MyCookbook

An app to help users create visual-based recipes.

Background

With the increasing trend in visually based learning experiences, our team set out to build a product that would assist users in creating their own visual learning experience using cooking.

 

Our challenge was to create an environment where users could easily add visual content to previously handwritten recipes.

The solution we created was MyCookbook, a mobile application that efficiently allows users to scan, input and add their own media to written recipes. MyCookbook gives users a platform to create a visual learning experience with their family recipes.

Research

Using primary and secondary research, our team sought to understand the landscape of the cooking industry. With surveys, observations, and interviews, my team and I discovered the following key insights about our environment, competition, and users.

Secondary Research Key Findings

Food is one of the most popular topics shared about on social media.

Users enjoy personalized experiences, tailored to their specific interests.

There is a rise in visual learning and media-centered experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an upward trend in at-home cooking

Competitive Analysis

By analyzing our direct and indirect competitors, we found that there are no solutions that offer users an easy way to add media to each step of their recipe.

User Interviews Key Insights

We conducted user interviews with 9 users and below are the findings. 

DESIRE TO COOK

Young adults want to learn more at-home recipes to cook

WISH TO DIGITIZE

Young adults are looking to digitize and save written recipes to pass down to future generations 

DIFFICULTY LEARNING

Young adults have difficulty learning from written recipes and are looking for visually-centric educational solutions

“I learn so much better with photos and videos.”
“I want to digitize my mother’s recipes and share them with my family”

User Persona

To gain a deeper insight into our user and their values, I developed a user persona to personalize our target audience.

Who are we designing for? 

  • Young adults ages 18 to 34
  • Basic digital skills assumed
  • Want to expand their skills in home cooking
  • Tend to be visual learners

Problem Statement

Young adults need an intuitive product to help efficiently digitize and personalize recipes because they value visual-based learning experiences and want to easily share their cooking techniques.

Rapid Ideation

Through rapid ideation my team and I came up with several unique solutions.
  1. An app similar to Instagram, but just for food
  2. An app that tracks user’s shopping habits and suggests recipes
  3. An app that helps users scan written recipes and add media to them

User Tasks

Given our short time frame for development, my team and I broke down the application into three user tasks.

Task 1: Create a recipe from scratch

The user can create their own recipe using the built-in template that would guide them each step along the way.

Key Features

Task 2: Personalize existing recipe

The user can personalize existing text-only recipes chosen from our application’s database on the “Explore” page.

Key Features

Task 3: View your recipes

The user can view a customized recipe in their digital cookbook, which would display the instructions along with photos or videos they inserted.

Key Features

Challenge

The design team had difficulty developing the floating action button, so we developed alternative solution. We further researched these options by performing A/B testing and revealed most users preferred the Option B over Option A.

Option A: Floating Action Button 

Option B: Bottom Button

Solution

Young adults need an intuitive product to help efficiently digitize and personalize recipes because they value visual-based learning experiences and want to easily share their cooking techniques.

Usability Testing

Over the course of our usability testing, my team and I found most users understood the organization and flow of the app. Although most users understood our application, we discovered a few pain points to consider in future development.

Pain Point: Inputting individual recipes is time consuming for users.

Possible Solution: Have popular ingredients and measurements auto-fill based on the user's recipe title.

Pain Point: Users wanted to share their recipes, however our current solution did not support sharing.

Possible Solution: Incorporate a social aspect or method for users to easily share their custom recipes.

What I Learned

As we near the end of this case study, I would like to take the time to reflect on what I learned from this project. As a naturally curious person and designer always wanting to expand my skills, I will take this time to document my key takeaways.

There is a delicate balance between design and development

Having a background in computer science, I recognize that development can be tedious and time consuming. Understanding the development side helped me communicate to the design team the inevitable impossibilities of development given our short time frame. My combined experience in design and development allowed me to flourish as a team leader on this project.

Usability testing is key

Performing usability tests at each stage of development (low fidelity, high fidelity and prototype) saved my team time and allowed us to create an application that was fully user-centric. Although we had some issues with overall development, by the end of the case study we gained a deep understanding of our user and their needs.

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