Winter 2024
Solving the Struggle to Meal Prep Consistently.
Team
2 UX Researchers
Role
UX Researcher and Visual Designer
Timeline
January 2024 - April 2024
Methods
Focus Group, Surveys, Diary Studies
Project Overview
For this school project, My peers and I found an interest on meal prepping and wanted to know more about people's struggles and their challenges with deep research. We delve into it together with focus groups and later on, we continued on our own with surveys and a diary study.
On my own for this project I kept my scope with the question:
Why do young adults struggle keeping up with meal prepping?
The Problem
Young individuals want to be healthier, but
they struggle with life responsibilities, school
and staying social.
The Goal
Discover what stops beginners from making meal prepping a habit, and identify opportunities for a tool or service that helps them build consistency.
We kicked off with a moderated focus group session with 5 participants, all self-identified beginner meal preppers. Where the group and I explored their routines, motivations, frustrations, and past attempts when meal prepping.
They often felt overwhelmed by planning and didn’t know where to start.
They disliked repetition: “I get bored eating the same meals.”
A lot of pressure to do it “the right way” led to decision fatigue.
Is this a broader pattern?
To validate our focus group themes, we launched a survey with 33 respondents (ages 20–30).
said lack of time was the biggest blocker.
wanted help planning meals or choosing what to make.
motivated by saving time
motivated by saving money
A participant said this:
“I don’t know how to keep it interesting.”
Thanks to these insights we get to meet, Samantha!
Meet Samantha!
Samantha, 20-year-old college student. Balancing school, social life, and health goals. Needs structure to stay on top of cooking and her nutrition.
She values easy planning, variety in meals, and staying organized. Often juggling classes and activities, she feels overwhelmed by repetitive recipes and indecision around what to eat.
Goals: Save time cooking, stay consistent with meal prepping, and discover healthy, affordable meals with minimal effort.
This is her current journey.
How does it feel to do this alone?
To dig deeper, we followed 3 participants over a week as they attempted to prep meals.
Participants logged their thoughts before and after prepping.
We prompted them with questions like:
“What did you plan to make today?”
“What made it harder/easier than expected?”
“What tools or support would have helped?”
This is what I found:
Planning fatigue: Most gave up on day 3.
Grocery list confusion, missing ingredients, or “not in the mood” to cook what they planned.
They wished someone would just guide them, especially early on.
We learned new things about Samantha and more details on her meal prep experience.
Samantha often finds herself
eating more fast food rather
than eating her prepared
healthy meals.
Resorting to quick and easy options like ceral due to a busy schedule.
Not having all the ingredients to try new recipes.
Have more vegetable options.
She has other goals like : have a variety in her meals, with different proteins and have balanced meals.
And now we know fully how her thoughts and process is when meal prepping
The Solution
Providing a way to support young individuals in their 20's to Prepy their meals
Get clear instructions on ingredient quantities to streamline your grocery shopping process.
Get quick dinner ideas and Mix & Match easy and different recipes during the week to keep it interesting, and use the randomize button for different options.
Get advice from Prepy AI. You can get Recipe suggestions tailored to your preferences and dietary needs, and even guidance in the recipes.
Overview of all the app screens .
Reflections
A Diary study needs your undivided attention.
I found myself stressed with the 'no pressuring' the participants when asking them to log in their diary of the day. There was a day where I forgot to send a reminder, and thankfully no one forgot that day, but it made me realize that the diary study method keeps you really aware of the time and like a boss bugging all the time about that one project.
Prioritization.
For the focus group session, our team had lots of different questions on what to ask during the focus group session. since the time was limited for the session, we focused on asking on their current journey when meal prepping, their general attitude towards it and what are their expectations of what they want to see in a meal prepping app, which help us gathered enough data for the initial research.
Daniela Guevara 2025
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