Little Chef
Little Chef is your go-to app for navigating dining hall menus, checking out what your friends are eating, viewing dining hall wait times, and getting meal combination suggestions.
Project Type. Mobile App, UI/UX, Nutrition
Project Brief. The goal of this project was to simplify nutrition information, promote healthy eating habits, and make thinking about food fun. The primary audience was college students.
Project Overview. Little Chef is an app that streamlines dining hall menus, wait times, and nutrition information, while also providing cooking recipes to enhance your culinary experience.
Project Outcome. This project process and idea was presented to Patrick Fenton (Swayspace) and an audience of over 50 people.
PROBLEM
A need for nutrition transparency and healthy diets for college students.
Little Chef addresses the need for nutrition transparency and healthy diets, particularly crucial for busy college students. The app makes understanding nutrition easy and fun, helping users make informed food choices amidst their hectic schedules.
MOBILE APP DESIGN
App Logo
In designing the app, we aimed to highlight creativity and autonomy in nutrition, empowering users to chef up their own meals and take control of their diet. This inspired the name of the app and it's logo.
Home Page
Find Chef Recommendations, see what dining halls are cooking, access your meal planner, additional nutritional information, etc. all found on the home page!
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Search
Explore a variety of new recipes tailored to your tastes and dietary needs, while also accessing detailed nutrition information to make informed choices.
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Connect with your community
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See what others in your community are eating!
INSPIRATION
Where it began...
Little Chef was born out of frustration with the limited variety and inclusivity of dining hall menus, especially for those with dietary restrictions. Recognizing the difficulty in finding food and the lack of nutritional information available, Little Chef aims to conglomerate dining hall information and nutritional details to emphasize ease and informed food choices for college students.
Inspiration
Firstly, I was inspired by the award-winning movie Ratatouille, a childhood classic that encouraged one to lean into the potential of their abilities, especially when it comes to cooking (everyone can cook). The essence of this is important as it inspires students to get creative with their meals, and allows them have an environment in which they are able to experiment with their cooking abilities. Next, I was inspired by applications such as Spotify, which presented information in such a way that was easy to navigate, and the Instagram feature when going about the community section, with a simple way to see what others around you are eating to gauge inspiration.
What I learned...
Intuitive Design
Video + Visual
Communications
Designing from Experience
Creating an intuitive design was crucial in ensuring that information about dining hall menus, wait times, and nutrition was easily accessible to college students. Too often, solutions to issues go unused, because of how hard it is to navigate.
Incorporating video communications into the app proved to be a powerful tool for engaging users and conveying complex information in a more relatable and digestible format. Playing on multiple senses (perception, auditory).
By empathizing with the challenges users face and honing in on my own experiences, I was able to design solutions that addressed these problems and identified bugs that might otherwise go unnoticed, ensuring a smoother user experience.
