Sally the robot
Designing a new service experience
Overview
Sally is the first fresh food robot development in 2016 for Chowbotics a startup that creates food service solutions through the power of robotics technology.
Every year thousands of people are trying to eat healthy failing in their results due to the lack of options and time.
Finding that people are spending most of their time in offices, traveling, exercising and going to school. This are some of the target areas where sally can bring a unique experience enjoying food in fast and healthy way.
Goal
The Goal was to create the first fresh food bar experience accessible, customizable, precise, and food safety.
My Role
Industrial Designer and UX/UI responsible for:
• Unified design vision of product with a functional and friendly design language for this new experience.
• Research and understanding the context of the user to design the first concepts of Sally the robot.
• Collaborated with the engineering team, guiding the design decisions to implement.
• Document the technical specifications, CMF, for its manufacture.
• Design screen interface, prototype and test.
Awards
Kitchen Innovation 2019 award - Winner of the NRA
Winner of the Big Innovation Award 2018
This first prototype was presented for demos in different restaurants in California and in the TechStars accelerator program ensuring a successful investment.
The Journey
The journey began analyzing the market to redefine value proposition, identifying our user demographics, followed by an exploration of concepts in sketch, working concepts in parallel with engineers.
After my first visit to restaurant around the Bay area, I take photos and notes of the conditions and environment where sally would be used. This field investigation helped to identify the space, explore size, shape, aesthethics, materials and aspects of human factors.
At the beginning of Sally's conceptualization process, some of our clients requirements were limited and the idea was very attached to the kitchen
The design exploration result in a 3 x 3 foot print size with a clean and sharp design.
For the final presentation in Techstars acceleration program I collaborated designing Sally, I created 3d visualizations, helping to manufacture prototype, I made CMF spec, test with real users, documenting the iteration process, designing and prototyping interface and document design guides for its implementation with developers. This was the final video of Sally's presentation.
For the 2nd generation of Sally the robot, I took a diffeent approach, I started exploring different experiences of products and identify element to takeaway from them.
UX & UI
I Collaborated as UX/UI designer in the user research, developing different wireframes stages for android platform, creating visual proposals and interactive prototypes that ended in the next design where users can customize their own salad bowl.
Discoveries
• Users prefer a big screen, rotate the screen for next improvements.
• We found that user would like to order their bowl by online and pick up.
• Users prefer larger images in the menu with the description of ingredients.
Based on the user feedback, Sally required a new Interface. I developed this concept based in the things that our users would like to see in the evolution of sally.
Sally Evolution
A second fresh and colorful version of "Sally" was released in 2018, offering a selection of salads and bowls designed by chefs.
The Final design is customizable to the color of the place where sally is present.
Details
Sally uses 22 ingredient canisters to serves 50-100 meals before replenishing and Prepares a 6 component meal bowl or snack in under a minute
Testing ingredients and recipes was a key factor to success in this project.
Now Sally offers a complete customization with made to order bowls that cover all dietary preferences.
