- Service Design · Food & Nutrition
- Personal project
- 2022
Case study · Service design and brand · 2022
Nutrire.
A service that makes eating right effortless for busy people, and wastes less food along the way.
- Brief
- Academic service design project
- Team
- With Subin S and Muhammed Raslan
- My role
- Service design and brand identity
- Year
- 2022
- Tools
- Figma
- Output
- Service blueprint, business model and brand
01 — The brief
Two problems, one service
Nutrire is a service design concept in the food domain: a service that helps busy people keep a proper diet, while cutting down the food that gets wasted along the way.
As a team of three, we took it from desk research to a service blueprint and a business model. I also built the brand identity, from a competitor audit to the final wordmark.
02 — The problem
Eating badly, and wasting food
Desk research surfaced two problems that turned out to be linked. People don’t know enough about managing their diet, and an enormous share of the food that is produced never gets eaten.
Diet and nutrition
- 1 in 4Indians say they skip breakfast
- 72%skimp on breakfast, and only 3% regard it as essential
Diets lean heavily on cereals, without enough protein, fruit or vegetables, and fall below optimal on nutrition.
Food waste
- ~40%of the food produced in India is wasted every year
- 50 kgwasted per person per year, about 6.8 crore tonnes in all
Waste comes from fragmented food systems and inefficient supply chains, and disposing of it has a real environmental cost.
03 — Understanding people
How people cope today
Without a service like this, someone trying to eat well pieces it together across three separate jobs, each with its own sources and tools.
01
Planning a healthy diet
- Researching diets themselves
- Consulting a nutritionist
- Instagram influencers
- Fitness blogs and articles
- Books, the internet, newspapers
02
Preparing the food
- Buying raw materials themselves
- Cooking to match the diet
03
Monitoring health
- Health-tracking apps
- Routine check-ups with a doctor
- Daily check-ups at home
Empathy map
Says
- “Where should I start?”
- “What do you take for a healthy diet?”
- “How much should I eat every day?”
- “What do you think?”
Thinks
- What is best for me?
- What else am I missing?
- I need something simple to follow
- Am I wasting too much time?
Does
- Checks different apps
- Compares data on the internet
- Asks friends and experts
- Researches food
Feels
- Overloaded
- Anxious
- Unsure
- Excited
04 — Who it’s for
Stakeholders and a persona
We mapped stakeholders in three rings, from the people the service is for to the partners it depends on, then distilled the core user into a single persona.
Persona
The average dude or dudette
Leads a busy lifestyle and goes looking for a service that can help them keep a healthy diet.
- Expects
- Good diet recommendations, affordable prices, fast delivery, health tracking
- Gains
- A fit, healthy lifestyle and affordable food
- Pains
- Unhealthy eating habits and bad food habits
- Jobs to be done
- Plan a healthy diet, prepare the food, monitor their health
Problem statement
Design a service that helps people meet their nutrition and dietary needs in a seamless, easy way.
05 — Service concept
What the user sees, and what runs behind it
On the front stage, the service follows the user from first look to a meal at the door. Behind the line of visibility is what makes the waste-reduction side work: ingredients come from local markets, and cloud kitchens spread across the service area process them efficiently and deliver over short distances.
Front stage
- 01
Explore
- Website and service
- 02
Sign up
- Registration
- Previous diets
- Health conditions
- Medicine intake
- Daily workout routine
- 03
Data input
- Meals already eaten
- 04
Recommend
- AI dietitian
- Customised diet
- Subscription plans
- 05
Select
- Meal Ready to Eat
- Prepare On Your Own
- 06
Order
- Payment method
- Address
- 07
Deliver
- To the doorstep
- Contact-free
Back stage
User database
Customer data stored on servers and updated in real time, with accounting alongside.
Raw materials
Sourced in collaboration with local markets and moved straight to the kitchen.
Cloud kitchen
Processes food efficiently to avoid waste, with kitchens spread across a target area for short deliveries.
Delivery
Contact-free doorstep delivery for both cooked meals and ingredient kits.
Two ways to eat
MRE
Meal Ready to Eat
Cooked meals that follow the recommended diet, delivered ready to eat.
PrepOYO
Prepare On Your Own
Ingredient kits for people who would rather cook. Meal Ready to Eat is a subset of these: every ready meal also exists as a kit.
06 — Customer journey
Six stages, two dips
We walked the persona through every stage, from seeing an ad to opening the door. The emotional curve showed exactly where the service would lose people: at sign-up, and again at the price.
07 — Pain points and blueprint
Designing against the friction
Around the service, we listed the friction points it would have to design against. The service blueprint then laid each journey stage over the evidence, touchpoints, back-stage actions and support systems needed to deliver it.
A long sign-up
Filling in health details is a long process that people may not finish.
Too many food choices
A full menu on top of a diet plan is a lot to choose from.
Too many recommendations
One person can receive more suggestions than they can act on.
Hard to reach users
A new service needs a way to be found by the people it is for.
Delivery infrastructure
Fresh food to many doors needs kitchens and riders close by.
Payment options
Subscriptions only work if paying is easy and familiar.
08 — Business model
Profitable as well as purposeful
The business model canvas sets out how the service would sustain itself: local markets as key partners, and revenue from subscriptions, AI nutrition consultations and dietary recommendations.
Key partners
- Local markets
- User data sourcing
Key activities
- Quality control
- Resource restocking
- Database management
- Marketing
- Customer support
Value propositions
- Nutrition for all
- Fulfilling dietary needs
- Minimal food waste
- An efficient delivery system
- Profitable as well as purposeful
- Recommendations that improve over time
Customer relationships
- Indirect
- Self service
- Customer support
Customer segments
- People with a busy lifestyle
- People with custom dietary needs
- People with health concerns
- People on a strict workout regime
- People living alone with little kitchen space
Key resources
- Customer data
- Food resources
- Website and app
- Storage and maintenance
Channels
- Service website
- App
Cost structure
- Raw materials
- Food processing
- Delivery system
- Website and app upkeep
- Quality control
Revenue streams
- Subscription packages
- AI nutrition consultation
- Dietary recommendations
- Advertising
- Collaborations with markets
Value proposition
Products and services
- AI nutritionist
- Food delivery
- Ingredient delivery
Gain creators
- Tracks diet and nutrition
- Fast, efficient delivery
- Saves time
Pain relievers
- No researching diets alone or visiting a nutritionist in person
- No hunting for meals or ingredients elsewhere
09 — Brand identity
Giving the service a name and a face
The brief for the brand was the same as for the service: help people overcome the problem of keeping a proper diet with a busy lifestyle. I started by looking at how the apps already in this space present themselves.
Competitor audit
| App | Cost | Meal tracking | Diets | Connects with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lifesum | From $3.75/month | Barcode scanning and manual input; net carbs, macros, detailed nutrients | Protein, weight loss, sugar detox, paleo, vegan, keto and more | Most major apps and devices |
| MyFitnessPal | Free; premium $10/month or $50/year | Barcode scanning and full nutritional information | Any type of diet | Over 50 apps |
| Fooducate | Free, or $3.99 ad-free | Barcode scanning and manual input; calories, nutrition and activity | Mainstream healthy eating | Doesn’t sync |
| Carb Manager | Free; premium $40/year | Macros, micronutrients, net carbs and calories | Keto, low carb high fat, Whole30 | Google Fit and Apple Health, including Fitbit and Garmin |
| Paleo (io) | $0.99 | No meal or nutrient tracking | Paleo | Doesn’t sync |
| Lose It! | Free; premium $40/year | Everything on a food label, plus water and exercise | Any style of eating | Health apps; devices with premium |
| MyMacros+ | $2.99; pro $19.99/year | Full nutritional breakdown of all foods and meals | The Zone, South Beach, any way of eating | iOS, Android and the web |
| PlateJoy | Plans from $8/month | Full nutrition for every recipe | Paleo, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, low FODMAP and more | Instacart and Amazon Fresh for groceries |
Pricing and features as researched in 2022.
What the logos had in common
- 01Distinctive typefaces
- 02Marks that explain themselves
- 03Few colours, for clarity
- 04A bold, strong first impression
- 05Structured logotypes
These shaped the Nutrire mark: a structured logotype in a single colour, with a bold first impression.
From Nutrio to Nutrire
Latin · verb
nūtrīre
- transitive To feed or nourish
- intransitive To be nourishing
The macron and the accent stayed in the final wordmark, keeping the Latin root visible.
Variations to final
Brand green
#408D5C
Signika Regular
Modified for the wordmark
10 — Outcome
A complete service, with a brand to carry it
The result is a full service concept, from problem framing to journey, blueprint and business model, with a brand identity made for it. It shows how nutrition and food-waste goals can reinforce each other in one service that is both profitable and purposeful.
- 6journey stages, explore to delivery
- 2meal models, MRE and PrepOYO
- 8competitors audited for the brand
- 40%of India’s food wasted (research)
11 — Looking back
What I’d test next
Nutrire stopped at the concept stage. The journey map already points at where testing should start.
Shorten the sign-up
Sign-up was the lowest point of the journey. I’d test asking only what the first recommendation needs, and collect the rest over time.
Fewer, better recommendations
Choice overload came up twice, in recommendations and in the menu. I’d test a single suggested plan with a way to swap meals.
Test the price
Order was the second dip. I’d test plan prices and payment options with real users before building the subscription model.