MUNCHMATES
Find recipes, find community
Munchmates, a social cooking application to foster community while finding recipes
Project Overview:
Role: UX Designer
Team: Jarenz Castillo, Ryan Eang, Zander Villaysane
Skills: User Interviews, User Research, UI Design, Prototyping
Timeline: January 24, 2024 – January 28, 2024
During the designathon held from January 24th to January 28th, 2024, I collaborated with a dynamic team to develop an innovative application named Munchmates. Throughout the intense event, we dedicated ourselves to grinding and working closely together, focusing on designing a prototype of the application. Our efforts were bolstered by conducting extensive user research, ensuring that Munchmates would meet the needs and preferences of its intended users. It was an exhilarating experience characterized by creativity, teamwork, and a shared commitment to excellence in design and user experience.
PROBLEM:
Design a digital application that addresses a challenge that undergraduate students may face.
What is MunchMates?
Our project is a social cooking application that allows users to find recipes and fosters a community of individuals who want to progress their cooking skills, show off their skills, or make friends. The entire purpose of the application is to allow students to become more proactive in cooking by encouraging social interaction among undergraduate students. Undergraduate students suffer from inconsistent eating schedules, the inability to cook, and lack of time. We wanted to help reinforce good eating habits for students by gamifying it and incentivizing it by providing checkpoints and challenges that students can overcome whether it be solo or with a group of people. We wanted to help bridge the gap between physical needs such as hunger and facilitating a social experience, which is something that undergraduate students tend to struggle with, especially when first coming into college.
My Contributions
During the designathon, I played a pivotal role in shaping the vision and functionality of Munchmates. As a UX designer, I spearheaded the user research phase, conducting interviews, surveys, and usability tests to gather valuable insights into user preferences and pain points. Leveraging this data, I collaborated closely with the team to refine our app concept, ensuring it addressed real-world needs effectively.
In addition to leading the user research efforts, I was heavily involved in the design process, contributing to wireframing, prototyping, and interface design. Drawing on my expertise in UX/UI design principles, I crafted intuitive user flows and visually appealing interfaces that enhanced the overall usability and aesthetic appeal of Munchmates.
USER RESEARCH
Our research process began with conducting market research to identify apps that already offer features similar to our concept. This initial step was pivotal in understanding what these applications do well and where they fall short. By pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses of existing solutions, we aimed to identify opportunities for our app to fill in the market gaps.
Subsequently, we implemented a Google Form survey targeting students currently enrolled in undergraduate programs to conduct need-finding more directly. This phase of our research was designed to capture the general problems faced by our peers when it comes to cooking.
By comparing the issues identified through the survey with the solutions offered by the current market, we sought to discover areas where our app could offer new, impactful solutions. The survey yielded 30 responses, providing us with valuable insights. These responses underscored the potential for our app to address cooking challenges and foster social connections through food:
- The main challenge highlighted by students was the lack of time, experience, and materials for cooking, which accounted for 63% of the responses
- 16.6% of respondents indicated that not having enough groceries or money was a significant barrier
In exploring the social aspect: we aimed to understand the frequency of cooking with friends:
- 55.6% of respondents rarely engaged in cooking with friends, rating their frequency as 1’s and 2’s on our scale
- 20% were neutral with a rating of 3
- 23.4% often cooked with friends, indicated by ratings of 4’s and 5’s
- 73.3% of participants showed a decent to extreme likelihood, rating 3 or higher on our scale
The concept of meeting new people to cook with was well-received:
- 60% of respondents showing openness to the idea, rating their willingness as 4 or higher
- 76.7% responded affirmatively.
Competitive Analysis
In our competitive analysis of MunchMates against leading recipe and social apps—Grub Social, Recon: Friends and Food, Pepper, and Kitchen Stories—we identified unique strengths and gaps within each platform. While these apps offer valuable features for culinary exploration and social interaction, we noted the absence of several critical elements that MunchMates aims to integrate, including meal planning, direct messaging capabilities, cooking challenges, and robust community features. This analysis underscores MunchMates’ unique positioning in the market, highlighting our commitment to delivering a comprehensive culinary experience that fosters connection, creativity, and convenience.
This table illustrates the distinctive attributes of MunchMates compared to its competitors, showcasing our app’s comprehensive approach to integrating meal planning, enhanced communication, engaging challenges, and a vibrant community into the culinary and social landscape.
| Area of Analysis | Platforms | |||||
| # | Category | Description | Grubsocial https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grub-social/id1672676290 | Recon: Food, Friends, Funhttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/recon-food-friends-fun/id1554505144 | Pepper https://www.peppertheapp.com/ | KitchenStorieshttps://www.kitchenstories.com/en |
| Logo | What do the app logos look like? |  |  |  |  | |
| 1 | User Based and Demographic | Does it have user profiles? | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 2 | Social Sharing | Do the apps have features that allow users to share their profile along with descriptive tags? (i.e. dietary restrictions, experience, etc.) | ✅ only experiences | ✅ also only experiences | ✅ | ❌just folders |
| 3 | Friend/Follower System | Do the apps have a system in place where users can follow or connect with friends and see their timeline? | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| 4 | User-Generated Content | Do the apps allow users to create and share their own recipes | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 5 | Meal Plannings | Tools for users to plan and organize their meals, and ability to generate shopping lists based on chosen recipes | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| 6 | Messaging/Chat | Do the apps have a messaging or chat feature that allows users to communicate with friends or other users in the app? | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 7 | Interactive feed | Is there a dynamic/visually appealing feed that displays latest recipes, photos, and updates from users? | ✅ just for photos and updates from users | ✅ just for photos and updates from users | ✅ | ✅ only recipes |
| 8 | Cooking Challenges | Integration challenges or cooking competitions ? | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 9 | Reviews and Ratings | Do the apps allow users to rate and review? Can users see the reviews and ratings of other users? | ✅ ability to save posts too | ✅ users are only able to like (more supportive) not critique | ✅ | ✅ |
| 10 | Community Features | Do the apps have forums, groups, or other spaces where users can discuss meals and how to cook? | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
DESIGN PROCESS
Ideate
The ideation phase commenced with a deep dive into understanding the core challenges faced by students, focusing on identifying specific pain points and the potential for innovative solutions. This critical examination aimed to uncover how a proposed solution could not only address these issues but also provide a comprehensive resolution.
Define
After a dynamic ideation process, which involved exploring various ideas and rigorously evaluating their viability, the concept of MunchMates was born. This application is designed to tackle food insecurities among students, enriched with a social and gamified layer to enhance user engagement and interaction. MunchMates represents a fusion of practical utility and engaging experiences, aiming to alleviate a significant concern while fostering community connections.
Create
The culmination of the ideation phase was marked by the creation of preliminary sketches, illustrating the envisioned layout and flow of the application. These sketches were instrumental in solidifying the concept of the application’s interface, providing a clear blueprint for navigation and user interaction moving forward. By carefully considering and designing each screen, the team ensured a robust foundation was laid for the subsequent development stages
Low Fidelity Prototypes
High Fidelity Prototypes
Style Guide
Solutions and Functions
Carousel Card Function for Explore:
This feature enables users to seamlessly scroll through various recipes contributed by different individuals on the Explore page. Users can effortlessly navigate between different recipes, each showcasing unique culinary creations from various contributors.
Chat and Note Features:
Users can engage in individual and group chats, as well as access their notes, allowing them to stay connected with others and organize their thoughts effectively. With the chat feature, users can send messages to individuals or groups, while the note feature provides a platform for users to jot down ideas, reminders, and plans.
Fully Functioning Loading Screen:
Implemented between larger pages and transitions, this loading screen ensures a smooth and uninterrupted user experience. Users are presented with a visually appealing loading screen while the system processes and transfers data, providing feedback and assurance that the application is responsive and actively loading content.
Final Prototype
Review and Reflection
Our most important design decisions were integrating community building features, such as the chat and group options. We tried to understand the success between various social applications, despite the limited rewards that they may offer. Through competitive analysis, we realized that many social applications entail a sense of urgency or fitting in, which garners a greater desire to participate. And through user research, we learned that many undergraduates experience limited cooking abilities, which often goes overlooked and accepted, as the way things are. We incentivized users by giving them challenges, and prestige levels to gain a sense of satisfaction, while they gain new experiences that will allow them to develop long-lasting skills and connections.
Looking ahead, our vision for MunchMates involves expanding the app’s functionality to include a broader range of pages and features that simplify recipe sharing and enhance social interaction among users. We plan to introduce more dynamic elements, such as user-generated content sections for recipes, advanced sharing capabilities, and improved mechanisms for user interaction, including forums and direct messaging. This expansion is aimed at nurturing a vibrant community of culinary enthusiasts who can share, learn, and grow together. Simultaneously, we will invest in further research and usability testing to deepen our understanding of user behavior and preferences. This will enable us to refine the app’s design and functionality continuously, ensuring that MunchMates not only becomes a hub for finding and creating recipes but also a platform for meaningful social connections and culinary exploration.