SAMA
Responsive website design for a food start-up
Mar 2022 - Jun 2022 
Project Background
 A collaborative idea put forward by a Chef and a nutritionist providing healthy food recipes, Meal Plans, and their own product line which encourages people to follow healthy lifestyle with an easier and sustainable approach.
Problems
Available online resource for recipes and meal plans, do not efficiently solve the crisis of people wanting to adapt a healthy lifestyle. People are not confident what source to follow or trust with a plethora of information available online. Leading a healthy lifestyle is often something that everyone wants but it is given the least importance between work and other obligations.
My Role
UX Designer and UX Researcher for the responsive website design.
Conducted Interviews, understanding needs and pain points of users followed with ideating and creating wireframes and prototypes for testing. Conducting usability test, making sure of design iteration are easy to navigate and fulfill people's need.
Goals
1. Designing a website a providing innovative health solutions which people can adapt and incorporate in their daily routing, saving both their time and money. 
2. Recipes in various categories as per preference, requiring less efforts from the user end to choose and spend less time in the overall process of meal prep.

3. Making lives easier by providing information which they can rely upon without having to rely on multiple resources and lead a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.
4. Launching an own organic product line of spices, drinks and meals that can make part of their sustainable routine.
Following steps were involved in the design thinking process of the responsive web design SAMA,

1. Empathize - Researched Users' Needs involving user research, user journey, personas and understanding pain points
2. Define - Analyzed problems and defined Problem Statements targeting pain points.
3. Ideation - Challenge Assumption and Idea Creation
4. Prototype and 5. Test - Created Mock up followed by usability study and iterations


User Research

Interviews conducted lead to a conclusion that the user group generally belongs to 3 categories - working couple, individuals, working Parent or a homemaker with kids and college students. Most of the study confirmed they are unable to adapt a healthy lifestyle even if they wish, due to less time and lot of online sources leaving them unsure of what to follow. People have less knowledge of nutrition and with the information all around, they are left unorganized. These group of people even with different difficulties share a similar goal to adapt a smooth and sustainable eating lifestyle.
Pain Points
1. Less time to cook, ends up ordering and spending money to save personal time.
2. Unorganized  and plethora of information, unsure of what to trust and follow.
3. Lesser knowledge about nutrition leads to unorganized grocery, guilty about not doing enough for healthy intake for the family.
4. Less resources that target time friendly, kids friendly, budget friendly recipes to get through a busy week and also ensureing sufficient nutrition intake for the family.
Understanding the Users - User Persona
Persona 1

Rishi Trivedi
Age - 34
Education - MBA
Hometown - Ahmedabad, India 
Family- Married, stays with wife
Occupation - Financial Analyst
"As much as I am excited to start my day and go to work, I wish I am able to take out time and follow a healthy lifestyle and not compromise it between my busy week."
Goals
1. Cook healthy meal, for 5 days a week. 
2. Make sure to cook variety of meals to ensure sufficient nutrition intake 
3. Wish to give equal importance to health as much as he gives to work. 
4. Feels motivated to incorporate healthy lifestyle but wants to make it a part of daily routine and everyday habit. 
5. Have access to healthy recipes and not overwhelmed with a lot of information available online


Frustration
1. Tries to incorporate and cook healthy recipes, but fails to follow on regular basis 
2. Frustrated as he is left with no personal time when he manages to cook and work. 
3. Feel guilty compromising their health. 
4. Helpless and overwhelmed with a lot of information online and not know what to trust and rely on
Persona 2

Sylvia Gilani
Age - 44
Education - Environmental Science
Hometown - Pune, Maharashtra
Family- Married, stays with husband, a kid
Occupation - Environmental Conservationist
"As an environmentalist, I love connecting and conserving our nature. I know nature has so much to offer, which if used wisely and consciously can lead us to a healthy and sustainable lifestyle."
Goals
1. Build a healthy, sustainable lifestyle as part of their daily habit. 
2. Cook regional healthy meals for the family. 
3. Follow a sustainable diet on daily basis. 
4. Ensure nutrient rich meals for the family, especially for the kids. 
5. Quick access to meal plans. 
6. Innovative healthy recipe  for kids.

Frustration
1. Fails to cook home-made meals on regular basis. 
2. Ends up with no personal time after work and cooking meals. 
3. Ends up being frustrated and guilty compromising her and family’s health 
4. Feels tired and annoyed to manage meals after work. 
5. Cannot balance well between work and healht priorities
Persona 3

Mrugni Jaiswal
Age - 24
Education - Bio-Medical Engineering
Hometown - Mumbai, India
Occupation - Student
"My utmost priority is to finish my education, and complete it with the least financial burdern."
Goals
1. Avoids ordering outside meals. 
2. Avoids extra expensed. 
3. Prefers home-made quick meal recipes. 
4. Prefers less time consuming meal preparation methods and meal plans. 
5. Not stress about food between work and not feel guilty about health and finance.



Frustration
1. Left with not time between work, campus job and study. 
2. Left to compromise personal health. 
3. Ends up eating junk and outside meals. 
4. Guilty to spend money on food and also compromising health.
User Journey Map
The user journey map here typically explains the tasks that a user goes through for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, from cooking food to adapting a sustainable diet in their routine. The journey map explains what a user goes through emotionally as well as well as behaviorally to finish their task. The study of the user journey helps use to understand, where SAMA can fill in the gaps and play the role it aims to achieve.
Site Map
Following the user journey map, site map of the website was made to understand the hierarchy and structure of the website's content. The primary goal of creating the site map was to provide us an overview of the website's IA and organization. This helped to understand how we can make the site more user-friendly and easy to navigate. 
Ideation
Based on the user-research and understanding gained about pain-points and user needs,  various sketches and paper wire-frames were produced to derive the best solutions against the challenges are user-groups were facing. Wireframes helded to understand IA of the website ensuring smooth navigation through the complete user-flow.
Digital Wireframes - Low Fidelity prototypes
Digital Wireframes and lo-fi prototypes of responsive screens were produced based on the Ideation phase to get started for the usability test.
Design decisions that solve user problems and pain points understood during user research:



1. Easy cue to recipes as per various category.
2. Easy and smooth navigation to meal plans with availability of different options.
3. Overall less time consuming and easy user flow.
4. User can chat with experts and their team to ask questions related to recipes and their health routine.
5. Information of ingredients and recipe page clearly listing nutrition information
Usability Study
Usability study was carried using the moderate method to evaluate the usability of the website. The participants were given tasks, such as find a recipe, meal plan and shop a product from the website. The study was carried with a primary goal to identify usability issues and collect the user feedback to improve the user experience of the website.
Some of the finding from the usability study were :


Hi-Fidelity Prototype 
Final Mock-up designs were created following the designing iterations based on the usability study findings. The hi-fidelity prototypes closely resembles the final website - both visually and usability. 

Sama is a Sanskrit word that describes balanced. When something is in its 
natural healthy state, it is balanced. We at Sama strive for this healthy 
balance in our life. Sama is the passion driven product of a Registered 
Nutritionist and a Certified Chef who have combined their love of nutrition 
and real food to bring you recipes that are healthy, sustainable and un-
complicated. Our mission is to provide you with healthy recipes based on 
your choice of time and taste. With a combination of wise choice of eating 
real food without counting calories, we enlighten your path towards have 
healthy and a balanced lifestyle.
Hi-fidelity Mock up design of the "Home page" and "About page"
reflecting   what   SAMA   stands for and,
what they are here to   offer.

Hi-fidelity screen design of the "Home Page" 

Hi-fidelity screen design of the "About" page, explaining what SAMA stands for.


Final mock-ups for,
desktop website


Mock ups of the website for desktop screen showing the overall identity of SAMA.

Final mock-ups for,
mobile website
Recipe page, 
on a mobile website. The interface is interactive and easier to navigate. Overlay feature is used to accommodate ingredients and direction in a limited mobile space, for  a smooth navigation.
Final mock-ups of the  Recipe page 
for a desktop device
Explore the
Meal Plan page,
where SAMA offers variety of plans based on food choices and number of days preferred by individual.
Easy navigation and smooth  Shopping experience.
SAMA offers organic products line of spices, drinks and home prepped meals.
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