OHME! Foods
UX Design & Research
February 2025
Designer & Researcher
🏆 FLUI Design Hackathon Finalist (2nd out of 168 participants)
Project Background
This project was done during the FLUI Design Hackathon in a team of four, the largest design hackathon in British Columbia.
Over a 4 day period, we were asked to research and propose a website re-design for a randomly assigned client. Out of 168 participants with 12+ clients, our solution finished second overall. My role in this project was the UX Designer & Researcher.
About the Client
OHME! is a health-focused food company founded by Han and Jenny during the pandemic. They revolutionized breakfast bowls with freeze-dried fruit toppings that preserve 95% of nutritional value while maintaining natural flavours. These crunchy, colourful alternatives to sugary processed options help OHME! achieve its mission: making nutritious snacking accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
The Problem
Business Goals
Our clients aimed to streamline purchasing, reduce friction, and boost sales of their premium freeze-dried fruit snacks, while preserving a vibrant brand identity and enhancing engagement.
User Needs
User research uncovered significant obstacles in the customer journey, including information overload, decision fatigue, and accessibility barriers - undermining trust in the brand and increasing drop-off rates.
Our Impact
This huge challenge of balancing between building a premium, credible experience while also adhering to the energetic, playful feel of the brand was tough, but our team tackled it with tenacity. Here is where we made the most impact:
Purchasing is Effortless, Elegant, and Engaging
To create a smoother shopping experience for OHME! Foods, we refined the site’s structure, eliminated friction points, and made products more accessible. Through simplifying navigation and keeping selections within easy reach, we ensured a more seamless path to purchase.
Letting the Product Speak for Itself
The updated landing page grabs attention with a bold hero section, showcasing exclusive partnerships and featured products to spark instant engagement. A striking visual element clearly communicates OHME!’s unique value, ensuring users understand what sets the brand apart.
The Process
Rapid Redesign: Revamping OHME! Foods in Just 3 Days
Client Direction
From the client interview, we learned that their greatest strength is the product (and packaging) itself while their greatest weakness was a lack of consistency and brand adherence.
Our stakeholders wanted the website to feel fun and energetic, while also being a premium brand. They aimed to streamline purchasing and enhance engagement by improving the visibility of recipes, blogs, and community impact.
Website Analysis
After carefully analyzing the website, we derived the usability issues and patterns, functionality issues (such as the hero main CTA), and more. This helped us understand how the client was currently displaying information and what needed to improve at a first glance.
Consolidation
We restructured OHME! Foods' information architecture to simplify navigation and streamline the shopping experience.
However, even after this change, we didn't know how to deal with the sheer volume of product listings. This was the most difficult challenge of the process and required us to completely rethink our approach.
User Research
Our team recruited 3 participants adhering to a rough persona for a semi-structured, 30 minute user-interview and we found a multitude of insights, including things like information overload, decision fatigue, and accessibility issues. However, participants were saying something that really encapsulated what our users were feeling. They said that they wanted to buy freeze-dried fruit now, but not from this company, because they couldn’t trust them.
Lack of trust in OHME!
"I want frozen fruit now, but not from them because I can't trust them." "The brand feels temporary and not timeless."
Information Overload
"There's too much information and it's very confusing." "I feel like I'm not equipped for this type of website. It's too much."
Issues finding information
"Where can I actually go to learn about the product? It takes too long."
Inaccessibility
"I can't even see the navigation bar. That white has to go!."
Our Solution
How might we create a seamless, fun, and energetic purchasing experience while increasing brand integrity and credibility?
Digestible Experiences
Following deep discussion, our team decided to merge OHME!'s 30 different listings into 4 categories of product lines, allowing users to choose available flavours from the landing page. This decreases fatigue and prevents users from being overwhelmed, allowing them to make smarter choices.
Embracing Value
Our client mentioned that they wanted their brand and packaging to be front and centre and the users felt the same. Focusing on brand feel, our new website made sure to exude the personality and energy of the brand and its products through a dynamic hero section and informative visuals.
Guiding Purchases
Participants told us that the product page had too much going on, so we organized images to add structure and reduce cognitive load. We also changed the hierarchy to focus on important info and limited options to reduce choice freezing.
Trust & Community
A core need was community building, so our website revamp included a direct mailing list CTA shown alongside lifestyle/aspirational content, representing a thriving, resource rich community. We replaced the TikTok-based content preview to further make OHME! feel more premium, credible, and timeless.
Prototype
Nourishing the User Experience: OHME Foods! Final Designs
Takeaways
Welcoming the process
Working from the ground-up accounts for design debt and makes the rest of the process easier. So many times, I get the urge to just jump right into designing after conducting research (especially after working for a fast-paced company like Samsung). This was especially prevalent because we didn't start designing until the end of day 2, so I was super worried about our chances of completion. However, this experience taught me that despite time constraints, having patience and trusting the process of collaborating and iterating makes for better and more efficient design.
Breaking the “I Got This” Mentality
I used to hesitate to ask for help, worrying about "bothering" others if I felt capable of handling a task myself. During this sprint, exhaustion pushed me out of that mindset—I reached out to mentors and my incredibly talented teammates, and the results spoke for themselves. By collaborating more openly, I was able to tackle challenges more effectively. Moving forward, I want to be unapologetically upfront about when I need support, knowing that great work comes from great collaboration.
What could we have done differently?
Our internal collaboration was top-notch, but I think one area we could have improved on was taking our time to really connect with users post-redesign. Although our user interview provided insight on what needed change, our solution wasn't properly put to the test until we reached the judges panel. User research is gold and I feel like we left more to be desired in that aspect.