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Overview

A user research study examining cooking fatigue among off-campus SCAD students, mapping the stakeholder ecosystem and synthesizing primary and secondary research into key insights; reframing cooking challenges as a systemic issue rather than an individual student shortcoming.

Objective

To investigate a real challenge students face at SCAD by uncovering the multiple barriers involved in preparing meals for themselves and translating those insights into concept-based user-centered interventions.

Details

Duration : 3 weeks (Oct 2025)

Team : Rucha Nene, Aarshi Jain

Mentors : Dr. Christine Z Miller

Stakeholder map

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Secondary research insights

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Observations

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Interviewing route

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Research

To understand cooking fatigue and poor meal planning, we developed a stakeholder map and a fishbone diagram through secondary research. We then conducted two 30 minute cooking observations, and interviewed five culturally diverse SCAD students.

 

The observations served as initial research to uncover insights from the physical cooking environment, while the interviews revealed barriers beyond the immediate context.

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Affinity Diagramming

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How might we

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Analysis

Insights from our observations and interviews were converted into I-statements, organized into yellow notes, clustered into themes (blues), and synthesized into key causes (pinks). These were then expanded into How Might We statements to guide brainstorming.

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Brainstorming

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Important vs Urgency matrix

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Feasibility matrix

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Potential interventions

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Interventions

We generated a wide range of ideas, both student-led and SCAD-driven, and evaluated them using two 2x2 frameworks. This process led to three potential solution concepts that address individual barriers within the entire system, recognizing that a single app or website is hardly a complete solution in itself.

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Learnings

  • Real pain points can only be uncovered through research without assumptions; for instance, a messy kitchen significantly contributes to cooking fatigue beyond time and budget constraints.

  • Interventions don’t always need to be evaluated as a product or business; for example, our final intervention wasn’t assessed for feasibility but aimed to innovate as a system, addressing not only cooking fatigue but multiple related problems.

My Role

  • End to end collaborative work from research, analysis, synthesis, ideation and documentation

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