Case Study
Responsive Web UX Design at People Inc. July — Oct 2024.
Challenge:
In a 100-day initiative, design and deliver new features to boost engagement on all recipe brands before the peak holiday season, ultimately increasing ad revenue through increased sessions, expanded sessions durations, and more return users.
Role:
User interviews, usability testing, kano studies, and synthesis
Ideation, design, and prototyping of new features
Design system contribution and maintenance
Cross-collaboration with Product, Dev, and Editorial
Results:
+26.14% increased sessions YoY
+184.6% increased average session duration YoY
+160% increased return users YoY
Key Insights
Synthesized from user interviews, usability testing, and kano studies.
Users are overwhelmed when faced with too many reviews.
Some recipes have 20k+ reviews. It’s a wealth of information but for the average user there was no easy way to parse through it all.
Cooking from a phone is disorienting and difficult.
Mobile accounts for 80%+ of recipe traffic, and the limited screen real estate was leading to scroll fatigue and confusion when working through the directions.
Users want to contribute, if it’s easy enough to do.
Our community of home cooks believes in paying it forward, but they only have so much time and they want to know it’ll help someone else.
Solutions
Notable delivered features.
"Ask the Community"
Designed a dedicated Question & Answer space, empowering the home cook community to ask and receive personalized recipe advice.
This solution addresses critical challenges for the business and users by reducing premature 1-star reviews used to ask questions, and also improving user satisfaction by giving them what they always wanted: an answer.
4.2/5 average usefulness rating
8,203 questions asked and answered in the first 4 months
Users can ask and answer questions in a space dedicated to helping one another.
Natural language processing was used to classify reviews as alterations, which were then reevaluated and ranked by helpfulness.
"Featured Tweaks"
Created an AI-powered review categorization feature, pulling out the most useful content to address user frustrations with overwhelming reviews. This carousel surfaces the most liked reviews that included an adjustment, or "tweak", to the recipe.
4.5/5 average usefulness rating
92% of users indicated they were more likely to visit again for this feature
Unauthenticated Review Flow
Users want to contribute so long as it's easy enough to do. Equally, if you can get them invested in the process, they're more likely to finish.
Here, we reduced the barrier of entry by moving log in/registration to the end of the submission flow, which led to a surge in contributions.
+37% increase in submitted ratings and reviews
Having the form open on-load instead of after registration led users to invest in the process and finish their review flow more often.
Sort and filter lets the user control what content they see and led to greatly increased session durations.
Sort and Filter Reviews
There's no one-size-fits-all for users looking at reviews. Adding sort and filter functionality simplified the consumption of reviews by giving more control to the user to parse out what was most relevant to their needs.
+23% of average session duration upon interaction
Serving Size Adjuster
The default number of servings didn't always work for users. They may be cooking for one, or cooking for many.
The Serving Size Adjuster gives users the ability to adjust recipe servings at the tap of a button, adjusting it to their household's needs. A highly requested feature, this received high praise from users both in testing and to customer service.
90% of users were more likely to visit again for this feature
+5% ad impressions per pageview
We spent extensive team with the Editorial team, reprogramming recipes for easy, purposeful conversions, such as teaspoon to tablespoon, etc.
The floating action button expands when idling, calling attention to the feature without obscuring their view while actively scrolling.
Ingredients Overlay
A simple but effective solution to scroll fatigue, the ingredients overlay provides quick access to the Ingredients list without leaving the Directions section.
+5% average session duration upon interaction
45% of users were more likely to visit again for this feature
"Cook Mode"
The first phase of what is becoming a larger project, Cook Mode solves a major pain point for users by keeping their phone screen on while they cook, no longer requiring them to tap the screen with dirty fingers while they're busy.
+120% average session duration upon interaction
82% of users were more likely to visit again for this feature
Results
Outcome:
Delivered 7 new features by October, the end of the 100-day deadline, leading to massive boosts in traffic and engagement around the Winter holidays when People Inc. makes the most revenue.
+26.14% increased sessions YoY
+184.6% increased average session duration YoY
+160% increased return users YoY
Impact:
The success of these features highlighted the value of design—not just through outcomes, but through the way we led in partnership. As a result, the design team has earned greater trust, influence, and autonomy in shaping future initiatives.