Purpose

After defining our target user group, we developed a mood board that captured their emotions with respect to the recipe collection transaction. The mood board combines various lifestyle elements pertaining to the aspirations of the target users. This step in the design process is beneficial because it enables us to bridge the divide between the user research and the creative process.

Process

We first created a list of phrases that we felt described our target user group, paying special attention to the transitional state they were in. These guiding phrases included:

• Out of college
• Time to grow up
• Uncertainty
• Excited by the prospects of: increased income, free time, more sophisticated lifestyle, a healthier lifestyle
• Leaving behind: late nights, poor eating habits, unbalanced lifestyle
• Exploratory
• Trying new things
• Attempting to find his/her style
• Not quite a refined palate, but on the way

Armed with these descriptive elements, we scoured through multiple magazines which were relevant to and marketed towards our target user group. We cut out and tagged pictures and text that we thought captured the ideas above. In addition, when we felt we had not sufficiently addressed a key element, we looked through stock photos online and printed out interesting pictures. With various candidate images and text, we selected the ones we felt best captured the transition our users were experiencing. We then created a metaphor of our users aspirations for the future being up and their previous lives being down, with them in the middle; we surrounded our users with white space to emphasize the possibility and freedom in their future. Other images surrounding our users in the possibility space were chosen based on our directed storytelling to capture the various elements of the cooking experience we want to address in our design.

Final Presentation