Redesigning Tasty by Buzzfeed

App Redesign, ux research, pitch deck

Why choose an app that already has 10M+ downloads and a whopping 4.7 stars?

Project Overview

For this competition, my team member and I were tasked with redesigning and improving the usability of one of 5 existing mobile apps by top companies, one of which was Tasty by Buzzfeed. Tasty is an app for the world's largest food network where you can search, watch and cook over 3000 recipes. It was an app that we ourselves would have used if only the UX issues were resolved. The challenge then became something that we genuinely wanted to take on.

The goal for this redesign was to utilize Buzzfeed's popularity and colossal community and emphasize its core characteristics which are fun, engaging, and creative. We aimed to make the app appealing to audiences of all age groups and diverse ethnicities.

My Contribution

Conducted user interviews, created user personas, came up with 6 out of 7 new features, selected the new colours, and made high fidelity wireframes.

Project Context

October 2021
Design Hackathon by IxDA
Team: Palka Dhirawani, Sayli Pednekar
Tools Used: Figma, Miro, Canva

Research Process

Informal User Interviews

Due to a lack of time, we called up a couple of friends and family members to gather their opinions about the app. We asked them questions about whether they had used other recipe apps before, what would be their primary purpose for using one, what would keep them from using Tasty, and how the app as a whole or a particular screen made them feel. The critical pain points observed from these were:

Difficulty in accessing some features or having to memorize how to access them.
The search screen is cluttered and difficult to read.
Unable to save multiple recipes all at once. One has to open the individual recipe page to save it.
Unfamiliarity with some of the ingredients and difficulty with using the US metric system.
No option to edit the recipe collections automatically made by Tasty on saving a recipe.
Need a feature to filter out recipes by particular ingredients.

User Personas

To better comprehend what kind of new features we could integrate, we created realistic representations of our 3 key audience segments in the form of user personas.

Competitive Analysis

After understanding the user pain points and crafting user personas, we wanted to understand the relative strengths of other competing recipe applications.

Tasty

Kitchen Stories

Cookpad

Yummly

Advanced Filters

✔

Cookbook

✔



✔

User publishing recipes



✔



Virtual pantry



✔

Food image recognition



✔

Step-by-step mode

✔



✔



On realizing that Tasty’s favorability comes from its plethora of recipes and YouTube popularity, we decided to keep the recipes as its primary focus point. Tasty was more convenient to navigate than all other applications, which we wanted to enhance. We also identified unique value propositions that Yummly had over Tasty. It was evident that we had to include some innovative features to improve Tasty’s user retention.

The Solution

Brainstorming New Features

Correlating all the above research to come up with novel features for the app was hands down the most fun part.

1. Ingredient information

Extra information about each ingredient is provided along with images and substitutions in-case some ingredient is unavailable or unknown to the user.

2. Following filter tags

A user can also select filter tags that they want to follow. Once they select these tags the user will get a notification every time a new recipe with that tag is added on the app.

3. Filter by ingredients

The user can filter out recipes according to all the ingredients they have available at home. This feature can also be used to exclude any ingredient from recipes.

4. Personal Notes

For users that don't know a particular ingredient, they can click on the info button and basic information about the ingredient, along with its picture and a substitute will be displayed

5. Random Recipe Selector

A random recipe will be selected every time the ‘GO’ button is clicked. Sometimes when there are many choices, it could be overwhelming for the user when they want to shortlist one. Since tasty has an immense database of recipes, this feature solves the problem of having to choose.

6. Tasty Blog Section

Blogs from the official tasty website are shown in the app. Clicking on a blog will redirect the user to that particular article on the blog website

7. Customizable Collections

The user can create customized recipe collections according to their needs and also mark the recipes they’ve made before.

Transforming the UI

Warm colours like red and orange are usually associated with food and induce a passionate hunger in people. The overbearing pink was replaced by a more subtle and contextual orange, while the Tasty brand's blue colour was maintained as an accent colour. The font was also changed to the more modern Montserrat.

Remodelling the Layout

Adding more tabs on the navbar for easy access to all features.
Organising the home page to efficiently utilise screen space and maximise engagement.
Moving the preparation section right below ingredients and adding checkboxes.
Compartmentalize tips/queries section and adding similar recipes section.
Created a separate page for searching and made the flow easier.

Information Architecture

To amalgamate our added features with the existing ones into the app, we devised an information architecture to decide how to best organize and structure all the components.

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