Homemade
About
In the Summer of 2015, I traveled to Nice, France to take part in the European Innovation Academy startup accelerator. There, I created the startup Homemade with two fellow UC Berkeley students and two Carnegie Mellon students. The idea came about as my team and I were discussing how much we missed a good home cooked meal while we were in Europe. Coming from such diverse backgrounds (Indian, Chinese, Iranian, Algerian and Qatari), we were unsatisfied with our dining options while we were in Europe. This gave us the idea of a service that would provide authentic meals that are cooked right in our local communities. Homemade is a mobile app that connects hungry customers with chefs in their community who provide authentic, home cooked meals.
Design Process: User Research
Before moving forward with designing the app itself, we focused on validating our idea first. Since we were across the world and our target audience was in San Francisco/Bay Area, we conducted user interviews over Google Forms to collect data. We needed to clarify some important questions, such as who our target audience was, do we have a market interested in buying, and if we do, do we have a market that is interested in cooking?
Here are a few questions we asked our interviewees:
User Feedback
People loved the idea of home cooked meal meals available in their community and were willing to pay more for a more authentic meal. At the same time, people were willing to cook for members of their community as a hobby or a means to earn money. We concluded that delivery service was just not feasible in the early stages because it would require a lot more resources that we just did not have (we were in a whole other continent). At the same time, the users made it clear that picking up food locally was a viable option if it was within a reasonable distance.
Lo-Fi Mockups
User Testing
The feedback from the first round of user testing clarified the need to improve the ease of use for older people. User feedback made it clear that most of the people who were interested in cooking for Homemade were older (retired, grandmothers, stay-at-home moms). The app needs to be easy enough for my 65 year old grandmother to use.
Final
The culmination of all the user feedback and research resulted in our final product. As seen above, the app appeals to both old and young with its minimal interface and simple user flow. The user has the ability to toggle between cooking as a chef or purchasing as a customer, pick up food locally in their community, and get a great authentic eating experience.