Recipify

Timeline:

Sep - Nov 2023

Tools:

Figma, FigJam, Procreate

THE PROBLEM

“35% of Americans order food because they don’t know what to cook with what they have in the house. More than 90% of those even admitted that even though their fridges are full, they still willingly order in” - Vice

Imagine this. You have groceries. You have ingredients. You even have time. But you just don’t know what to make. You think and think again, but end up succumbing to the mighty food delivery app that can solve your indecisiveness for you. As a college student myself, I order takeout because of its ease.

THE SOLUTION

An innovative app that integrates AI to suggest meal ideas to users based on the ingredients they already own to encourage cooking at home, saving money, and ultimately reducing food waste.

COmpetitive ANALYSIS

To understand the industry space, I conducted a comprehensive analysis of Samsung Food and DishGen via Nielsen’s Heuristic Principles. The contrast between a tech giant vs. an independently developed app highlighted distinct differences in their interfaces, usabilities, AI capabilities, and overall navigational efficiency.

User interviews

During User Research, I wanted to understand 18-35 year olds' perception of food, cooking, and grocery shopping.

How and why do they arrive at the conclusion to order takeout instead of cooking?

I conducted 30+ semi-structured user interviews which involved a contextual inquiry model— directly observing the user’s entire thought journey.

Key Findings

Lacks Inspiration: Users aren’t aware of recipes to cook with their pantry
Sporadic Time Availability: Users aren’t usually of how much time they can allocate for cooking each day
Out of Energy: Users prefer takeout because they are tired and/or lazy

Role:

UI/UX Design, UX Research, Visual Design, Prototyping

Main insights

DESIGN FORMULATION

For all four archetypes outlined—sporadic, uninspired, tired, overwhelmed— there are a few design decisions that are imperative to implement for the MVP.

AI made flexible: generate recipes and customize to match users’ erratic preferences
Decision-making simplified: make quick choices based on items user owns already
Inspire user vision: reduce clutter with efficient navigation to inspire at-home cooking

Following the comprehensive user interviews, I developed an Archetype Map to collectively address the pain points of each stakeholder group I interviewed—college students, fresh graduates, established bachelors, and those who have just started their families.

Overall, it came down to two factors, time and energy, which affect users’ recipe ideation process.

JUMPING INTO DESIGN

Keeping the design formulation in mind, I started with rough sketches and began digitizing them into low-to-mid fidelity wireframes.

LOOKING BACK — lessons learned

Recipify is an idea born out of my conviction to make cooking easier and accessible for everyone.

There is an undying passion for cooking that runs through me, but I never find the time to explore this passion with college. Turns out, many felt the same as well and I pushed myself to design Recipify. To integrate AI, I had to understand the technicalities behind generative content as well, which required backend research.

This project called for extending beyond my capabilities, and I definitely grew as a designer!

Dabble outside comfort zone ▷

Recipify’s primary UI is in dark mode, and I absolutely loved that for this project as the vibrant colors of the recipes become the star of the show. I was very hesitant about this decision at first, as it was my first time experimenting with dark mode UI.

MVP sometimes means sacrifice ▷

Recipify was an individual conquest, which meant limited time + hands on deck. While I initially thought that I could accomplish an interactive “cooking” mode to improve user engagement, limitations with time struck me. I plan to revisit Recipify and definitely work upon this in the near future.

User Testing — scope for further research ▷

I’m a firm believer in the gravity that user testing can have in validating designer’s choices. While I was able to integrate user research at the beginning of Recipify, I could not accomplish user testing on the final prototype due to time limitations.

Opportunities

Pantry Scanning: Actively know what ingredients they have on their hands
Recipe generator + modifier based on pantry items: Ability for users to choose what/how they want to cook
Inspirational feed: for those interested in premade recipes

Discerning Navigation

One of the biggest pain points with the competitive apps was the lack of an efficient and simplified navigation, hence I wanted to spend considerable time designing the navigation.