Book & Cook
Book and cook is a service designed exclusively for students of NID that provides them the chance to cook their favourite dish with friends in a custom kitchen setup privately booked by them. A service whose core lies in recreating a personal kitchen experience for the user along with a group of 4 to savour the dish they prepared just the way they like it. The home way!
Project Overview.
Skills.
User Research
Design Strategy
Opportunity Mapping
Service Design
Toolkit.
Research Methodology
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Outcome.
The Service was launched for 2 weekends for students on campus.
Overall participation : 100 students and 20 registered groups availed the on campus service.
Duration.
2 weeks Development
2 weeks Implementation
Background.
A a part of the Service design module, teams of 4 students each were formed and asked to map the various unorganised services in and around National Institute of design campus (NID). The students would then select one such services based on opportunity quotient and their interest areas after which they embark on its redesign/ New Service design. The module focused on identifying elements of a good service which fulfils the need / opportunity area in the campus and bring these two together by a collaborative team effort. One of the emphasis on the module was testing the service by executing a trial run of it in the to evaluate if the service was financially self sustainable on its own in the campus for a duration of 2 weeks. It also helped in understanding the viability of the service in providing value to the community in the longer run. A research was conducted through interviews with students on campus where they spoke about areas of improvement in campus.
Service Design Process
We used the double diamond approach for our design process which was decided as a team. We further analysed each of the following four steps and than further listed the sub steps which form the building block of our service.
Discover the need for service
Define the value you serve as a service
Develop customer engagement
Deliver the service with quality
Discover Need.
There was a huge scope and need of services in multiple areas ranging from fitness, food, sports, personal care, hostel facilities etc which formed the top options in our research insights. As a team we decided to pick food & mess services as our opportunity area as food form a daily essential need of each one and so our service would have a chance to impact most students in a way. We also wanted to create a fun experience around food to achieve user delight in the end. We now tried to understand the structure of our service by dwelling into the feedback and voice of our students.
Define Value.
Identity Creation
This picture shows the initial draft of the elements used to create the visual identity of our the service. The keywords which resonated from student feedback were used as mood board and a quick identity was build. The canvas we started with could be defined in the below statement.
Savour yum food + Joy of cooking with friends = Core of service.
Develop Customer Engagement.
In the development stage of the service, it was of prime importance to create a buzz about book & cook from the beginning amongst students to infuse interest over other services. We decided to do so by three channels simultaneously.
By connecting to a network of students through a Facebook page and build awareness in the community and ensure participation. This FB page will be a medium through which our users could get a glimpse of the upcoming service and at later stage could be a platform for sharing information related to launch etc.
By displaying posters of students involved with their interactions with food in mess, kitchen or across the campus.
By conducting a Mock Run of the service to see the bottle neck in advance. A video was also created for promotion purpose.
Posters
Promotion posters were put in the campus featuring students as subjects while engaging with food. This created an element of excitement about and also anticipation to know what the service is about.
Deliver Book & Cook.
We received an overwhelming response as we entered the fourth stage of the service. After an enthusiastic run in promotions and mock session, we had delivered a good adverting of Book & Cook in the community. It was decided to launch the service during the course of following 2 weekend ( Fri-Sat-Sun) in the dinner hours. We ensured a systematic and hassle free launch of the service by executing it in following steps.
Launch poster informing the students of the opening details about the service for group of 5 were displayed in community spots such as mess, hostels, entrance gym etc.
Registration booth was setup in the mess for students during breakfast, lunch and dinner time which sees the maximum footfall.
Each registered group was provided with a registration kit consisting of the best practices, name tags for each member of the team and a list of in house ingredients for cooking such as salt, oil, cutlery etc.
Each team reached out to us with the list of specific ingredients required for their preparation. They were given 3 hour of time slot for cooking and dining in the created kitchen-lounge setup.
We also provided them with chef hats to experience the joy of cooking and arranged a student photographer for candid photography with their loved ones.
Launch Poster & Registration kit
We continued to run the service in the following month due to increased demand from the student community. They enjoyed the wholistic experience of dining their favourite food made in the way they like and in the company of their friends. With my team members Vineet, Romel & Milind for Book & Cook.