Kids Kitchen
Instructor: Google
UX Design Professional Certificate
Individual
Year: 2022
Project Goals
Kids Kitchen is an app that provides a fun learning experience for kids as they cook a simple meal with their parents. In addition to the app, Kids Kitchen has a website where parents can go to learn more about healthy foods and how to implement good food in their children’s diet. Users want a way to get their children involved in the kitchen and want to be able to teach their kids about the importance of good nutrition. Users are looking for an app that will involve their kids and guide them when cooking in the kitchen, as well as a website that will give them nutrition information and provide tools to teach nutrition their children.
Kids Kitchen
Creating a place for parents to teach their kids about healthy foods
Challenges
Create a dedicated mobile app that guides kids through a simple recipe
Design a responsive website for mobile that gives parents the tools to teach their kids about nutrition
Redesign the responsive website for a laptop screen size
Research
The user research for Kids Kitchen was used to help meet the needs of the users I am designing for. The primary user group that the research focused on were people who had young kids in their life, who wanted to teach kids about the importance of healthy foods. Through this user research, I discovered that the primary pain point was being able to engage children with an easy to understand interface. Users wanted to spend time with kids, while also educating them about health and cooking.
User Personas
Jenny Adams
Jenny is a part-time manager and a mom of two who wants an easy way to cook with their kids in the kitchen so that she can teach her kids about healthy foods. Jenny wants to find new healthy recipes and get their kids involved in cooking in order to teach them healthy habits. Jenny would love an app that allows her to bring her kids into the kitchen in a fun and engaging way.
Humaira Cox
Humaira is a retired pilot who discovered a love of food when traveling all over the world. Now Humaira would like to share that love of food with their grandkids. They love to spend time with their grandkids, but it is difficult to get them to focus on one thing for very long. Humaira wants a website that would allow give them the ability to teach their grandkids how to cook in a fun and engaging way.
Competitive Analysis
I did an audit of direct and indirect competitors in order to find opportunities to improve on designs and gain insights to push my project forward. Some opportunities I identified include:
Offer an app that gives parents a way to involve their kids in the kitchen
Provide online resources for parents to teach nutrition and healthy habits to their kids
Paper Wireframes
I went through several iterations of paper wireframes for the user journey of the Kids Kitchen dedicated mobile app. Wireframes include a recipe card, ingredient list, recipe step pages and a nutrition outline.
Digital Wireframes
I used the paper wireframes to map out the digital wireframes using Figma. In the digital wireframes I outlined how users will move through the main user journey. I identified the key features from the paper wireframes including recipe cards and step by step instructions and carried these ideas over into my digital wireframes. The design for the Kids Kitchen mobile app is focused around creating a clean and simple instructional app that allows kids to move through the recipe easily. The app only has a few items on each page so kids can understand the pieces individually.
Iterations
I conducted a usability study to test how simple it is for users to move through the app and complete the primary task of selecting a recipe and going through the recipe steps to completion. I used insights I gained in this study to improve the apps design:
Users want to be able to search for recipes on the home page
Users want to view nutrition facts about the recipes
Users want to add recipes to their favorites to save for later
Accessibility Considerations
Hierarchical Headings
The text elements are ordered on each page based on importance.
Color Contrast
A clear contrast between background and text with bright colored buttons to make actions clear
Linear Layout
Linear, logical layout designed for those with low vision
Challenge 1
Dedicated Mobile App
Kids Kitchen wanted to create a dedicated mobile app that gave parents a tool to involve kids in the kitchen. It was important to create an app that uses large font with fun colors and pictures in order to make it accessible to kids. I designed an app that brings kids through the steps of a recipe and uses simple language and engaging images that can be used as a learning tool.
Challenge 2
Responsive Website Mobile
Another challenge was to design an interface that allows users to access nutrition information on their phone. The mobile version of the website provides parents with quick and concise information that can be used in addition to the Kids Kitchen app. I designed specific pages for parents to browse recipes as well as access information to learn about the food pyramid and other health food resources.
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Challenge 3
Responsive Website Laptop
Finally, I needed to reformat the responsive website to fit a laptop screen in order to make the website more accessible for a variety of user. On the laptop version users are given clear drop down menus with more information about healthy recipes and teaching nutrition to kids. While the laptop version of the responsive website provides the same information as the mobile version, it gives users more flexibility to view this information in a larger format.
Site Map
After completing the dedicated app design, I created a sitemap to map out the pages I needed to create to make a responsive website. The layout includes the primary headings including: recipes, nutrition and about. Then I outlined the subheadings that will become the pages that makeup the website.
Style Guide
The Kids Kitchen color palette is centered around bright, fun colors that create an exciting and engaging look for the app. I used yellow for the main background color and a dark blue text color that stands out against the bright background. The main typography of the site is an easy to read font and I used bold text for the headings and buttons.
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Takeaways
This project helps parents to teach their children about the importance of health foods. The dedicated mobile app works with parents in the kitchen to give them the tools to cook healthy food with their kids. The responsive website will give parents the resources to teach nutrition to their kids and discover new healthy recipes.