Sujay Kotwal - NomNomBox

Team: 6 members

Mentors: Dr. Jonathan Cagan, Prof. Eric Anderson, Prof. Peter Boatwright

My Role: I led a team of 6 designers to spearhead user research, conduct brainstorming and ideation phases, storyboard ideas for narrative recipes and produce mid-fidelity and high-fidelity app interface prototypes.

Duration: 4 Months- Fall 2016

background

NomNomBox is a product designed to engage kids aged 2-4 into cooking activities in a fun, interactive way. It is based on an increasing interest from millennial parents to cook with their children as a way to learn healthy eating habits, sharing family meals and improve children's skills while having fun. Introducing kids into the kitchen is a trend that has also transferred to preschools as a way to enhance cognitive and language development, as well as encourage picky eaters to try new flavors. We have envisioned a product that works as a combination of an ingredient kit, storybook and an interactive app.

The recipe kit is an ensemble of all the ingredients required for a particular recipe.

Storybook provides an alternative method for the kids to learn recipes by dividing different phases of the cooking phases into different scenes of a story. The storybook is tailored in way that makes the process of cooking as an adventure journey.

The App provides an audio-video narration that works on the lines of storybook. It also provides a secondary source for revenue generation with in-app purchases. The intuitive UI allows users to immortalize precious moments from their cooking experience with a “Click-a-photo” feature.

process

Identifying Product Opportunities

list of opportunities:

Developing Social, Economic and Technological Factors and Finding Product Opportunity Gaps

Value Opportunity Analysis using weighted matrix:

Final Set factors for our opportunity:

UNDERSTANDING USERS

Stakeholder interviews

After 5 rounds of user interviews, following insights were uncovered:

• Care about their children’s eating healthy & fresh meals

• Struggle encouraging their kids to try different ingredients/ foods

• Raise their kids to be more responsible

• Enjoy Cooking with their kids as a bonding and educational experience

USER JOURNEY

kEY PAIN POINTS

• Parents have little time to plan ahead of time

- selecting a recipe

- preparing for cooking

- cleaning up afterwards

• Tend to repeat the same “safe” recipe

• Cooking with kids can happen really fast (5-10mins)

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Even though there are no equivalent products in the market, we can find a similar services for adult cooking in three companies: Blue Apron, Plated and Hello Fresh, between others.

All of them offer the experience of cooking gourmet recipes at home, which is implemented by an online platform where users sign up for a membership, get to choose a meal’s recipe and then pay for a box with ingredients and instructions that is delivered to their homes. In terms of packaging, all of them offer very similar products, which is essentially a box with sub-containers for different types of ingredients, and gel cold packs to keep them at a low temperature. They also all include high quality paper instructions with pictures, monthly plans, and offer extensive information on their websites about the origin of the produce they include. For the most part, they offer fresh organic or local ingredients that are hard to find in ordinary shops.

CONCEPTUALIZING OPPORTUNITY

The design of the product will include the packaging design, labeling, App interface and the stories and recipes selected.

Design Features of Packaging:

• Flexible or Modular, it should allow for more than one function other than contain the food ingredients (Example: serve as a holder for the story instructions or as a phone holder for the kitchen while cooking).

• Has to allow for ventilation

• Needs to fit into the fridge for storage

• Easy to handle/ hold

• Attractive for Kids

Design Features for Labeling:

• Level of cooking difficulty

• Ages recommended

• Nutritional Information

• Ingredients content

• Utensils needed

• Preparation time

Packaging Concept Exploration

Packaging Exploration: Toy Box/ Tool Box Concept

Packaging Container Exploration: Toy Containers, Easy to Handle For Pre-Schoolers

Story Guidelines

• Encourage user more for trying for their success

• Story flow:

- Once upon a time there was. . . . .

- Everyday, . . . . . One day, . . . . .

- Because of that, . . . . . Until finally . . . . .

- Find what the character is comfortable with and challenge them

- Give users “opinions”

App interface

First, we started with low-fidelity wireframes. We closed the whole flow of the application and thought about what the parents and kids are going to interact with the application. Based on that, we figure out the main features and functions of this application. We tested our paper prototypes on millennials.