Chefzone - Industrial Design Project

Role: UX/UI Designer

Tools: Figjam, Figma, Mobbin,Miro, Notion IO,
Otter AI

Problem: Chefzone's platform seeks to create opportunities by seeking ways to outsource jobs within the food and beverage industry. The platform also provides a resume template that creates a pdf and web-based version for applicants to apply easily for jobs.

Goal

I will be working on solving problems that users have with building a resume utilizing product & heuristic analysis, information architecture and competitive analysis.

Constraints

Designing a app with no prior research or framework
Work with design team who had various time zones
Lack of understanding from investors and stakeholders about the current recruiting market for chefs

Time: 5 weeks. Time was extended due to challenges with the product team and realigning to overall objectives midway our research.

Overview

Chefzone was created to showcase the wonderful diverse generation stories of our wonderful culinary community we show up to co-create every single day.

We live in a time where it’s easy to fall into a pattern of being transactional. However, through Shared humanity, connections, we are all connected, we go through the same things. Life isn’t always easy and happy it isn’t supposed to be. The struggles shape us into who we are. How we respond to struggles, and how we use resilience, compassion, and love to let others know they are okay.

Food and beverage are ingredients we have in our everyday lives that leave us feeling nourished, connected, and abundant with ourselves and others. We want to build a mindful community that

Solution Statement

How might we provide an online community for chefs to showcase their culinary skills?
(Specifically for ethnic market & online communities)

How might we be able to create an organized resume that showcases a chef’s accolades and work

As a user, I would like to build a resume that will showcase my cooking skills and work history.

As a user, I would like to find jobs within my industry in a central location and have the ability to easily apply for jobs onsite

Research Insights

Chefzone’s founder Kiana had compiled notes prior to our roles being assigned to this project. Our goal was to gain insight and clarity from the various interviews whilst understanding particular behavior and patterns of chefs and hiring managers. The individuals interviewed varied from experienced chefs to those who were looking to break into the industry. Otter AI’splatform created for us a better understanding of our previous analysis & assumptions, which pushed us into the direction of seeing how a chef’s resume can showcase his skills and prior work experience in a visual concept.

Meet Chef Bill Murray our user persona

Affinity Mapping

The affinity mapping exercise was utilized for us to organize our ideas and data that was given to us from prior chef zone research. This brainstorming session allowed for us UX Designers to put ourselves into thinking perspective of the chef and the problems they’ve been facing in the food and beverage industry.

Group 1

This group relayed several pain points of the chef, who finds it difficult in landing or finding a job. Several patterns were identified and we further discussed this amongst ourselves to focus in narrowing our findings.

Group 2

Whilst we understood various pain points in the beginning, we started to work our way down in a meticulous manner. It is important to understand how a chef is motivated and understanding how the user takes on challenges within the industry in finding jobs.

Group 3

Working through this section gave us some additional sore points that chefs embarked upon after getting a job and various obstacles faced whilsts trying to become more qualified for a better market pay.

Group 4

Group 5

We wrapped up our affinity mapping exercise with focusing on the contents and key aspects of the Minimal Viable product which was the video resume. We wanted to ensure that the use of access for both the chef and hiring manager was easy to maneuver and not overly time consuming.

Competitive Analysis

Pared (Responsive Mobile)

No OAuth for quicker onboarding.
No resume building is included, just adding work history and creating a a profile
There aren’t any ‘out-of-the-box’ features to add in the ‘add your background’ part, such as adding photos or videos - similar to creating a portfolio.

Because Pared is specific to the culinary industry, building a profile and adding work history is already set up with inputs for existing restaurants and related roles.
A networking system is another feature in part of this app, and after the user fills in their work history, it aggregates other industry persons the user may know. It also allows the user to sync contacts to find people you may know that are using Pared.
Encourages profile image to encourage networking.

Postives

Negatives

Action Items

Creating a resume within the app and have ability to download for outside use.
Allowing a “portfolio” section in the profile.
Ability to add social media links

Indeed (Responsive Mobile)

Postives

Clean UI with only options to “upload resume” or “create a new resume”.
Automates skills based on the user’s industry and allow the user to easily tap on any relevant skills. Less recall needed from the user.
Allows the user to know what stages they are at in the resume-building process (e.g. step 1 out of 5)

Negatives

Allows users to autofill the resume form by loading an existing resume, however, those features don’t always cleanly autofill. The success of the autofill depends on the format the resume is in, as well as if the user has access to an iCloud drive.
In the “create your resume” section, there aren’t any unique features.
The resume building is very thorough but could be overwhelming and time-consuming.

Action Items

Having more unique features to display a user’s unique skills or individuality. E.g. videos, photos, more visuals.
Aggregating a network of other people the user may know in the industry
Allowing a “portfolio” & “networking” section in the profile.

Thumbtack (Responsive Mobile)

Postives

Thumbtacks marketing tool is shown at the very top of the profile set up a page and also gives you starter paragraphs to help set up user content and data
The app offers opportunities are leads that are no too far off from your match of services.
Automatic responses generator for when a client has a question
Weekly budgeting goals so that you can improve your outreach.

Negatives

When typing in the word chef, ranges are given but not enough categories are presented.
In the “create your resume” section, there aren’t any unique features.
Responses seem generic and may not appeal to the client

Action Items

OAuth is used as a primary method- Users can sign up with gmail, apple, or their very own email. Users aren’t forced to confirm an email address or a lengthy password to include Uppercase, Lowercase and Symbols
Leads can be filtered by clients range, how relevant they are to your skill and their contact information
Marketing templates can be created rather than creating one of your own

Low fidelity wireframes and flows

Based on our research data and analysis, our priorities here were making sure communication, documentation, and accountability were referenced throughout each function of Chefzones usability feature so that the app as a whole was as comprehensive as possible and further encouraged teamwork and collaboration. I also chose to focus on the resume generator function

Usability Testing

High Fidelity Wireframes

For the redesign of Chefzone, we coveted three iterations in the process whilst centering the
design around chef zone users and how they interacted with the platform to make their job
search as efficient as possible. Few things we added in our last iteration were guides that
prompted the user as to how they should proceed with the next steps. This key feature allowed
for consistency of usage and added an organic experience for the user to utilize the functions
in creating a pdf version of their resume.

Test Prototype

Outcomes, Learning & Next Steps

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