App Design, Brand Identity

Stone Soup

Prototype and brand identity for a new social media app.

 

Project Context

Social media as a tool to foster and strengthen relationships

Social media apps have become a space where unique connections and relationships form, while at the same time they have gained a reputation for promoting negative feelings and habits such as depression and perceived social isolation.

In response to this challenge, I created Stone Soup. Stone Soup encourages face-to-face interactions by coordinating clubs where members meet in-person to share a home cooked meal. It connects people in the community through their common interest in food and seeks to use social media as a tool to foster and strengthen relationships.

My Role

  • Crafted Stone Soup concept

  • Designed brand identity, wireframes, and printed cookbook

  • Staged all photos

Users

  • Andrew

    • 24 years old

    • Single

    • Recently moved to Minneapolis from Madison, WI for a job

    • Enjoys rock climbing and camping

    • Has been a vegetarian for 2 years

    • Looking to meet new people

  • Georgine

    • 62 years old

    • Married with two adult children

    • Has lived in Minneapolis for 15 years

    • Enjoys gardening and cooking with the food she grows

    • Is always looking for new recipes to try

  • Sarah

    • 36 years old

    • Married with 3 kids ages 5, 7, and 12

    • Lives in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis

    • Enjoys yoga and traveling

    • Started teaching her kids about healthy eating and cooking at a young age

    • Wants to get more involved in her community

Goals

  • Demonstrate social media as a tool to promote positive behaviors

  • Develop a clickable prototype and brand identity for a new social media app

  • Understand current social media app design trends

Understanding the design trends

Throughout my design process, I referenced popular social media apps to guide the layout and functionality.

Moving smoothly through the app

I created an experience concept map to visualize how the users would move through the app.

Based on user goals, the three main ways to use the app are:

  1. Host a new cookbook club

  2. Join an existing cookbook club

  3. Browse cookbooks and save recipes

Sketching the ideas

With a finished concept map and a fresh understanding of common design trends, I started sketching out how this app would function.

These sketches were the basis of the low-fidelity prototypes for user testing.

Combining vintage and modern

For the brand’s color palette, I combined two vintage pastels with a modern red. I chose the red as the main color for the app because it’s eye catching for buttons and navigation.

The logo is a circular badge to signify a community of people with an S shaped soup ladle in the middle.

Design Solutions

Fostering new communities

The goal of Stone Soup is to promote positive behavior by connecting people in the community. This is done through clubs where users meet in person to share a home cooked meal.

When users enter the app, they are shown a list of clubs happening in their area as well as the option to start a new club.

Users interested in hosting will be prompted to pick a cookbook from a variety of options. Each cookbook includes hand selected recipes that when combined create a complete meal.

Engaging with neighbors

Users interested in joining an existing club can browse clubs happening in their area.

Prior to joining, the user can see when and where the club is meeting and which cookbook the host has chosen.

Once a user joins, they will be prompted to claim a recipe from the cookbook to cook and bring to the club.

Building a personalized cookbook

Another feature of the app allows users to browse the cookbooks in the app and save recipes to their profile.

Branded Merchandise

Completing the Stone Soup brand

Along with the Stone Soup app, I designed branded merchandise such as, an apron, dish towels, an oven mitt, recipe cards, and a full cookbook of popular recipes from the app.

Takeaways

Some key takeaways from this project are:

  • Keep app designs simple. The first drafts of Stone Soup were over designed using all three colors in the palette, images and graphics, and lots of words. Through studying other social media apps, I learned that a simplified design makes an app easier to use and look better.

  • Take your users on a journey. It’s very important to write out the user personas and what their needs and goals are early in the design process. It helped me a lot to come back to these users at every step, thinking about how they would move through the app and if their needs were being met.

  • Don’t be afraid to take on new roles. As part of this project, I made all the recipes in order to take photos. I’m not a photographer so this was a new role for me. Not only was it a lot of fun, but cooking and staging the photos gave me a lot of inspiration for the designs.