Solving customer pain points for Hello Fresh
The Brief
As part of a User Experience Design immersive course, we were given the freedom of choosing a problem space to explore and tackle. During the pandemic, there was a surge of people ordering food online on a regular basis. For busy professionals needing quick meal options, we decided to find ways of making the ordering experience on hello fresh better.
Approach:
The design for Hello Fresh was shaped by the principles of design thinking methodology - research, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
The Team:
Myself(UX Designer)
Poppy Neill (UX Designer)
Dada Park (UX Designer)
Stephen Siu (UX Designer)
Tools:
Figma
Whimsical
Google Forms
My Responsibilities as a (UX Designer) on the team:
Project Management
Research
Sketching
Wireframing
Prototyping
User Testing
Persona creation
One on one semi structured user interviews
Timeline:
3 weeks
Subscription mail order fresh food delivery service
HelloFresh is a leading meal kit company in Canada and across the world, providing ingredients for entire meals in refrigerated boxes with recipes. As well as specializes in Fresh ingredients for healthier dinner options and well-portioned meals.
Competitive Research
I conducted research to see the positive and negative aspects of each company and how we can include similarities to hello fresh to improve the quality of a food subscription service. As well as to question is there any missing factors that can be emplaned further explored.
Chefs Plate
Chef's Plate is an online platform that enables users to get fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and chef-inspired recipes to their homes while eliminating the need for grocery shopping.
Positives
Easy to use navigation
Eco friendly packaging
Variety meals
No-commitment subscription
Easy cancellation
Positives
Grocery variety shop options ex snacks
selection of Cultural foods options
Easy to use navigation
Variety meal plans
Eco friendly packaging
No-commitment subscription
Easy cancellation
Negatives
No rewards system
Not wide food selections for (snacks, grocery, breakfast meals)
No Wine pairings for every recipe
Cook it
A Montreal-based meal kit delivery company called Cook it has meal plans of wider food selection to choose from for bigger families, busy people, novice cooks, and vegetarians.
Positives
Large variety food for user types: Big Families ,Picky eaters, Novice cooks,Couples, Busy people , vegetarians.
Easy to use navigation
Eco friendly fish (Fish from sustainable fisheries, approved by Ocean Wise)
Free delivery
Rewards program
Wine pairings for every recipe
No-commitment subscription
Easy cancellation
Negative
Limited delivery area
No allergy information
Smaller food selection each week only dinner selection
Good food
A food subscription delivery service that provides fresh food with recipes to eliminate the need for grocery shopping.
Negatives
No rewards program
No list of allergens
No Wine pairings for every recipe
Background information
Market research
Demand is on the rise!
HelloFresh gained 1 million users in the first quarter of 2021 alone.
Industry Leader
HelloFresh is the industry leader with over 50% market share in 2020.
Home cooked meals
consumer behaviors shifted to home cooked meals during COVID. Users want to continue this trend.
Healthy Eating
There has been an increase in the healthy eating trend over the past 5 years.
Background Information
Market Research
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1200051/meal-kit-companies-market-shares-united-states
Competitive Research
We Combined our interviews results into a giant Affinity Mapping exercise
Was able to split users into different categories.
User Profile
Jane
A young professional who is always on the go
Goals
Cutting down food costs to spend elsewhere.
Learn how to cook new food.
Have a hassle free time when shopping, preparing and cooking dinner.
Frustration and Concerns
Hello Fresh and other services do not have enough variety in their meals
Last minute work trips makes canceling boxes ahead of time impossible.
Her constant on the go social life causes Jane to leave HelloFresh food uncooked and ultimately wasted.
User Journey
Week 1
Jane is looking for food inspiration and at home cooking and finds hello fresh
Jane is happy with the new meal rotation
Week 2
She is happy with her food rotation
She is happy with her food and discount price
Discount ends and she is not offered any more loyalty points or offers
Week 3
Jane buys food this week but it all goes to waste Orders box this week but realizes she has to go on a work trip
Week 4
Looks for food but not enough variety so cancels subscription
Define
HelloFresh Pain points
Variety
Over the long run, users find that the long term menu does not have enough options to choose from.
LifeStyle
Users are finding it difficult to consistently cook due to work trips, spontaneous friend visits and other changes.
Canceling Time
Currently, users must cancel their meals 5 days before delivery. This is impossible for users who have spontaneous schedules.
Wasting Food
Users feel guilty when they miss their meal box. They do not like to see their meal go to waste and this leads to cancellations.
Problem Statement :
Users are leaving HelloFresh because they are not satisfied with the variety of their meals and inflexibility of the ordering schedule
Opportunity
How might we change HelloFresh to recapture old users who canceled their service?
Ideation
Sketches (we iterated over several days)
Variety meal meal selection
Filter for the user to check the available options in a easier way
Question from the user face
What happens user clicks edit delivery button?
What happens when user clicks on cart button?
How would we structure options for the filter?(Protein , cuisine )card sorting
How does the screen currently look on PC and mobile
Lifestyle 4 Meals)
Let user to change the serving freely for each boxes
Ex : when the default serving is 4 , inform user how much it would cost extra
If he/she adds additional servings
Sketches (we iterated over several days)
I went over 6 more ideas that was pretty similar to our groups ideas for
Flex boxes , semi frozen
Longer life meets
Latening cancellations
Donating wasted food to local food banks
Allowing users to add on single servings
Ways to improve hello fresh
Solution / ideas
Who did we talk to ?
Recurring customers of hello fresh
What did we learn?
Users found that they were unable to use the meal kits due to changes in their schedule or lifestyle.
Ideas we explored :
Variety of food
Open a new line of business that serves semi prepared food
Canceling time
Delay before 24 hours / skip the week you can cancel grocery same day without a charge
Wasting food
Using fermented food instead of fresh meals
for an extra option to add when choosing a meal you can also send box to food banks to your area
These were the ideas that these were close but not a right fir for hello fresh :
wasted food lifestyle plans change or change food friends come over
Possibly partner with restaurants four different food experience like Uber eats
Themed evenings like taco Tuesdays or extra options like cultural for every country showing their type of food for the month or alternating throughout the month
Mystery week or month you just don't know what they are getting until they receive the box
Have biodegradable shopping bag full boar usable temperature cooler box reusable napkin to wrap food
Over a week we went over different options that better suited the users
After many Discussions
All of our ideas were the same but layouts and formatting was different. So we decided as a team to choose the same layout as hello fresh and add in the search bar and flex box option.
Solutions
Flexible Meal Kits
Increase the time meal kits can be kept in the warehouse or at home.
Shorten cancellation time
Allow users to cancel their meals in a shorter time frame.
Reducing Waste
Allow wasted food to go towards a good cause.
Display Variety
Allow users to filter through their catalog to show the variety of food and show if users ordered a box or not.
Ideation
I conducted user testing on all three pages and found that users found it and enjoyable experience with the first page but did not get as much good feedback for the food bank option for the 2nd screen and 3rd screen. User were unsure if they would they would use on the
(The low-fidelity version allows you the option of clicking on chicken)
(The low-fidelity version allows you the option of clicking on chicken)
Feedback from Questionnaires
Introducing Flex boxes
We created an intro on the main screen as a marketing strategy to introduce flex box and see how users respond to it.
5 out of 6 users loved the idea of trying something new , but the question remained would they use it often? Based on the interviews 3 out of 6 people who live a busy lifestyle didn’t mind trying it out for a while because food in the past would go to waste.
On the Menu page by clicking on the search bar and selecting the type of meat , then you are brought to the third screen as shown above.
Users top concerns are not enough variation and wasted food hence the flex box.
4 out of 6 found it easier to choose the food they crave for by adding in the type of meat.
I did an A.B. testing of the homepage with two different quotes to see how easy is it to catch the eye and Appeal to users.
Based on the a/b testing users preferred 6 users preferred option A and 2 user preferred option B.
Limited Finance Information
We had limited information surrounding the lifetime value of a customer or cost of retention. This made it difficult when it came to pricing and discount oriented solutions.
Limited Access
While we had access to current users, we would have liked to talk to at least 5 current users. This would aid us in understanding their behaviors.
Access to HelloFresh
We had no communication to HelloFresh which made information gathering more difficult.
Key takeaways
I learned about myself in this project to explain my ideas and sketches more clearly and communicate with your teammates often to achieve high quality work. As well as, know your team members’ strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. This will help give each individual opportunities to shine with their talents and expand their knowledge in areas they want to grow.