End-to-End MVP
Smart food-allergy app providing safe ingredient substitutes for any recipe.
At-A-Glance
Many people in my family have either food-allergies, intolerances or dietary needs. The idea behind Parsely was fueled to help those in my family who like cooking at home. As the product designer, my goal was to create a personalized, expert-backed tool to help them feel confident knowing that what they’re cooking is always safe for them to eat. The app’s MVP is to capture any recipe, analyze it for unsafe ingredients (based on a user’s dietary needs) and provide safe substitutes. Those with dietary needs shouldn’t feel overwhelmed deciding what to cook. Parsely provides peace of mind and a variety of safe recipes.
My Role
User Researcher, Product Designer, Visual Designer, Brand Designer
Type
iOS App Design
Health & Wellness
Industry
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Optimal Workshop, Whimsical, Ballpark, Zoom, Adobe Illustrator
Timeline
4 weeks
Highlights
Parsely assists home cooks with dietary needs and food intolerances.
Build trust
Safety starts with personalization. Parsely builds a user’s allergen profile by asking the right questions up front. This builds user trust, ensures safe recommendations and provides a tailored experience.
Expert analysis
Parsely can analyze any recipe (yes, ANY recipe), scan it for unsafe ingredients and provide users with safe substitutions based on their allergen profile.
Ingredient substitutes
When offering ingredient substitutions, Parsely provides flexibility. Whether a store-bought product at local supermarkets or a simple homemade alternative.
Quick access anytime
Parsely makes it easy to build a personalized library of recipes, ingredients and products. These saved items live in a dedicated section – so you can quickly revisit online and offline.
Discover
Research shows millions of people worldwide have food allergies.
Secondary research
Researching the statistics about those with dietary needs led to an astounding fact – that nearly 11% of adults aged 18 or older have at least one food allergy. This is more than 27 million adults across the U.S. Additionally, 40% of that population reported having two or more food allergies.
The nine leading causes of food allergies are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. These are often referred to as the “Top 9” or “Big 9”.
To prevent reactions, people often rely on a combination of avoidance, action planning and medication. This is a continuous cycle.
User interviews x 5
Competitor analysis
My analysis revealed that there are no direct competitors who provide a recipe scanning feature to replace ingredients based on a user’s dietary needs.
Doesn’t intuitively swap safe recipe ingredients
No shopping list builder
Allergen-safe food product database
Recipe database
User community
Doesn’t intuitively swap safe recipe ingredients
No recipe database
No allergen-safe food product database
No shopping list builder
No user community
Doesn’t intuitively swap safe recipe ingredients
No recipe database
Allergen-safe food product database
Shopping list builder
User community
Doesn’t intuitively swap safe recipe ingredients
No recipe database
No allergen-safe food product database
No shopping list builder
User community
Research synthesis
By synthesizing all of the research data, several pain points were found. I narrowed them down by prioritizing the most viable to solve. The most critical ones are listed below.
Cooking at home to manage dietary needs is overwhelming
Sometimes lacks the energy it takes to meal prep
Users are frustrated with limited options while cooking
Substituting safe recipe ingredients with homemade alternates is tedious
Existing apps are lacking recipes tailored to those with multiple needs
Going to several stores to find allergen-friendly products is inconvenient
Researching new recipes aligned with dietary needs is time-consuming
Cook same “safe” recipes, but experience mealtime monotony
Confident only using apps backed by credible experts
Recipe Analysis
Users feel limited when cooking at home. They want a variety of new meal options tailored to their needs.
To address this, an AI expert will be implemented to capture any recipe, analyze it for unsafe ingredients and provide safe substitutions tailored to each user’s needs.
Product Availability
Users are frustrated by having to visit several stores to find allergen-friendly food products.
To address this, a geo locator will be integrated to provide availability of allergen-friendly products at stores local to the user.
USer Reviews
Users don’t want to spend time searching for recipes they can use or read reviews about them.
To address this, recipes saved and rated by users will be accessible to the app community. Granular filtering will be integrated for easy searching.
Define
How clarifying the solution helps home cooks with dietary needs.
I created the below user persona based on my findings. Daniel is someone who has food allergies and intolerances. He has a desire to cook at home more often, but doesn’t because of the issues he encounters.
Daniel Desai
Age:
31
Occupation:
Software Engineer
Location:
Santa Clara, CA
Hobbies:
Music, tennis, drawing
Overview
Daniel is a software engineer who thrives on efficiency, but managing his soy, dairy, wheat and corn allergies has been wearing on him. Due to a recent promotion, his time is limited and needs a convenient solution to manage mealtimes. He’s all for using apps, but most of them don’t accommodate those with multiple dietary needs.
Frustrations
Goals
How might we give users easy access to allergen-safe recipes and expert-backed ingredient substitutions, ensuring confidence in their mealtime choices?
Develop
Prioritizing solutions to fulfill user needs.
Information Architecture
After defining user goals and the HMW, I then outlined the app’s MVP (capture any recipe, analyze it and provide allergen-safe ingredient substitutues based on a users allergy profile) by creating the information architecture.
My Dashboard
My Favorites
My Profile
Community
Onboarding *
Explore
Task Flow
User Scenario
Daniel has been making the same allergen-safe meals that are familiar and convent due to a busy work schedule. He’s bored rotating the same meals each week.
Before discovering his dietary needs, Daniel collected several favorite recipes because he enjoyed cooking. To test Parsely’s recipe capture feature, he visits his Pinterest board and picks one.
Wireframes
I sketched out low-fidelity wireframes to represent three different task flows. Each set of screens shows how the user completes steps within the tasks.
Onboarding
Capture Recipe
Ingredient Substitutes
Task 1: Onboarding
Important step for the system to gather info about the users’ food allergies in order to provide a safe and tailored app experience.
App Name
When deciding on a unique and memorable name for my app, I jotted down several words associated with the brand voice (confident, insightful, safe, positive). I landed on a clever word that combines the verb, to parse with the word parsley = “Parsely”.
Branding
The Parsely brand is reflective of its core values – positive, insightful, confident and safe. The visual aesthetic borrows from an earth tone color palette, hand drawn illustrations, organic shapes and friendly imagery.
Component Library
Logo
Style Tile
Test & Iterate
Testing the prototype for usability and final delivery.
Key comparisons
Using Figma, I conducted a moderated usability test with participants from my target demographic. I observed my users to see if/how they successfully completed three tasks.
Onboarding
Before
Users were unsure where they were in the onboarding flow. They also felt the back/next arrows weren’t visible at the bottom.
After
Adding a progress bar at the top with back/next buttons ensures users can easily identify where they are in the onboarding process.
Dashboard Navigation
Before
Users were unclear about the placement of some buttons. The priority suggestion was to move the most important options to the top and rename them to: My Recipes, My Ingredients, My Products.
After
Iterations proved successful as all users verified the circular navigation. They feel it’s effective, unique from standard navigations and that it fits the overall visual aesthetic.
Ingredient Substitutes
Before
Users felt the content was crowded and needs open space for better readability. They were also unclear that the up/down arrows are for indicating ingredient replacements.
After
Users verified the new UI by stating it’s intuitive, it successfully identifies allergens and the ingredient alternatives are distinct. They feel it exceeds expectations with these modifications.
Takeaways
Pain points
Users unsure how the app works. Designed “How it works” screens to generate buy-in.
Users unclear where they are in the onboarding process. Made them accessible with bigger tap area.
Recipe capture feature has too many steps. Redesigned the flow to be more streamlined.
Crowded content for the “Food-allergen(s) found” screen. Redesigned for better readibility.
Positive Feedback
Appropriate amount of onboarding questions to build a user’s allergen profile.
Users praised the app’s ability to detect unsafe ingredients in any recipe and provide safe substitutions.
The ability to save safe recipes, ingredients and products to “My Favorites” is very helpful.
The circular dashboard navigation design was well received and a refreshing from standard designs.
Reflection
Here are some important things I learned throughout the process of creating Parsely.
Continue to iterate
Continued iteration is vital to ensure the product meets both user needs and business goals. It also saves time before committing to detailed, high-fidelity prototype.
A/B Testing
A/B testing multiple versions of the recipe capture revealed how users expect the feature to behave. This process helped balance automation and user control.
Empathy is essential
Fully understanding user needs, pain points and emotional drivers were essential to creating a meaningful product.
Limited space
For mobile apps, space is limited. It’s important to prioritize and balance content in order to make the user flow seamless.
View prototype
