Yum Yum Process Book

Cook Socially.
Simona Snapkauskaite
A Solo Project centered in the User Experience Design field

Copyright © 2021 Simona Snapkauskaite
Owner: Simona Snapkauskaite
https://simonasnap.myportfolio.com/
Cook Socially.
No part of this publication can be sold,
reproduced, or distributed in any way
without written approval of the author -
including all illustrations found in the
A Solo Project centered in the User Experience Design field
publication, except short phrases of
text in brief quotations used for non-
commercial means.

Table of Contents
The Backstory 2
The Research 4
The Ideation 7
The Prototyping 15
The Branding 24
The Final Prototype 32
The Sources 38
Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Contents 1

The Backstory
There are so many phrases and sayings about the kitchen. “The
kitchen is the heart of the home,” in particular, is true to my upbringing.
Six months ago, I worked with a group on a project to create an
app that hopefully would help us solve some sort of issue, that we
How can I make the cooking
experience more enjoyable
and social for anyone, especially
now during this pandemic?
As well as create long-lasting
cooking habits that the user will
want to continue?
saw in our lives. With this opportunity, I wanted to create something
that would help my mom compile all her cookbooks in one place for
easy use. However, with the start of the pandemic, my mom and my
sister started to connect virtually with cooking.
Every week my mom and sister would find a recipe, video call each
other at a certain time and then cook together in their respective
kitchens. It quickly became common to have a computer placed at one
of the spots at the table with my sister eating her meal in California,
with the rest of us in Seattle eating close to the same thing.
Working on my BFA project I wanted to explore the social side of
cooking. Many of us have memories of someone cooking up a meal
in the kitchen or taking part in creating the food as well. With this
recent habit of video cooking in my family, I wanted to instead create
an app that would help make the cooking experience take on
some of its more social aspects. Something that it has lost for many
people as they start to live alone, travel, or are now isolated thanks
to the pandemic.
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The Research
“This habit is driven by the increase in home cooks’ creativity and
confidence in the kitchen, as well as the motivation that cooking at home
helps to save money (67%), eat healthier (56%) and feel good (56%).” 2
The beginning stages of this project was part of a different group
According to the annual Food & Health Survey conducted by
the International Food Information Council; a total of 85%
of participants stated that have started to do something
new with their food intake since the start of the pandemic.
With 60% of those participants saying that they are cooking
from home a lot more often. 1
Now that a year has passed, another survey conducted
by the firm Hunter, has released that 71% of the people
who have started to cook more during this pandemic plan
to continue even after the end of the pandemic.
project that I was a part of. With three others, we conducted the
initial research and ideation for the Yum Yum app.
To gain an understanding about how people view cooking and how
they might find recipes five interviews were conducted, and some
key quotes include:
Question: “What could make cooking easier or more convenient for you?”
Participant 1: “If I already had a source of information that would take
me directly to the recipes I need at the moment.”
Question: “How did you obtain the recipe, and where was the source?
Any difficulties?”
1 Food Dive. “Coronavirus Changed 85% of Consumers’ Food Habits.” Accessed April 4, 2021.
https://www.fooddive.com/news/coronavirus-changed-85-of-consumers-food-habits/579532/.
Participant 2: “I have probably researched the recipe a long time
ago and try to modify my own recipe down the road. Probably
used my phone.”
2 Food Dive. “Survey: 7 in 10 Consumers Say They Will Keep Cooking at Home after the Pandemic.”
Accessed April 4, 2021. https://www.fooddive.com/news/survey-7-in-10-consumers-say-they-will
-keep-cooking-at-home-after-the-pand/593532/.
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Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Research 5

A survey was also conducted with 122 participants submitting
feedback. Some key figures included:
• 66% preferred to use the Internet to find a recipe
The Ideation
• 54% cook less than 5 times a week
• 30% wish they knew about more cooking/baking related events
• 70% like cooking and/or baking
Throughout my research I found it interesting how often people talked
about cooking in a social setting. All the questions I asked and focused
on, often were about the individual person, yet at some point they
would bring up cooking with family and friends, or for someone.
This showed me that cooking was truly a social experience.
The ideation process involved several
different brainstorming activities and
more direct research, looking at the
potential competitors the app might
have to face in the future.
Other key points from me research to remember:
• There are a lot of people who cook at least once in a while - there is
an audience to target
• People don’t often follow a recipe 100% - some method of
editing is key
• People are already looking for recipes on their phone - so a
phone app should be the deliverable
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Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Ideation 7

An Affinity
Diagram -
a method of
organizing
key points
that were
brought up
during user
interviews
Afterwards the group pitched things that they liked seeing in
existing cooking apps, what the wished to see, and what
could be a cool idea. We then broke those ideas down in
a Feature Prioritization Matrix (below). This allowed us to
place those notes into different categories of importance and
complexity to help us understand where we might focus our
ideas. The group I had initially worked on focused more
on creating an app were creating and editing recipes. For
my exploration, I took what we made and curated it to focus
more on the social findings that were found in the research.
Ideation started off with an Affinity Diagram done by my group to
understand key things that participants mentioned in their
interviews. We found groups of key information that included things
like Paint Points, and Preferences that included highlights like:
• No one liked the cleaning process
• People got bored waiting for things to finish proofing, baking, or
heating up in the microwave, pan, etc.
People also mentioned that they all share their cooking journey in
some way, for instance:
• Sending pictures to friends and family - mainly of finished results
• Sending recipe links when something comes out well
• Also, people like cooking in groups but mainly cook alone due to
either living alone, or the pandemic making things unsafe
A Feature
Prioritization
Matrix - It is
used to help
come up with
possible ideas
for features
that might be
useful, and
then which of
those ideas to
actually keep
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Competitive Analysis of Possible Competitors
To understand what this app might be up
against in the market, I looked into what
competitors the app might face.
Indirect Competitor | SIDECHEF
Competitive Advantage:
• Learn how to cook and bake
from professional chefs. Users
can get help with meal plans
and staying inspired. Even get
help shopping for groceries,
by making a to buy list through
a recipe.
Strengths:
• Has a crew of professional chefs creating recipes for the app.
Enough free options to get the user hooked into the app, and
enough premium pad features to entice paying users - help pay
for the professionals that are helping develop the app
Weaknesses:
• So many premium features, so free items are buried. Long
scroll down to discover more information. Videos are all basically
premium - need to pay to learn a skill.
Question:
• Am I making a totally free app - how to compete then with
professional curated content?
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Competitive Advantage:
• An app created in 2010 focused
on “capturing and sharing the
I then created a storyboard, imagining a scenario where the app
might be used. It would also show off some of the possible
features that would possibly show up in the prototype:
world’s moments”
Direct Competitor | Instagram
• Bought by Facebook in 2012
• Features include posting
photos, video reels, stories
and a marketplace tab
Strengths:
• Easy to understand UI, and lots of easy was to share info
• Free app - no need to pay for features (unless starting
a professional account)
Weaknesses:
• To much information - need to filter out what you like
• Endless Scroll Feature - is there a better option?
• Algorithm problems - how can people interact with the
post chronology important
Questions:
• How can I make sure that posts stay cooking related?
• How can I ensure easy learnability?
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Thanks to my Ideation and Research I now knew that I had
a list of features that would be great to incorporate in an
app. In addition, that while there are a lot of cooking apps,
The Prototyping
I couldn’t find one where the social part of cooking was
emphasized. So now, I sought to make an app that answered
the key question:
How can I make the cooking experience
more enjoyable and social for anyone,
especially now during this pandemic?
Prototyping started with paper prototypes,
then initial wireframes. The wireframes
went through various stages of testing and
iteration so that the end prototype would
be as user friendly as possible.
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Paper Prototyping
I started off to flesh out what I
wanted the recipe pages to look
like. How I wanted filters to be
shown, where inspiration could be
found and what a recipe layout
might look like. I believed that
this would be the main backbone
of the app at the time, as people
most often talk about recipes
when conversing about cooking.
I also came up with a four-tab
navigation system that would
allow users to set up a profile,
share their recipes, find recipes,
and do a more pinpointed recipe
search with various filters.
Pinpointed Recipe Search Recipe Inspirations Recipe Layout
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Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Prototyping 17

Low Fidelity Prototyping
Coming up with the initial low
fidelity prototype, there were
screens made for a potential
onboarding process. Discovering
the types of meals and cuisines
the person might like before
giving them recommendations.
However, the prototype went
through testing and in future
iterations, the onboarding
experience was dropped as the
way that recipes are recommended
changed as well. The recipe
and explore events were also
blocked out without text and
images, so information hierarchy
can be established.
Possible Onboarding Screen Explore Event Screen Recipe Layout
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Middle Fidelity Prototyping
The design started out with a sort of bubble inspired
interface. All images being contained in a circular mask,
and all buttons had rounded corners. While the round
interface made people feel like the app was more vibrant/
cheerful, it became increasingly hard to show how text
aligned with images, and to repeat the feel of the design
on different pages. Therefore, the recipe and the dash page
started to feel like they were for different applications.
In addition, people had a hard time finding their profile
and cookbook in their dashboard page and figuring out
how to share images with others was becoming increasingly
hard. The app was good in helping a person find a recipe,
but the social part wasn’t there. Yum Yum was losing its
core purpose.
Yum Yum Splash Screen
Recipe Page after testing
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Therefore, on the next iterations
a different color palette was tried.
Many people often associate green
with the forest, growth, and food,
and it also has a calming feel.
Therefore, the app should now
stand out as a more interesting
interface, and appeal to the user
(opinions that were then reflected
in the user testing, many did
comment about liking the dark
green background). In addition,
the navigation introduced a fourth
While, the green was well received,
other colors in the wireframe,
weren’t as much. So the color
palette had to be developed further.
In addition, people mentioned
they didn’t like the name of the
“feed” page, so that page had to
be renamed. People responded
well to the profile, once they were
on that part of the app, however,
they wanted the recipe page to
include a link to creating a new
recipe as well.
tab, adding a feed page where
people could then post recipes and
pictures of recent food creations.
Helping develop the social aspect
With those key findings in mind,
I started fleshing out the next
iteration of the prototype.
of the app further.
New Recipe
Page
Post Page
Prototype
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The Branding
While working on the prototypes and
fleshing out the Yum Yum functionality,
I was also working on the branding of
the app. The logo started off as a quick
sketch in Photoshop. But, had serious
flaws right from the start.
Many iterations and ideas were thought
up, but in the end the grainy cake with
ugly type was transformed into a clean
Yum Yum’s first logo - a small cake with the words up top
minimalistic plate. That would easily be
applied to different profile images and
used at a variety of different logo sizes.
24 Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Branding
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After the cupcake, I wanted
to explore logo options
where food was still a major
player, but the name Yum
Yum stood out more. But,
after making the plate and
letter logos (left), I realized
the plate logo (top) wouldn’t
scale well, and therefore
wouldn’t be good to use in
situations where the logo
should go smaller. Also, the
donut logo (bottom) did not
match the flat style of the
rest of the app.
I started to do smaller illustrations. First, drawing the
ideas out on a sticky note before going into illustrator
to develop them into small icons (above). After receiving
feedback, I found that many people gravitated toward
the plate, and the small heart shapes in my text logo
idea. Therefore, I went forward with trying to develop
those ideas with color (next page).
More sketches
Some more developed logo ideas
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After doing the color tests, people felt like
the amount of color was too busy. Eventually
I combined the type and the plate idea
together and made the plate predominantly
white. The text could then be manipulated to
then make the logo work at different sizes,
and Yum Yum’s logo was finalized.
Color tests of the two logo ideas people responded to the most
28 Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Branding
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Finally, I was able to create
advertisement mockups of Yum
Yum, and explore how I might
show the app on instagram or
in a banner ad.
30 Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Branding
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The Final Prototype
The Main Screens of the Yum Yum app
The Splash Page
The loading screen of the
app. As the app loads, the
plate lines would mimic the
circular loading animations
found online.
32 Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Final
Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Final 33

The Post Page
This is the landing page of
the app; users would be
able to share pictures of
their food creations. But,
images and posts would
be limited to food related
activities. In addition, while
making the post, users
would have the option of
linking the recipe they used.
So, people would have
easy access to recipes they
like they are particularly
intrigued by.
The Recipe Page
The recipe page became
the secondary page, but is
still there because finding
recipes is important to a
lot of people. Filters can
still be found at the top,
and every week recipe’s
would be highlighted to
help inspire chefs to try
new recipes. However, all
the sections below it would
show the recent recipes
selected and viewed by
friends. So the user would
be able to see what kind
of meals are interesting to
those around them.
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The Events Page
The page would allow the
user to explore events
that are happening in the
area. In addition, the user
would also be able to set up
events with friends and
family. To either cook or eat
together. Create features
would include the option
of group video calls, and
linking a recipe if groups
decide to cook together.
The Profile Page
This is the user’s cookbook.
Here is were they can see
all of the recipes that they
have saved, and where
they can edit and add new
recipes. In addition, if the
user wants to show off a
recipe that they have created,
there is a shared tab.
So, they can monitor those
shared recipes, and people’s
activity, like comments and
reviews. Recipes can even
be sorted into stacks. For
easy organization.
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Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Final 37

The Sources
Food Dive. “Coronavirus Changed 85% of Consumers’
Food Habits.” Accessed April 4, 2021. https://www.
fooddive.com/news/coronavirus-changed-85-ofconsumers-food-habits/579532/.
“How COVID-19 Will Affect 2020 Food Trends.” Accessed
April 27, 2021. https://www.foodbusinessnews.
net/articles/15762-how-covid-19-will-affect-2020
-food-trends.
Lempert, Phil. “Food Trends Forecast 2021: Being
Healthy In A Post Covid-19 World.” Forbes. Accessed
April 27, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/phil
lempert/2020/10/19/food-trends-2021-stayinghealthy-in-a-post-covid-19-world/.
Food Dive. “Survey: 7 in 10 Consumers Say They Will Keep
Cooking at Home after the Pandemic.” Accessed April
4, 2021. https://www.fooddive.com/news/survey-7
-in-10-consumers-say-they-will-keep-cooking-athome-after-the-pand/593532/.
38 Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Sources
Simona Snapkauskaite • BFA 2020 • Yum Yum • Sources 39

Thank you to John Nguyen,
Saniya Arora, and Carolina Silva
for being such an amazing team,
and taking the first part of the
Yum Yum journey with me.