Delish

Add flavor to your life!

A new platform for culinary enthusiasts to feel productive and create income by selling the food they cook.

Top of Page

Challenge

In today's era, Instagram boasts millions of users who eagerly share their culinary creations, with many aspiring to monetize their food endeavors. Among these enthusiasts, a thriving community seeks to establish their unique food brands. However, during their journey, they often face challenges related to visibility, payment processing, and the development of effective branding strategies.

Approach

Delish, born from extensive research and a deep understanding of the culinary community's genuine needs, is committed to creating a secure and well-structured platform. Our goal is to provide a supportive environment for individuals seeking to monetize their culinary talents, offering safety, facilitating seamless payments, and empowering them to explore the digital avenues for building their own brand.

Activities

Service Design, User Interview, Netnographic Research, Market Research, Persona, Value Proposition, Business Model Creation, UX Design, UI Design

Timeline

3 months

Team

Kübra Ergin, Dilara Gül

Target Devices

Mobile Only

Introduction

PROCESS

The process was based on the Double Diamond Design Thinking model through which we expanded our vision by doing user and online researches and collapsed the data by picking out the best solutions. The main goal was to create a business plan, and a product as an initial design and in our second step, we expanded our process through field research and narrowed down the options by creating our final business model.

USER RESEARCH

1) Netnographic Research

Firstly, we discovered the Instagram pages which specifically indicated in their bio that they accept orders and sell food. Once we started looking for the accounts that provide food services, we realized that we can categorize these accounts and the account owners' behaviors by looking at the type of food they are selling, their number of followers and their style of sharing the foods.

Accounts with more than 250K followers

They Do;

According to our research, these accounts share at least one post a day, they write very detailed instructions of the recipes. They use a lot of different hash-tags and they share stories more than once each day.
Even though most of the account owners are not college graduates, we can still see college graduates and other people from a higher demographic group as in the 3rd image.
The difference we observed between them was that account owners with stronger education backgrounds create brands with higher values with their designs and elaborate on their wording choices.

They Need;

Strategies to improve their accounts into real businesses.
Branding their accounts, so they can impress the customers better and create more value for their brands.
Packagings in parallel with their branding.
An easy delivery system.

Research

Accounts which make the 15K cut seem to grow respectively fast.
They start finding a place at the explore section of Instagram and they can grab some of the conversions.
One common behavior they display is that they display their phone numbers openly which might be considered as an act of trust towards the buyers and a quick way to get contacted by the users.
When we analyzed the accounts with more than 15K followers we can easily see a cluster of the accounts that sell traditional and tough dishes.
This facilitates their growth in respect to other accounts since the possibility of grabbing the attention of the users is easier because they have a talent to cook the toughest food.

Accounts with more than 15K followers

They Do;

They Need;

Maintain their recognition,
Learn how to grab the users' attention better
Discover simpler yet striking dishes rather than the tough traditional foods.
Mentorship to explore their potential and become a brand.
Branding.
An easy delivery system.

Accounts with less than 10K followers

They Do;

The accounts which have the smallest number of followers belong to people who have just started to selling food online
These accounts do not share a lot of posts or do not know how to increase the number of their followers.
They generally tend to write comments underneath popular users' posts to, ask them to check out their account and follow or to support.
They do not feel very confident while sharing their posts and do not receive a lot of conversions for their posts..
They do not know how to take high quality photos, how to write intriguing explanations.

They Need;

Encouragement.
A platform where they can be more visible.
Feel comfortable while sharing their very first posts.
Keep their motivations up while reaching out to more people.

Different Post Sharing Styles

We can see 3 different sharing styles above. While some of the users prefer to put different images in the same post that include all the orders they have sent to their customers with their well-designed logo, others added images of their production processes and preferred writing the recipes below in a more detailed way since they think they attract more attention by doing so. As we can see in the 3rd image above, some of them only sell raw spice as a different type of product. In the 3rd, image we can also observe that the account owner writes their account names back to back several times to grab people's attention as they scroll down Instagram's explore section.

2) User Interviews

We found people who sell food via Instagram and conducted user researches with them, these users were not only housewives but there were also chiefs who sell food through instagram and people that migrant from city to urban areas where they can farm and sell the products they produced.

10 users

Who, What, Why, When, How

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? (age, occupation, marital status etc.)
Could you briefly talk about how you spend a regular day?
How often do you cook?
Do you usually cook this often? If not so, how?
Have you ever sold your food on an online platform?

If yes;

5.1 Why? How did you decide to do that?

5.2 When was the first time you made a sale?

5.3 How did you do that?

5.4 Have you ever done that in a different way? Why is that? How?

5.4.2. Additional case: As a person who makes sales both offline and online , which one do you prefer, why?

5.5 Has your way of doing this changed over time? How? Why is that?

5.6 How long have you been selling online? When was the last time you did it?

5.7 Considering your last experience, did you face any problems?

5.8 Is there a comment you want to add?

At the end of the analysis, we encountered three types of personas; Housewife over 40, Organic Product Producer, Home Chef. We decided to go with Housewife over 40 and Organic Product Producer to begin with.

Persona 1;

Click on images to see the details.

Persona 2;

Click on images to see details.

MARKET RESEARCH

Before creating our business model and value proposition out of our user research process, we checked out other platforms to see their approach and how we might distinguish ourselves. Click on image to see the details.

BRAINSTORMING - KEY FEATURES DETERMINATION

After our researches, we determined our key features to add to our application. We first had a brain storming session that led us to see our options then we narrowed down to few features.

Communication features

to improve socializing

Daily promotion lists

to provide visibility

Easy and fast ordering

to improve shopping

Reviewing feature

to gain trust

Assignment based badge earning to improve self-confidence and create a feeling of achievement

Service Design

BUSINESS VALUE CANVAS - SERVICE BLUE PRINT

UX/UI Design

UX DESIGN

Need

Buyers: Need to see all the categories easily to find their needs without losing time.
Members: Need to grab customers' or other members' attention.
Sellers: Need to have an online portfolio to show their dishes in their menus.

Feature

Homepage: That presents all the categories and help the buyers to find their desired products.
Explore section: Including different lists that will provide visibility to members, especially the new joiners.
A profile page: For sellers to present their shop and create their menu to receive orders through.

UI DESIGN

We started the UI process with color selection. Colors should match the idea of the product.

They should have a positive impact on people and they should also boost their appetite for the food they come across in the application.

We used rounded corners in the components to make the app more friendly and easy to follow rather than making it strong and too sharp.

Primary Colors

Secondary Colors

Personal Notes

PERSONAL NOTES ABOUT THE PROJECT

What I liked

Having the opportunity to apply all the UX processes in a project was extremely valuable for me. Also, conducting user research with women who create income for themselves on social media was priceless.

What I would improve

I would have worked on the legal parts of the issues and try to carry this project into another level. I would have started out small and then improve the app into a more complex design by adding the social media features.

Team

Kübra Ergin, Dilara Gül

Team

Kübra Ergin, Dilara Gül

Delish

Add flavor to your life!

A new platform for culinary enthusiasts to feel productive and create income by selling the food they cook.

Challenge

Approach

Activities

Service Design, User Interview, Netnographic Research, Market Research, Persona, Value Proposition, Business Model Creation, UX Design, UI Design

Timeline

3 months​

Team

Kübra Ergin, Dilara Gül

Target Devices

Mobile Only

PROCESS

USER RESEARCH

1) Netnographic Research

Accounts with more than 250K followers

They Do;

According to our research, these accounts share at least one post a day, they write very detailed instructions of the recipes. They use a lot of different hash-tags and they share stories more than once each day.

Even though most of the account owners are not college graduates, we can still see college graduates and other people from a higher demographic group as in the 3rd image.

The difference we observed between them was that account owners with stronger education backgrounds create brands with higher values with their designs and elaborate on their wording choices.

They Need;

Strategies to improve their accounts into real businesses.

Branding their accounts, so they can impress the customers better and create more value for their brands.

Packagings in parallel with their branding.

An easy delivery system.

Accounts which make the 15K cut seem to grow respectively fast.

They start finding a place at the explore section of Instagram and they can grab some of the conversions.

One common behavior they display is that they display their phone numbers openly which might be considered as an act of trust towards the buyers and a quick way to get contacted by the users.

When we analyzed the accounts with more than 15K followers we can easily see a cluster of the accounts that sell traditional and tough dishes.

This facilitates their growth in respect to other accounts since the possibility of grabbing the attention of the users is easier because they have a talent to cook the toughest food.

Accounts with more than 15K followers

They Do;

They Need;

Maintain their recognition,

Learn how to grab the users' attention better

Discover simpler yet striking dishes rather than the tough traditional foods.

Mentorship to explore their potential and become a brand.

Branding.

An easy delivery system.

Accounts with less than 10K followers

They Do;

​

The accounts which have the smallest number of followers belong to people who have just started to selling food online

These accounts do not share a lot of posts or do not know how to increase the number of their followers.

They generally tend to write comments underneath popular users' posts to, ask them to check out their account and follow or to support.

They do not feel very confident while sharing their posts and do not receive a lot of conversions for their posts..

They do not know how to take high quality photos, how to write intriguing explanations.

They Need;

Encouragement.

A platform where they can be more visible.

Feel comfortable while sharing their very first posts.

Keep their motivations up while reaching out to more people.

Different Post Sharing Styles

2) User Interviews

We found people who sell food via Instagram and conducted user researches with them, these users were not only housewives but there were also chiefs who sell food through instagram and people that migrant from city to urban areas where they can farm and sell the products they produced.

10

users

Who, What, Why, When, How

Persona 1;

Click on images to see the details.

Persona 2;

Click on images to see details.

MARKET RESEARCH

Before creating our business model and value proposition out of our user research process, we checked out other platforms to see their approach and how we might distinguish ourselves. Click on image to see the details.

BRAINSTORMING - KEY FEATURES DETERMINATION

After our researches, we determined our key features to add to our application. We first had a brain storming session that led us to see our options then we narrowed down to few features.

BUSINESS VALUE CANVAS - SERVICE BLUE PRINT

UX DESIGN

UI DESIGN

Primary Colors

Secondary Colors

PERSONAL NOTES ABOUT THE PROJECT

What I liked

Having the opportunity to apply all the UX processes in a project was extremely valuable for me. Also, conducting user research with women who create income for themselves on social media was priceless.

What I would improve

3 months