I have recently moved out to regional NSW and started to cook for myself. I have genuinely enjoyed this process until I started to get busy from work. There are no food deliveries where I live and during lock-down it’s impossible to eat in restaurants, leaving my taste buds hungry for authentic Asian food. My only option was to spend hours making them.

I have tried meal kits before but the Asian flavours are not tasty for my annoying Chinese taste-buds, despite the other options tasted fantastic. Apart from feeling being left out by the meal kit companies and the inaccessibility of ready-made food, it is also very hard to buy Asian groceries online. I haven’t encountered a single store with great customer experience, unless they are made by Chinese, for Chinese, with no options for an English interface. Also most don’t deliver to my area(which is understandable). I now understand why Asian gather together in the same suburbs!

Apparently, my friends share similar opinions with me, and it made me wonder how everyone else felt about this problem. This project encapsulates the journey of designing an ideal user experience for a hypothetical Asian meal kit company – Rice. from generative research to simple wire-frames.

There are times were my findings did not match my expectations and leaned heavily towards one side, I had to change the business model and thus the user flows of this hypothetical company due to the opinions of the people I have surveyed and interviewed. This made me question how to find the balance between making customers happy and making money!