Amazon Dinner Product
What product or service might Amazon provide to improve meals for customers? My team had six weeks to research an end user, develop ideas, and prototype a solution.
Problem
Create a dinnertime product for Amazon.
An interviewee unwraps her meal in the middle of the night before consuming it.
approach
User Selection
After discussing the brief with the team, we chose the subgroup of people with unorthodox work schedules or night-time shifts. There are many segmented groups in the dinner space, but we chose to pick these individuals because of the challenge they offered us as well as the ability to innovate new meaningful solutions.
Interviews
We conducted interviews with individuals that fit our subculture and gathered lots of data. These interviewees included many nurses as well as hospitality staff.
Journey map used to demonstrate the path of a typical user to prepare a meal.
Interpretation
We analyzed the data and came up with insights and needs. The insights were based on patterns we saw and ares that we wanted to focus on.
Insights
- OWNERSHIP LEADS TO SATISFACTION
When customers feel like they are in charge of their meal, they are happier with the results.
- MEAL TIMES ARE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SOCIALIZE AND RELAX
Meal times serve as breaks and a time to catch up with coworkers and friends.
- SMALL WORK-AROUNDS SPICE UP ORDINARY MEALS
Simple actions that a customer owns during preparation can make a large difference.
- PREDICTABLE MEAL STRUCTURES SIMPLIFY PREP
Preparation based on different food groups help in a customer’s food prep journey.
Ideation
From our insights, we brainstormed a number of ideas. After sketch-modeling them, we further narrowed it down to two that we would develop further and test.
Field Testing
The first concept was tested in the field using a printed screen prototype of a possible interface. A user demonstrated recipe preparation and Post Its were used to track locations the user touched in order to determine proper remote button placement. We learned that there were too many different touchpoints and that the button had to be moveable.
The second concept was developed by freezing a number of different food items. They were broken off from a larger batch and microwaved.
A user then tasted the prepared food and stated "I don’t care [that it is frozen food] anymore, now that I’ve tasted it. It’s pretty good."
Solution
Final Prototypes
Amazon Cookmate
Cookmate is a way to integrate recipes and food preparation into streaming content. This allows a customer to create amazing dishes without missing a second of their show.
Amazon Eats
Eats allows customers to mix and match categories of their meal while reducing preparation times. Each serving comes pre-frozen and breakable into portions. Users simply break off their desired size, pack it in a microwaveable dish. To serve, they add some sauce for a personal touch, pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and out comes a homestyle meal.
Conclusion
Amazon Eats and Amazon Cookmate complement Amazon's current offerings while encouraging customers to purchase Prime further driving Amazon's revenue.
Prime subscribers spend twice the amount of money on Amazon products than non-Prime members.
Prime Fresh members generate three times the service fee as non-subscribers.
Our offerings will generate more Prime and Prime Fresh subscriptions for Amazon, thus increasing their revenue.
A few months after presenting, Amazon piloted a meal kit service, created a Skill for Alexa to read out recipes, and purchased Whole Foods, further cementing its place in the grocery and preparation space.