At the very beginning of the internship, I was assigned a user study as my first project at Electrolux. I observed and interviewed my mentor and her family at her home. Meanwhile, I also reached out to a bunch of target users and conducted five remote interviews. Finally, I created three personas as a reflection of the interviews in my study. This user study did not only help me to understand better the current product I was about to work on, but also to spot several pain points. And based on the user study, I came up with the initial idea of Julie.

Problem

College students and young professionals, with their busy schedules, usually find cooking and organizing their fridges time-consuming. Some usually forget what they have in the fridge and end up wasting food; others hate spending time trying to figure out what to cook for each meal with the available ingredients.

Solution

Julie, an Alexa skill concept that enables Alexa to work with Electrolux smart refrigeratorsuggest recipes based on available in the fridge, remind users of expiring food, order missing ingredients from Amazon Fresh, and provide step-by-step cooking guidance. The name of this project was inspired by one of my favorite movie Julie & Julia.