Px Plate

Project Overview

Px Plate aimed to provide customers with meals personalized for their specific nutritional needs.

To do this, Px Plate wanted to build a responsive web-app that would automate the decision making process of a dietitian when making meal recommendations. The optimal nutritional value per meal (eg: overall number of calories, amount of salt and/or fat, etc) would then be calculated and made into a meal for customers to order.

My Contribution

I led the research, design and prototyping of the entire user experience (offline and online).

I also worked very closely with different departments including chefs, dietitians and the business teams to understand operational complexities and solution out ways in which we could build a great experience.

Business Goals & Challenges

Build out an MVP in a highly ambiguous environment

Px Plate’s business concept was being bootstrapped to further assess if there was a true need for the service.

There was little understanding for who the target audience would be or even how operations would work with the technology.

And so, the name of the game was to build lean and concentrate only on delivering core bits of the user experience.

Bring an online experience to a hawker centre

To pilot test the concept with a limited budget, the founders purchased a small low-cost food stall at an asian hawker centre (about 100 sqft; 9 sqm).

Ordering food at a hawker is a purely offline experience, and so introducing an online experience to a hawker centre was asking for quite a change in customer behaviour.

Build Loyalty

The benefits of eating healthy in the long-term helps create a greater impact for customers. And so, it was an important goal for the company to build a base of loyal customers to not only build a recurring revenue source, but also to help customers achieve their health goals.

User Research & Insights

Based on the fact that Px Plate was in extremely early stages, I decided to conduct contextual inquiries and structured face-to-face interviews to collect qualitative data.
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In this highly ambiguous stage of a business, I set out to understand the motivations, behaviours and pain points of different groups of people who were interested in healthy eating and the hawker environment. This also helped us create different personas that would effectively act as an early understanding of Px Plate’s ideal target market.

Insights on our main target group (People who wanted to eat healthy but struggle making the change)

Manage health & feel good

Most people attributed their desire to eat healthy in an attempt to manage a larger health problem (such as acid reflux) so that they could maintain a better sense of well being to feel good. Weight loss so that they could feel more confident in their body was also another significant factor.

The diet disconnect

Although they know eating healthy is an important part of managing health problems, people frequently voiced out the inability to understand how to effectively eat healthy in order to make a difference in their health.

The confusing nutritional space

Most people who want to eat healthy say that it is hard for them to find reliable sources of information in terms of what foods are really healthy for their health issues. While one source might frown on wine or coffee, others say these beverages are good for you.

The rise of health bloggers and fad diets are also adding to the confusion in the nutrition space, especially for people looking to eat healthy for medical health benefits.

Observations about the hawker environment

Long, snaking queues

Although most hawker stalls were fast at fulfilling orders (3-5 minute intervals), they had long, snaking queues during the lunch rush. This created a problem of crowded store fronts with visitors having to spend their time mindlessly queuing.

Loyalty

Although our target group knew that eating healthy is an important part of managing health problems, they had a problem with understanding how to put that in action to make a difference in their health.

Concepts & Testing

With all the gathered data, I set out to quickly test various ideas. To do this, we were able to gather friends and family who fit the description of our main target audience. We then conducted tests of how each individual would go through our different processes (Signup, Ordering, Reordering and Discovering Information). We used mockups in different ways to quickly recreate the experience and understand if it was the best way to go.

Eliminating the problem of queuing altogether

To avoid the problem of having visitors queuing and waiting a long time for their food (especially with our longer food preparation timings), our goal was to clearly communicate a completely new way of ordering so that we could deliver a fuss-free experience.

We utilized our storefront to communicate the concept of personalized meals and to guide customers to start the online order process by getting on their phones.

Order Tracking

The online experience would then minimize crowding or queues through an order tracking feature. First-time visitors could then come back when their order is ready. Additionally, returning visitors would know to place an order in advance and only appear at the stall for collection.

Weekly ordering to build healthy habits

The food-ordering experience was designed specifically to encourage customers to order their meals on a weekly and even monthly basis, versus just for the day.
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This was designed with the intention to guide users to plan for healthier eating habits, helping them make their desire to be healthy a reality.
This was of course also geared toward helping build a recurring revenue base for the business.

Optimizing the experience of getting a meal personalized

To get a meal that was nutritionally personalized, dietitians needed a lot of information from individuals to make a nutritional assessment. To optimize this experience, I looked to minimize the amount of typing users would have to go through and the number of screens they would have to see.
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To do this, I designed simple options they could quickly and immediately pick from in one main page. This greatly helped minimize the perception of complexity and the time spent clicking around.

Empowering users with the information required to make healthy choices

To help our customers understand how to live a healthier lifestyle, we tested the idea of providing them with a breakdown of their nutritional assessment.
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This information was contextualized for our users when eating Px Plate meals. It would help them create a benchmark for healthier eating habits and a better understanding of how they should be eating for a healthier lifestyle.

Ideas put on the back burner

There were many other ideas that the team had brainstormed based of our research findings. However, we wanted to build a lean MVP with a concentration on perfecting the basics. Nonetheless, here are some other ideas we brainstormed about incorporating into the app.

Loyalty program that rewards customers whenever they eat healthy (whether it is Px Plate or not)
Showing customers how each Px Plate meal helps with their overall health condition
Taking into account a user's motivation for eating healthy and understanding if Px Plate is helping them achieve that goal
Explanation of how each meal helps their specific health condition

Where is Px Plate now?

To launch the product, I created a fully coded and interactive frontend system using webflow and passed the exported code to our development team for further backend development.
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Px Plate launched, however, I unfortunately left the company before I could conduct further testing of the launched experience. However, I was told that the launch was well received and it since had over 800 customers and 1,600 orders.

The metrics I would have wanted to get a deeper dive into would have been:

User drop off rates and parts of the system where users drop off
Number of recurring orders versus one-time orders
Having user enter their motivation for eating healthy
Explanation of how each meal helps their health conditions

Media coverage

Px Plate was featured in a variety of local media after its initial launch including:

Men's Health

Straits Times

Dr Hempel Network

Px Plate

The Solution

Let's connect

I am always looking to connect with like minded individuals and for feedback on my thoughts and work. Feel free to email me at

sarah9393@gmail.com