Deciphr
Duration
Oct 2021
6 week sprint
My Role
UX/UI Designer (solo)
Project Manager
Platform & Sector
Mobile App
Consumer Products
Deliverables
UX/UI Design
User Research
Prototypes
Helping consumers demystify ingredient labels for everyday products across food, personal care and cleaning items, so they can lead healthier lives
The Design Challenge
My first personal project at Academy Xi took place over 6 weeks. I was asked to explore a problem space of interest.
I choose the frustrations that came with deciphering ingredient labels in packaged food and personal care items that could have long term health implications.
We are fortunate to have more tightly regulated food and chemical ingredient policies here in Australia, however there are still questionable ingredients hiding in our everyday products that many people are unaware of, with new research coming out linking certain ingredients as endocrine disruptors or carcinogenic. The amount of people experiencing food allergies, intolerances and chemical sensitivities has also exploded over the last decade.
Following the 'double diamond' design process, I developed an end-to-end solution to overcome this problem and delivered a user experience that could help improve the lives of everyday Australians
Project Scoping
To kick off the project I started out with a scoping framework to get a better understanding of the goals, deliverables, risks and constraints as well as identify my own assumptions about the topic
Problem Statement
With that, I came up with an initial problem statement:
"Health conscious consumers who want to better understand the ingredients in their packaged food and personal care products but are frustrated with the technical jargon on ingredient labels and the lack of tools available to help decipher them"
01
Discover
Desktop Research / Competitor Analysis / Contextual Inquiry
Survey 1 / Interviews / Survey 2
Research Plan & Objectives
I identified 3 Research Objectives which would help validate my problem statement
Desktop Research
6
Competitor Analysis
2
Contextual Inquiry
64
Surveys Respondents
4
Interviews
Desktop Research
Starting with desktop research, I came across some alarming statistics
2 in 100 adults
Food allergies now affect 1 in 10 infants and 2 in 100 adults in Australia. Australia has one of the highest allergy rates in the world.
2 million
In 2018, chemical sensitivities affected 2 million Australians and about 1 million have medically diagnosed MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities)
25%
Food intolerance is even more common - surveys indicate that up to 25% of the population believe they have an intolerance.
50%
50% of the population or 1 in 2 Australians have at least one chronic health condition
Competitor Analysis
How do the competitors stack up?
I had a look at other players in the market. Mostly what I found were apps by overseas companies that lacked a sufficient database of Australian products. There were also no options that combined food and personal care as an all-in-one solution; along with other functionality complaints.
Contextual Inquiry
Observing shopping habits
I set out to conduct a Contextual Inquiry in my local supermarket, but due to COVID and social distancing this turned into a contextual observation. 2 x trips of 20 minutes each were spent observing shoppers in action.
Key Findings
-
2 types of shoppers were noticed - those who know exactly what they're looking for and grab and go; and those who take a while to choose and will compare a few options
-
About 30% of shoppers I observed looked at the rear label of a product
-
Most people shopped alone however there were the occasional family groups (typically mum with older children)
Survey 1
44
Surveys Respondents
From my survey results, it was clear that the most concerned group were women, particularly women in their 30s, of which 43% of them have children and almost 80% are reading ingredient labels and have tried to research ingredients online. Most importantly, all respondents had struggled with trying to understand the ingredients to some degree.
When it came to purchasing decisions, the highest influence factors were dietary benefits (e.g. sugar free, gluten free, organic), followed by price, brand reputation and ingredients list. Products without harmful chemicals was also of importance, more so than macros and packaging.
Demographics
Influence on purchase
Interviews
4
1:1 Interviews
My one on one interviews identified that people had concerns when it came to particular ingredients (e.g. preservatives, SLS) or certain types of products (e.g. sauces, protein powders)
Most were overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information when researching as well as the sometimes conflicting information online. They are time poor and their concerns are either due to their own experience or the people close to them. Family influences was a common thread and I found that the people most deeply affected by this were people with health concerns (allergies, intolerances, food preferences) and mums with young children.
At this point, I realised I needed to speak to more mums to further validate my research. With time not on my side, I wasn't able to arrange more interviews so I settled on a survey targeting mums whilst incorporating as much qualitative questions as possible.
Survey 2
20
Surveys Respondents
Most mums felt frustrated and confused by ingredient labels and 80% said they would be inclined to use a digital tool to help with this problem. All respondents read ingredient labels when it came to purchasing products for their children, and also during pregnancy they tend to become increasingly mindful.
Types of products
Reframing the Problem
My initial problem statement of helping 'health conscious consumers' was too broad, so I narrowed my focus to helping 'mums with young children and health concerns'. Based on my research findings, this was the group most deeply impacted and who could benefit the most.
02
Define
Affinity Map / Empathy Map / Persona / Customer Journey Map / How Might We
Affinity Map
Synthesising the research into who, what, when, where, why, how helped me gain better context around the data. Some distinct themes also emerged - family, trust, time, credibility, cost
Key Insights
My research led me to 6 key insights
Empathy Map
All the insights were then fed into an empathy map, a visual way of empathising with the user to get a better understanding of what they think/feel/see/hear and do when it comes to deciphering ingredient labels.
Personas
From there, I came up with 2 user personas - Suzy who is concerned about the chemicals in personal care products, and Maggie who is concerned about the preservatives and additives in packaged food
Customer Journey Map
Mapping out both their journeys helped me identify pain points & frustrations and find opportunity areas for potential solutions
Key Pain Points
-
Unaware about harmful ingredients
-
Conflicting information
-
Suspicious about marketing
-
Too many things to research
-
Too much scientific jargon
-
Time consuming
-
Difficult to find replacement products
HMW's
This led to 3 How Might We statements
How Might We..
1
Demystify complex ingredient labels in packaged food and personal care products so that Suzy and Maggie can make more informed purchase decisions
2
Save time and effort for customers so that they are not wasting hours searching for information from a variety of sources
3
Highlight a product's environmental, ethical and social footprint so that users can support brands who are doing good for the planet
03
Develop
Ideation Workshop / MVP / Storyboard / User Flow
Wireframes / Mid-fi Prototype / User Testing
Ideation Workshop
7
Participants
2
Workshops
108
Ideas Generated
I conducted 2 ideation workshops - one with fellow classmates and another with my personas, using a combination of Crazy 8 brainstorming, dot voting and fist-to-five techniques.
MVP
Prioritising features to solve the biggest pain points
A few of my Suzy's mentioned nationally changing the packaging of products to be colour coded; this was a popular idea but has regulation constraints. The most feasible and efficient solution was having an app that can quickly scan products and provide non-biased risk assessment based on the ingredients. This became the MVP, along with few other features that were high value and easy to implement.
01 Barcode scanning app breaks down complex terms and advises health risks
02 Dietary filters/preferences
03 Favourites/Saved List
04 Suggestion for healthy alternatives of a product
05 Search by category, product and ingredient
06 Ability to see what products friends have saved (direct msg in app for opinion)
07 Translation feature for people who speak another language and also for when travelling
08 Environmental, ethical, social badges to quickly identify a product's footprint
09 Dictionary type feature that explains other commonly used terms for an ingredient
10 Daily newsfeed - latest scientific discoveries in ingredients
Storyboard
I choose to storyboard the main scan feature. This is the key functionality the app needs to be able to perform.
User Flow
My user flow went through a number of iterations. I decided to test the logic with my Suzys before I started building out the wireframes. 7 different issues were identified and changes were made before moving on to prototyping.
Wireframes
Lo-fidelity hand sketches on paper to map out key components
Mid-fidelity Prototype
With a basic plan in place I started prototyping mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma, making sure my interactions were smooth and wouldn't cause any problems in testing.
Usability Testing
3
Suzys tested
1
Maggie tested
Moderated testing on the mid-fi prototype revealed a few issues
1
Make reviews at top of product page clickable - all users tried to click here to access reviews
2
Main nav icons to include words - there was confusion about the meaning behind some of the icons
3
Eco badges to contain prompts notifying user they can click through - this was not immediately obvious
4
Ensure friend's list is linked to account page - improved navigation to find friend's pantry/cabinet
Each tester completed a SUS questionnaire and gave a rating of the app out of 10. The overall feedback was positive.
3/4
Suzys and Maggie gave an overall rating of 8/10
1/4
Suzy gave an overall rating of 10/10
Suzys loved the ability to view a friend's pantry/cabinet
Maggies loved the translation feature for scanning products in different languages
"This is especially useful for mums when they are recommending kids products to other mums and can never remember the names. I can tell them to just view my pantry!" - Suzy persona
"There's no quick way to know (about ingredients) unless you're picking up everything and reading it. This is great, it means I can store it and I don't have to think about it. It takes away the guesswork." - Suzy persona
04
Deliver
UI Design / Hi-fidelity Prototype / Next Steps
UI Design
Developing a 'look and feel' for Deciphr
Hi-fidelity
Prototype
Next Steps
Learnings
Learning new tools and methodologies
As my first UX/UI project it was a steep learning curve. The best way to learn something is by doing. Although intense and fast-paced, this was the best way to get good at new skills really quickly. Figma is now my new favourite tool and I've added many new methodologies to my design tool belt!
The power of co-design workshops
You walk away with so much more inspiration and new ideas than what you could have come up with on your own. Group synergy is a beautiful thing.
"The insights were wonderful, contextual inquiry was fantastic. Great storytelling with the effect this has on the population. Your deep dive with the venn diagram where it's actually about the mums, fantastic. Beautiful piece of work!"
Hayden Peters (Lead Experience Design Instructor, Academy Xi)
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