Introduction
Chups is an early stage startup that is looking to disrupt the culinary industry. They partner with hyperlocal chefs in the San Francisco Bay Area who are starting to scale up their businesses, but can’t afford to hire extra help—let alone afford the appropriate facilities.
While at WANDR Studio, I worked with the Lead Product Strategist and created a successful, promising onboarding experience for their local chefs:
- Chefs were able to quickly record their starting recipes by documenting ingredients and preparation steps.
- Chefs could expedite their onboarding by relying on recipe templates that Chups had stored in their database.
- Chefs were able to immediately browse and message host restaurants based on cuisine type and consumer demographic compatibility.
Aligning with our client stakeholders
We first held a strategy kickoff meeting to get aligned with what our stakeholders already knew about their business, their users, and their brand. This exercise also gave us insight into what problem space they scoped out for us to investigate further.
Requirements for a successful project
Chups wanted to use their mobile platform to more easily connect up-and-coming local chefs with host restaurants and ghost kitchens that would execute their recipes to serve Chups’s consumer base.
Meeting the minimum requirements meant being able to say “yes” to all of the following:
- Will local chefs be set up for success by the end of the onboarding experience?
- Will local chefs start contacting host restaurants to create partnerships?
Interviews with the chefs
We interviewed 3 local chefs that closely matched Chups's persona. They all shared one main concern at this stage—how could they feel confident that their recipes would be executed up to their standards?
Surfacing our first assumptions
We aligned with our clients on our first round of assumptions for an optimal onboarding experience for chefs. Although the initial task was one onboarding flow, we felt it was important to distinguish between the two:
- Minimum viable sign up flow: Gathering the necessary information to establish an account and save contact information.
- Chef onboarding flow: Gathering enough detailed information about a Chef’s starting menu and brand to set them up for success.
Testing a branded experience
The user flow created alignment between us and the client, and it also gave us a more solid list of granular interaction requirements. We took those requirements to create an engaging visual experience.
Chups's brand vision
Testing a mid-fidelity version of the app
Due to time and resource limitations, we conducted usability tests with the same 3 people we interviewed at the start of the project. This wasn't ideal due to potential biases and expectations that they may have had from our previous interviews.
Usability test results
Interviewees encountered the most friction when it came to recording their recipes. There was hesitance around ingredient sourcing and keeping recipes secured as proprietary information.
