Narrative

Chef Privé ("private" in French) is a conceptual app that I did for fun. It started as a simple design prompt that was given to me as a challenge. I wanted to approach this like I would a normal project, but since I didn't have any team or any other information, I needed to work with the little information I had.

Prompt and Challenge

Prompt

This was the exact prompt:
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"For centuries, sharing a meal has been a ritual that connects families and friends together. The tradition of getting together to eat and chat allows us positive and meaningful time with somone or groups of people.

However these lovely and cozy meet ups are fading away. The results form a survey sent out to 2500 people living in New York CIty prove that the number of social gatherings has been going down each year. Especially home hosted events for friends and family.

The main reason for this is the lack of time and energy to prepare and organize these meetings. Participants mentioned the struggle to buy, prepare and serve the food. The majority agreed they would love to host more lunches and dinners for their loved ones."

Challenge

Design an app that allows users to browse and book a chef/cook who will come to their house and cook a meal for their guests.

Full creative freedom. I chose to design this for iOS.

A quick search in the Apple App store revealed a few apps that seem to have a similar goal to this challenge. I downloaded and tried to access:

• Cheffeurs
• SRVE
• Eat In
• Luxe
• Savour
• Chelit

However, the competitor analysis resulted in no useful data, as I could not access any of the apps. I was either not in their service area or the app was broken / unsupported.

Since that was completely useless for any real data, I took a look at some other apps with a similar offering. These apps included:

• Rover
• Wag
• Taskrabbit
• Thumbtack

This was much more helpful. I was able to access and play around with these apps. And I noticed a few similarities and trends. It seemed like the most important aspects were: Price, Reviews, Experience, and bio. This was reinforced by my user research. 

User research

I used a combination of the data given to me in the prompt and actually did my own personal research with three real users. Here are some of my notes:

Data from prompt (n=2500):

• Capture method was a survey
• NYC residents
• Home hosted events declining
• Lack of time and energy to prepare / organize

Personal user research (n=3):

• Data captured in an interview
• Special occasions, bachelorette party, vacation 10-15 people
• All three participants preferred a luxurious experience instead of a casual one.
• Wanted app to have a high end fee
• If app was more casual, participants expected lower quality or cheaper.
• If this was a recurring event, they would want a more casual or cheaper option
• They would search by date rather than by cuisine, chef, or price.
• Must need features are reviews, photos, price, specialties and primary language. Location was not mentioned as must need.

Persona building

I created three fictitious personas based on my research.

Primary Persona - Jim and Pam

• Newlyweds, no children
• Friends and family all live in Brooklyn and NYC
• Havent seen friends in 2+ years due to COVID
• Both are back in the office working full time
• Long commute home from North NYC to Soho, they get home late.
• Some guests have special dietary restrictions
• Want to relax and have friends over and not worry about cooking or buying all the ingredients for a large gathering.

Secondary Persona 1 - Jorge

• Bachelor
• Works on wall street
• Usually dines out
• Both are back in the office working full time
• Enjoys entertaining guests
• Wants to hire a caterer or chef for the Super Bowl

Secondary Persona 2 - Chen

• Single mother
• Works 2 jobs
• Hosting a surprise birthday party for her best friend
• Looking to book a chef for this special occasion

Branding

Typography

Headings / Titles

I went with a Serif typeface to increse the perception of elegance, high-end, luxurious. I used the default iOS serif typeface New York, for ease of implementation, and lightweight app code.

Body copy

I used the iOS default sans-serif for ease of implementation and legibility

Design elements

Colors

I chose green to represent plants and food. This could be perceived as fresh produce, or organic.

Shapes

I wanted it to resemble a leaf, or a plant to help drive home the idea of fresh, high quality ingredients.

Images

What better way to make you salivate than gorgeous images of mouth watering food. This also should showcase the talents of the chef and promote their professionalism. You want to impress your guests with a michelin star quality meal from home.

Deliverables

Prototype

Built using Figma, I have a limited featured prototype in the app. You can also play around with the prototype here.

High Fidelity screens