THE CHALLENGE
Paradox of choices
Green Chef is an organic meal kit delivery service, that sends customers food ingredients and recipes to prepare fresh meals. Compared to the competition, what sets Green Chef apart is its specialty meal kits for a variety of dietary preferences. From 3 meal plans in 2014, Green Chef has diversified and seen rapid growth in its product offerings to 9 meal plans including Vegan, Gluten-Free, Paleo & Keto.
Green Chef: 2014
Green Chef: Late 2017
The multitude of choices was great, but on the flip side made the product offerings difficult to understand and overwhelmed the users, effectively increasing the friction while signing up. This increased the number of drop-offs in the conversion funnel.
My Role
I led the design for optimizing the sign-up experience. Worked with a product manager and other cross-functional teams to drive conversion by uncovering insights, building concepts that address customer pain points. I did usability testing, created user journeys, wireframes, prototypes, and design specs.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
Understanding the data
When a user with a family of 3/4 came to Green Chef, they would order multiple boxes of a meal plan. Identifying this behavior, we launched family plan with two generic menu options– Carnivore and Omnivore.
Many users came to Green Chef for specialty menus like Vegan/ Paleo/ Gluten-free. In the interface when users clicked family plan, they only saw two options and were misguided by the UI that Green Chef doesn’t offer any of the specialty menus, and they would drop off from the sign-up flow.
The orders for the specialty menus almost halved after the launch of family plan.
Goal
The goal of the project was to improve the information architecture and the steps involved in the sign-up flow to eliminate user confusion and increase conversion.
DESIGN PROCESS
Concepts and Explorations
The initial concept I explored was to combine the 2 step process of choosing the meal plan to a single step in the sign-up flow. By default, users see all the menu option. If a user selects family meal plan option, the specialty menus go away, but it helps establish the understanding of why the meal plan disappeared.
I did a quick cafe study and tested this design with two users. I gave them a task-based question, asked few questions and observed their behavior while they interacted with the UI.
Concept I - Combine 2 step process
This concept helped to improve overall discoverability of plans, but it forced the users to do a lot of the hard work. Users had to do a lot of calculation regarding the number of servings, the number of boxes they need to order, and price per box. This felt like more work than they had expected and often frustrated the user and eventually lead to drop-off.
Usability heuristic–
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
After talking to two users, I had a shift in perspective. Instead of expecting users to understand the system and make a decision on what meal plan would fit their life and family, I decided to change the tone of the interaction. I settled on two fundamental questions which they already would know answers for:
– How many people they are cooking for?
– What they would like to eat
These two questions would give us all the information we need to made recommendations for the exact meal plan for them.
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How many people are you cooking for?
The user enters the number of people in their family. This helps to identify the plan and servings needed by the user.
A family plan consists of 8 servings and 2-person plan consist of 6 servings.
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What do you like to eat?
Based on the dietary preferences of the user, they can choose their ideal menu.
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View recipes
The description alone is often not the best way to explain the kind of recipes. View recipe feature allows users to get a preview of some of the top recipes for that menu that would give them a glimpse into what meals they can expect to get. The user can quickly compare meals from other meal plans as well.
Top choice for you
Based on user selections, Green Chef recommends the right meal plan and the number of servings/boxes to order. It also gives them an explanation of why a particular option is right for them.
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