Julio is an app designed to bring together talented personal chefs with party planners, overworked parents, vacation goers, and the guy planning the most elaborate proposal dinner possible. Julio is designed to make the booking process easy, streamlined and clear, so each both chef and client have a positive experience.
Client: Design Labs Bootcamp
Date: September/October 2022
UX/UI Research and Prototype for Julio an app to Connect Chefs and Clients.
As we move towards wanting to have experiences versus wanting more things, sharing food with those we love is a moment we can all get behind.
Julio will connect chefs with people looking to have food based experiences, in their own homes, or on location.
Media research provides us with some contemporary takes on the personal chef, or the chef moving away from conventional restaurants.
It shows us that there is a need for a personal chef platform that speaks to a new generation of chefs, those who want to have more freedom and higher wages. It also shows us that there is still so much legwork and personal branding that is required for independent food workers, and that a platform which can handle more of the office work of being a personal chef would be welcome.
An article in the New York Times shows us that personal chefs are definitely on the public radar, and with food obsession and the obsession with being like celebrities, it could be a perfect time to provide a way for people to have an interesting and modern way to book private services.
Competitive research shows us that though personal chef apps do exist, none of them, with the exception of Shef, have really broken into the mainstream. Shef differs from Julio in that it’s about connecting home cooks with local people who want to taste authenticity. But the strength of its brand identity, broad user base and simplicity make it a company to look at for inspiration and insight.
I was pleased to see that though other apps like Julio do exist, there is still room for more.
I created this infographic to better display the collection of research I made from conducting user interviews and surveys.
I made a survey of ten questions, and gathered 11 participants, ages 16-62. For the interview portion, there were 5 participants, ages 35-55.
The goal of the survey and the interviews was to understand some habits people have in relation to dining out, restaurants, hosting, app use, and to understand their comfort with the idea of a home chef.
Thru both the surveys and the interviews I learned about people’s habits when it came to dining out, dining in and hosting.
I also learned that food people really love restaurants, and the experience of visiting them, so that will be taken into account when creating the app. How do we convince people that private chef in your own home or vacation rental could be just as great of an experience, and become tradition?
All my participants are people who have a vested interest in food and food service, which gave me a unique insight into the hows and whys of choosing the ways in which we share food as entertainment and enjoyment.
Can Julio help convert these restaurant die hards, and can chefs who are comfortable with their current systems, no matter how disorganized, be convinced to try something new? Let’s look deeper into Julio.
After conducting research, I was able to put together a comprehensive user persona. Although Julio would be usable by both client and chef, the initial prototype is based upon our chef persona.
Yadira is also based upon people I know and have known who work as private chefs or in the service industry. She is incredibly hard working, industrious, creative and intelligent and she knows her worth. Yadira did not attend higher education but her real world experience is invaluable.
Julio aims to provide professionals like Yadira with the ability to connect to people who will value their talents and abilities.
Information Architecture
Wireframes
I knew that the branding and UI choices were especially important for Julio. It needs to reflect the fun and celebratory nature of hosting dinners. By taking the app in a colorful direction, it is meant to be an enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing experience for both users, the chef and the clients. I chose colors that present in food but two shades of blue to inspire confidence and calm in the app user. As it is an app that focuses on work and doing a job, it needed to look creative and interesting to hold user attention, the bolder color choices help represent this.
Font choices needed to be legible for small screens but also provide some interest, to keep up with the colors and imagery. Hoss Round is a sans serif that is made by psType, a foundry from the US and will be used for the app headers. Stevie Sans is a serif font from the Brazilian foundry Typefolio. It is an updated and fresh design that is legible and perfect for smaller app typefaces and buttons.
Prototype
Using my UI kit and plugging into my wireframes, I was able to create my prototype fairly quickly. I tested it on 6 individuals and was able to gather a lot of useful information for the final iteration of the prototype.
