he is aware he must prepare his meals more efficiently

• The majority of his food intake is vegetables and fruits, and every protein meal has to have a side dish containing vegetables. He eats desserts once in a blue moon

• He loves to hang out with his friends, indoor, and outdoor. His living room is adapted to socializing, and he usually has company over the weekends

System Persona

Portrait

• She is 28, born in and raised in London, UK

• As the UK has a very culturally diverse society, she started learning about different cuisines at a very early age

• Julia attended the School of Artisan Food, and she also took some classes at Westminster Catering College

• She loves to travel, and every time she visits a new country, it feels like a pilgrimage for her.

• Julia loves to visit small restaurants and meet with the local housewives that are known as great cooks in their community

• She likes to share stories from her travels and recreate experiences

Function

Offers a variety of fast and healthy recipes from all over the world and understand your time is precious

Speaking Style

• She has two accents: UK English and American English

• Julia is informative and polite

• She is informal, but she won’t use street or colloquial language.

• Her speaking style could be described as a pleasant mixture of Jamie Oliver and Sadia Badie

Personality

• She is joyful, friendly and always ready to cook

• She is a world traveler and tells interesting cooking stories, and doing so making chopping and stirring more amusing

• Her character is mix of country housewife who likes to cook and a world traveler.

Julia’s Character

Knowledgeable

Julia knows her food and likes to get to know her users' needs, habits and food preferences and to adapt to them

Patient

She understands that users have different culinary skill levels. If asked to repeat, she will do so by changing the word order or using synonyms for actions a user has to take

Concise

Julia describes a receipt at the beginning and then repeats simple, short sentences, navigating users cooking direction

User story and sample dialogs

Challenge No. 2:

After choosing desired recipe, the system offers step-by-step instructions, but sometimes users can get disturbed and miss the prep step.

User Story

When I decide to make a 5-minute-recipe meal, I want to have an option to replay the instruction, so I don’t have to listen to everything from the beginning

Challenge No. 3:

If users are already familiar with the recipe they would like to make, but they need a specific recipe information, system should prompt only a desired information, without telling the full recipe

User Story

When I decide to make Quick chef dish, I had few days ago, I want to have an option to skip some steps if I already know them, so I can save even more time and don’t get bored

Challenge No. 4:

If users have a specific food group or allergies, the system should offer only the recipes that suits users dietary needs

User Story

As a person with severe food allergies, I want to be able to save the list of my allergens, so that I get access only to the recipes that are suited for my dietary restriction

Testing

With the total of 6 test participants, three of them are native English speakers, two are bilingual (English and Serbian), and one is Serbian and proficient in English. I have chosen this group of test participants because of their different English levels and communicated with some of them in Serbian during the testing, so they could come up with English phrases without any previous task/scenario influence

Discovered issues

1. Test participants with no prior voice assistant experience wanted to ask additional questions that this skill doesn’t support, seeing Quick chef similar to Alexa. Before we continued, I had to make sure they understand what assistant skills are and how they work, making a comparison with mobile apps.

2. Not all the utterances were supported, so I included the new ideas to the existing list.

3. After conducting testing with 6 participants, it is discovered that 4 out of 6 would like to have, at the very beginning of interaction with Quick chef, two options: to get a couple of suggested recipes and to ask for a recipe for available ingredients.

Suggested changes

• The first suggested change given by 3 out of 6 test participants is changing the intro prompt and introducing users with capabilities this skill support. Suggested intro prompt should include an option to hear meal-type suggestions or to input available ingredients without listening another set of suggested options.

• Suggested prompt: Hi, Quick chef is here. I can tell you some of my top recipes for {mealType} or you can say what ingredients you want to use.

• If the system offers three recipes for a specific meal type, and if the user doesn’t like any of the suggested ones, users would like to have two options: to propose a recipe with a specific ingredient or to hear more recipes.

• Suggested prompt: If you don’t like these, I can tell you more recipes, or you can tell me what ingredient you want to use.

• Background music was suggested by 2 test participants who cannot cook without the music. They suggest instrumental, lounge music that will stimulate users' cooking skills and the volume should be adjustable, higher during the cooking time, and lower during the assistant - user interaction.