Sobann
“Delivering high-quality, authentic Asian home-cooked meal kits that take less than 30 minutes, from the box to the table.”
Sobann homepage 2019
What is Sobann?
Sobann is a meal kit delivery service located in the DMV area, providing authentic Asian meals. Curating each week’s meal kit with the in-house chef.
Family Meal Kit PG(left), Home (middle), A La Carte Page (right) 2019-2020
THE CHALLENGE
To Redesign the 2020 Sobann website in two weeks to properly advertise its products as well as to convert the site into English.
Our solution: In order to accelerate Sobann’s growth, we wanted to create a newly designed English site and fashion a prominent CTA that draws attention to Sobann’s bestselling product the “weekly meal kits”.
My Role
As the stakeholder, I was able to provide insight as to what the client wanted and what the current customers of Sobann thought were the most crucial to the re-design. I also was the designer and web developer of the redesign, a team of three including myself came up with the mock-up of what the newly design website should look like, and from there I developed the new website launching it on January 4, 2021.
The Sobann redesign mock-ups were developed in two weeks (September 29, 2020 - October 14, 2020). Within the two weeks, we researched, interviewed, developed three prototypes, and iterated numerous times after conducting usability testing. At the end of the two weeks, the redesign of Sobann was ready to be developed. In the following months, I launched the newly design website.
The Approach
I approached the redesign in three steps while conducting research throughout:
Core Experience
Brand Identity
Visual Interface.
Core Experience: Sobann’s Customers
Career Focused
Wanting a home-cooked meal, but due to their career they do not have time to come home and cook a meal for themselves. They rely on getting meals delivered from restaurants or take-out.
Parents:
Wanting to feed their children with food that they once had when they were young. Either not having the skills or are overwhelmed with work and having to follow the rigorous schedules of their children.
“[Meal kit services] try to make it fancy and try to make fusion dishes, but I’d rather [have] more authentic tastes.”
After carrying out a survey and conducting interviews, it appears many people have ordered meal kits and complain about their lack of quality, ethnic authenticity, and heavy time commitment. Sobann attempts to solve these meal kit issues providing curated meals and in-house chef created authentic Asian recipes.
2.Brand Identity
Sobann 2019:
While it showcases the logo at the top of each page, it gets lost due to the amount of imagery on the homepage. Having the KakaoTalk illustrations has the herro image it almost makes it seem as if this is an advertisement for KakoTalk, rather than informing the customers of the correct information that this is the Sobann website. Other than the logo at the top of the page it does not have any prominent brand identification.
Sobann REdesign 2020-2021:
The hero image has been replaced with a table full of Korean dishes and draws your eyes directly to the most popular product “the weekly meal kits”. It now has a uniformed font and color scheme throughout the website, allowing the customer to recognize they are on the same webpage.
“How might we provide a more streamlined, English ordering experience and broadcast the convenience and authenticity of Sobann’s meal Kits?”
3. Visual Interface
Definition & Ideation
With the user research and the stakeholders feedback in mind, the team furthered their research by conducting a competitor analysis to figure out how to make the navigation simpler. The result after conducting several card sorting activities with our users is the following; the removal of drop down menus, limiting the top navigation to five buttons: Meal Kits, A La Carte, Catering, Log in, and Sign up.
Testing & Iterating 2020(Wireframes,Mid-fidelity Prototype, Style Guide, High-fidelity Prototype)
Wireframes: Home Page (left), Meal Kits & Specials (middle), Weekly Meal Kits (right)
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
It features: a homepage with fewer CTAs, Hero images portraying the most popular product; the new header and footer navigations; a secondary page showcasing the various meal kits and specials available; a redesigned "5-Day Family Meal Kit" page with photos of and captions describing each dish.
Style Guide
High-Fidelity Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype 2020: Home Page (left), Meal Kits & Specials (middle), Weekly Meal Kits (right)
2021 Sobann launches new website.
After working with the team, as the stakeholder I continued to develop a redesign of the Sobann website. And on January 4th, 2021 the newly designed Sobann was live.