PARSNIP CASE STUDY

End to End Mobile App Collaboration
Check Out The Beta App
Company
Parsnip.ai


Duration
1 year
The Team
3 Engineers
1 Chef
1 Design Firm (8)
1 Photographer
+ Me!
My Role
UX Research
Usability Testing
Marketing Strategy
Community Engagement
Content Editing
Tools
Figma
Notion
Slack
Zoom
Flamelink
Skills
User Interviews
Early startup stamina
Creative presentaions
Remote working
Switching many hats
Background
Parsnip was birthed in 2020 by a group of friends who recognized a great need during the pandemic for empowering people in their own kitchens. It’s the first app to capitalize on teaching cooking skills through gamification, or in other words the “Duolingo for cooking.”
My Role
I began collaborating with the founding CEO, COO, and CTO (pictured) from the early stages of this startup and thus wore many hats with Parsnip as it evolved. I did early UX design for the first beta version which landed $200K in funding, including both of the Duolingo founders, as well as securing partnership with an award winning Silicon Valley based design firm. From there I collaborated with the stakeholders on design decisions, conducted user research and usability testing, as well as assisting with marketing strategy, content editing, community engagement, and more.
With the CEO, COO, and CTO on a company retreat

UX Research

Competitor Analysis
Researching the dense food app market was crucial to identifying how to distinguish Parsnip from dozens of others. Fortunately we discovered that no others were currently focusing specifically on building cooking skills. Jackpot. We also found a way to bypass all the app store competition and be found by 1000x more users. How so? The most popular way to find a recipe online is, you guessed it— Google. Which is why Parsnip chose to become a progressive web app (PWA) that can be visited in a browser and indexed by Google.
Competitor Analysis
User Interviews

Over the course of a year, I conducted three rounds of user interviews and usability tests at different stages in the beta development. One initial sweep that was much broader to understand all the different types of behaviors and desired kitchen / food related AI, and two more rounds as the beta version improved for a deeper dive into user wants, needs, and desires as well as to help flag major useability disconnects. Here are the goals for phase 2 of research:

Research Goals
Empathy Maps
As I gathered from dozens qualitative interviews, I recognized three categories of users and began taking note of their thoughts and behaviors as illustrated in these empathy maps. This helped me put myself in the shoes of our users and better advocate for their wants and needs for all the design collaboration decisions.
Personas
I mapped out 2 key personas of potential users to help us truly narrow down who we are aiming to target the most. The more we understand our target users, the more accurately we can cater to their desires with each design decision.
Research Summary Highlights
I had many methods for analyzing the results I gathered from my research including more detailed excel spreadsheets with color coded, categorized  quotes from each interview. This Affinity Map was helpful for summarizing key insights and themes as I presented to the team. I also recorded zoom interviews and edited select bites for certain key insights we were most interested in understanding.

The UX research I gathered helped me effectively advocate for our users on collaborative design decisions made with the stakeholders and designers. Meanwhile, our award winning design firm, Definery, spearheaded the UX / UI of the app over the course of 6+ months. They asked me not to show any of their design process.

To see the latest version, pull out your mobile device and checkout the app at www.parsnip.ai
Check Out The Beta App
Powered by Webflow