Ooni Mobile App
Delivering the ultimate pizza-making companion.
Ooni’s first venture into creating a companion app to their offering of Ooni Pizza Ovens was created by an external agency at the very early stages of the company.
Three years on and the buyers of Ooni varied wildly, the current app was not suitable for beginners and did not offer enough to the seasoned pros.
With a team of 5 from the Software Team, we undertook the task of reimagining the app.
90%
Users tested preferred the new app.
75%
Read recipes and other content to completion.
40%
Users interacted with shopping experiences.
Approach
We took a traditional double diamond approach for this project. Due to it being a small team we could work very fast. Here’s how we broke down our time;
- Research Interviews - 1-2 Weeks Beginning with Stakeholders of the company then with user, both new and old to Ooni.
- Ideating - 1 Week Hosted as a mini design sprint, we began breaking down the problems, wants and needs. Relying on both new and old insights.
- Design - 3-4 Weeks Where the majority of the time was spent, tinkering over Figma Prototypes and repeatedly doing smaller tests with select users from the first round (Ooni Insiders)
- Validating - 1 Week Bringing it all together, Stakeholders and the original testers were given the prototype to use and give their feedback on. This went on to create our roadmap for a full fledged release.
Over the years, we’d spent a lot of time gathering feedback through the app. We verified this information through a quick series on interviews, from there we utilised personas and journey mapping to understand our vision.
I find storyboarding a impactful and simple way to showcase a journey. These were repeatedly referred to by other stakeholders involved in the project.
The Human Problem
From research we understood that the terminology used across industry professionals was not translating to our everyday users.
“What does hydration mean?”
“Why do I need this?”
“It’s going to take how long?!”
With overly complex controls for the current app, users tended to default to recipes found online rather than customise their own.
The Business Problem
The Ooni-verse was expanding to bring in more products to cater to the lifestyle of a budding pizzaiolo.
The current app was very much a standalone app and did not embrace each individual users purchasing habits or wants and needs.
🤔 How might we introduce new pizzaiolos to our app while preserving the experience for our loyal users?
Ooni Mobile App 2.0
Home
Aiming for simplicity, ease of access and all the favourites in once place.
Home is designed to allow for users to browse their most used recipes in a swipeable manner, and adjust on the fly with a static measurement counter.
Each recipe is now given a distinct typography and colour for quick identification and association.
One-click Cook allows for pizziaolo’s to get straight to cooking their favourite recipes.
Recipes & Cook
Steering away from long form content, Recipes are now laid out with the key information first and foremost. Understand what you need as soon as you enter the recipe.
When you’ve the decision, hit cook to see each step of the recipe in the simplest way. One swipe up and down allows for minimal interaction with the device from messy hands.
Advanced Options
When you’re ready to tinker with your recipes, swipe up from Home to enter Advanced Options. With the most important content (dough balls, weight and yeast) still available for tweaking, Advanced Options hides the complex bit until you’re ready to tackle it.
Save these choices to your own recipe book and then share them with the Ooni-verse. Summarised neatly so you can get to what you know, cooking good pizza at home.
Discover & Learn
Designed for exploration and learning, Discover gives the opportunity for every Ooni Owner to grow into a fully fledged Pizziaolo.
Alongside distinct styling, the new recipe cards give the most important information at a glance. Key features of each recipe alongside difficulty, ingredients and time allow for quick comparison and mental note taking when deciding what to make.
We knew from research that around 60% of users do not think in advance of what they will make. They prefer to make on the day.
At the same time as developing Ooni App 2.0, we were working on a new e-learning platform for classes, live events and longer form content. We wanted to showcase how this new app would seamlessly fit into this part of the experience.
Live cooking events hosted by chefs around the world could now be accessed through the app. Check sections of each course before jumping and join live. Bringing the navigation style directions to the live events alongside quick chat options allow for participants to follow along with ease.
The Ooni-verse & You
The Community is one of the strongest aspects of Ooni.
Pizza Lovers coming together. We wanted to give them a space to connect, ask questions and share their wins (and losses). The Ooniverse opens new users to blog posts, recommendations, FAQs and allows them to connect before the purchase.
Once they’re in, they have their own space to track courses, recipes, products and more.
Earn badges by interacting with the community, showcase your skills and shop to build the ultimate backyard pizza-making station!
Validation testing took place over the course of a week. Some interviews were held remotely alongside roundtable prototype testing with select members.
90%
Users who tested the previous app responded positively towards the prototype.
“Wow, a world away from the old one. I love it!”
75%
Users who explored the longer form content finished reading it and interacted with the menus (sharing, bookmarking and commenting)
40%
Users who entered details about their own ovens then proceeded to shop additional accessories and community information on their model.
- In person ideation is unbeatable (for me) Hosting the workshops in office and having stakeholders participate in drawing scrappy ideas as fast as possible is not only entertaining, but breaks down barriers of formality. Some of the best ideas came from a giggling exec with a Sharpie.
- Humanity is key When discussing each decision we made and explaining it to others, we constantly referred to our personas we had previously crafted. They became silent members of the group and made telling the stories in our heads so much easier. I now bring these into every bit of work I do.