MoodFood was the evolution of a simple problem statement taken through MICA's Product Management course and then through Capstone Development over a total of 16 weeks. The overall process began with brainstorming and mindmapping, included market and research on macro forces, user discovery, and then ultimately prototyping and testing.
Initial user discovery revealed that many participants identified as struggling with mental health, with stress and anxious thoughts being the top symptoms and work, school, COVID-19 and relationships being the top stressors. However, participants also indicated that they like to cook and furthermore, that they are aware that cooking and eating have an effect on their mental well-being.
Particularly enlightening was speaking with a mental health professional, who helped shed light on how they assist clients who struggle with activities of daily living including but not limited to cooking and eating. They described their approach to encourage clients to build 'menus' for themselves, comprised of activities from which they could choose on any given day based on their mental, emotional, and physical bandwidth much like a patron would choose items from a menu at a restaurant - it's not meant to be consumed in whole, but rather in what someone can manage in that moment. This heavily informed the design solution that MoodFood took: in addition to providing recipes based on a user's mood, it would also allow users to perform activities, serving them beyond their need for recipes and becoming an all-around mental health and self-care tool and resource.
The solution's design and branding took on a simplistic approach, inspired by hand-drawn food illustrations with limited palettes as well as scrapbook-style recipe books and bullet journals. The idea was to evoke a recipe book or self-care journal created with one's hands, in the pages of a nice journal and using a well-loved pen.
While background research and user discovery is certainly crucial to laying the foundations of the problem and the subsequent solution, it is important to stay focused on the initial problem statement. Research may always bring up new questions and assumptions to validate, but it is also important to consider these in the context of that initial statement or how it changes the initial statement. In my experience during this process, I allowed it to add more questions and parameters to consider, which meant that I lost sight of my initial intentions somewhat.