AROMA: 15-minute vegan dinners
Aroma is an Alexa-enabled virtual cooking assistant that will help you prepare vegan dinners in just 15 minutes or less using just three ingredients.
Role - Research, Voice Design, Usability Testing
Tools - Voiceflow, Alexa developer console, Figma, Lookback
Methods: Personas, User Stories, Sample Dialogues, User Flows, Scripts
I grouped the users’ stories to summarize the main functions needed in Aroma to meet the users’ needs and address their pain points. This chart outlines the tasks that will be explained in more details in the voice interaction flows.
As research shows, younger people are far more likely to be vegetarians or vegans than older generations. So, the main age group for Aroma is 25-34. I started by interviewing a few individuals who fit the demographic. Using that information I was able to create user persona to better understand the needs and pain points of my target audience. based on the user interviews, I found that my target audience are often short on prep time, and often feel uneasy if they find that they don't have all the ingredients needed for a recipe. Before we go further, let's meet Sara!
USER PERSONA
User Story #1
As a single parent, I want to be able to prepare meals based on what is in my fridge, so I don’t have to go shopping for missing ingredients.
User Story #2
As a recent vegan person, I want to pick easy recipes that I can make, so I stay motivated.
U: Alexa, open Aroma
S: Hi Sara, how can I help you today?
U: I have broccli and salmon and I need to make a quick dinner.
[Aroma will provide two recipe options, user can choose one of them or ask to hear more recipes]
S: Well, I have two recipes for you: Grilled salmon with vegetables or steamed salmon with broccli.
U: Which recipe has more calories?
S: (Alt 1) The grilled salmon with vegetables has 800 calories and the steamed salmon with broccli has 500 calories.
S: (Alt 2) The grilled salmon with vegetables has more calories.
[The user may then ask how much calories in each recipe-more steps]
U: Let’s do the steamed salmon one.
S: Great!
[Then Aroma walks the user through the recipe’s steps]
Usability Test Plan
Usability Test Results
USER FLOWS
SYSTEM PERSONA
After laying out the preferences and speech patterns of the user persona, I built the system persona to match these preferences. Let’s take a look at a complete system persona for the virtual cooking assistant our user persona, Sara, might interact with.
USER STORIES & SAMPLE DIALOGUES
User Story #3
As a busy person, I want to plan and save the meals I’m preparing for the upcoming week so I can manage my time efficiently.
User Story #4
When I don’t have an ingredient needed for a recipe, I want to be able to add it to my shopping list.
U: Alexa, start Aroma and plan the week’s dinners.
S: (Alt 1) Hello Sara, do you want to start with Monday’s dinner?
S: (Alt 2) Hi Sara, how about starting with tomorrow’s dinner?
U: Let’s do that/ that’s good/ let’s start with Tuesday’s. I want a vegan recipe.
S:Alright, start planning Monday’s dinner. I have some delicious vegan recipes for dinner. Do you want pasta recipes, soup bowls, or salad plates?
[user can pick one of these options or say give me more options]
U: Pasta recipes.
S: Got it! For pasta recipes I have broccoli pesto pasta, do you want to hear the ingredients or want more options?
U: ingredients/ let me hear the ingredients/ what do I need?
S:Ok, you’ll need ……………
U: I don’t have basil and lemon.
S: Do you want to add them to your shopping list?
U: yes.
S: alright, basil and lemon added to your shopping list. Do you want to save the recipe for Monday?
U: yes.
S: All done, broccoli pesto pasta recipe saved for Monday. Do you want to plan Tuesday’s dinner?
[user repeat the same steps to plan upcoming meals, or exit and resume planning the dinners on a later time]
User Story# 5
As a person who can’t memorize recipes, I want to be able to store my preferred recipes and retrieve them easily when I need them.
U: Hey Alexa, open Aroma.
S: (Alt 1) Hi Sara, how can I help you today?
S: (Alt 2) Hi Sara, what do you want to prepare today?
U: I want to prepare sandwiches for the kids. I want something with chicken tenders.
S: Got it!
[Aroma gives recipe options and instructions]
U: That’s an easy one. I want to save it to my recipes list/ Aroma, can you save this one/ Add this recipe to my recipes.
S: All set. Chicken tenders sandwich saved to your recipe list.
AROMA'S MAIN FUNCTIONS
AROMA SCRIPT
USABILITY TESTING
