Adobe x Berkeley Innovation
As a part of a design consultant group, Berkeley Innovation, my team and I worked with the Adobe International Team over the Fall semester.
We were tasked with creating an editing application that enhances Chinese short-form video creation process. Adobe, having also done their own research and interviews, identified the market gap within China on video editing content scene: that editing is spread across several apps because each app is does not fully encompass the needs of the creators. Thus, it was also our task to reconfirm these key insights, and generate unique ideas to solve this problem.
Type
UX Research, Product Design, Speculative Design
Dates
Sept - Dec 2019
Tools
Adobe Illustrator, XD,
User Research Methodologies
Ideation
Prototyping
Team / Role
Clients: Lance Shields, Linda Ma, Wilson Chan and Lorenzo Buosi
Project Mentor: Alyssa Yang
User Research Lead: Noe Abe
Ideation Lead: You Jin Hannah Lee
Iteration Lead: Jago Pang (me)
Prototyping Lead: Jessica Chou
Utilized Chinese to conduct user interviews, taking generated ideas and materializing them into structured user flows and designs.
Introduction
Overview
We were tasked with creating an editing application that enhances Chinese short-form video creation process. Adobe, having also done their own research and interviews, identified the market gap within China on video editing content scene: that editing is spread across several apps because each app is does not fully encompass the needs of the creators. Thus, it was also our task to reconfirm these key insights, and generate unique ideas to solve this problem.
Problem
In Hong Kong, according to a 2018 study conducted by the Nielsen Company, more than half of participants report they are health conscious and are serious about maintaining their health, but many also say they find it difficult to do so. With an increasing awareness of health issues, the leap to put words into actions proves more difficult than otherwise, with half of the respondents BMI’s above or below the normal recommended range.
Thus, this rose a question, how can we encourage a healthy lifestyle? While there were many avenues to take this route with, we decided to tackle food. It is said that while exercise and mental health is important, it often comes down to what you eat that determines how healthy you are. Thus, the driving How Might We statement for this project is:
How might we enable short-form video creation that encourages users to have personal fun in their editing experiences?
Research & Insights
Hypothesis & Plan
The hypothesis was that food was the driving factor to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and that there is a lack of a streamlined, convenient process to stick to these habits. Thus, to validate this and answer the how might we, it was important to understand the two main aspects of food: purchasing (eating out/grocery shopping), and eating (cooking/consuming).
The driving how might we’s for these two aspects were:
A. What is the experience for purchasing food?
B. What is the experience of planning, cooking, and eating food?
I conducted 2 surveys with 56 respondents, 7 user interviews, 3 observational studies, competitive analysis, and secondary research. The research was directed for a young-adult target market.
Surveys
I conducted two surveys, one for each section. The purchasing food survey had 22 respondents and the food habits survey had 34 respondents. This was to gauge what types of pain points users felt, and identify areas to further research into. The key insights that arose from that were.
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For lunch, a majority of people eat out (office workers/students), and many at fast food restaurants due to price and indulgence, but for dinner people usually cook and eat at home.
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Planning for food is often minimal, loosely followed, and time consuming especially when cooking for a household.
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People often have excess food, and thus food expires often unknowningly and is easily thrown away.
Interviews
To map out the user journey of maintaining a healthy habit, and for an in-depth understanding of specific pain points, I conducted 7 user interviews with Hongkongers ranging from 19-45 years old. The questions asked covered both sections, but with a focus on grocery shopping as opposed to eating out, given it was a relatively untapped market space in Hong Kong.
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Frequency of shopping is based on the desired ingredient, and done in one go. To maintain freshness for the ingredient, raw produce are bought on the day everday/every other day and often in wet markets, and non-perishables are bought weekly, often in supermarkets.
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Households prefer family style meals to ensure healthy eating. Thus, many shopping lists are based on the food groups. For one-person households, they tend to cook simpler, easy, single-dish meals.
Observational Studies
I went to three different places where users buy groceries: ParknShop, Fusion and Market Place, each of which were targeted for a specific user group. The most salient point was that.
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When shopping, deals increase consumer spending. Impulse shopping occurs often as well given the leisurely, aimless pace, with junk foods often being bought.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis was conducted on a total of 8 different food services, including grocery/takeout delivery services, meal prep, and health apps.
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There was no all in one application that encouraged a healthly life style, and many of the applications were asychronous.
Secondary Research
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Nutritional labels are not carefully looked at, especially wet markets where they can only use their own perceptions.
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While a health-conscious lifestyle is on the rise, it is ofen not followed through. There is a lack of understanding of common nutrient/disease relationships, and no one really tracks their food because it is inconvenient to do so.
User Personas
From these insights, there were refined into three user personas.
Jacqueline
Working young adult
Jacqueline is actively health-conscious, concerned about quality, and shops at supermarkets. She often cooks for herself and spends time planning meals, writing lists, and following recipes. However,she has trouble keeping track of all the food she has or needs, thus wastes food. It is also time-consuming for her to plan everything, and visits multiple stores to find specific incredients.
Jacqueline
Working young adult
Jacqueline is actively health-conscious, concerned about quality, and shops at supermarkets. She often cooks for herself and spends time planning meals, writing lists, and following recipes. However,she has trouble keeping track of all the food she has or needs, thus wastes food. It is also time-consuming for her to plan everything, and visits multiple stores to find specific incredients.
Jacqueline
Working young adult
Jacqueline is actively health-conscious, concerned about quality, and shops at supermarkets. She often cooks for herself and spends time planning meals, writing lists, and following recipes. However,she has trouble keeping track of all the food she has or needs, thus wastes food. It is also time-consuming for her to plan everything, and visits multiple stores to find specific incredients.
Working Prototype
Respective
From the high-fidelity mockups I created, I had the fellow developers and other people give feedback on the work. These include suggesting on how to implement reward systems, how to develop vendor relationships and tier systems for healthiness.
As of right now, a coded prototype is being developed. The receipt scanning function and recipe suggestion algorithms, which can be found here. Once it has gone into launch, the case will be updated with more user testing.
Overall, this was my first full and extensive project regarding product design, and where I learnt a lot of skills such as prototyping, card sorting, and creating user flows. I really enjoyed the project as it was interesting to see how recent technologies, such as machine learning can be implemented into modern day apps. To improve, I would want to collaborate with other designers in order for more ideas to be generated and evaluated. Additionally, I would want to do rigorous user testing to see how it would work in the real world. Furthermore, if it is launching in the US, there would need to be research into American users as I have found out many differences between them.
I am looking forward to seeing what will happen with this project!