Summary
Potluck is an ingredient-focused cooking app that helps people make creative dishes with items they already have in their kitchen. Through user research, I found that understanding different ways to use certain ingredients adds an element of flexibility that helps you make the best use of what you already have. I decided to create features that give users this kind of insight about the ingredients they want to use. I also created a library of food illustrations to give the app a playful, unique feel.
User research
I conducted interviews with four people who cook frequently and asked about their motivations and frustrations surrounding cooking. I organized their responses with an affinity map:
After analyzing the responses from the interviews, I noticed a few angles that could lead me to an interesting solution to cooking problems. These are direct quotes from two different users:
The first quote presents a common problem, and the second one offers a solution. However, this solution is only accessible to people who have cooked a certain ingredient enough times to have accumulated a sort of intuition. These two pieces of the puzzle led me to the question:
How might we help users develop a cooking intuition so that they can use ingredients creatively and effectively?
Keeping the Potluck user’s wants and needs front of mind, I moved into the ideation phase.
To find solutions to the big ingredient problem, I used the bad idea to good idea method. This helped me loosen up my creative problem-solving, and then I moved into thinking of direct solutions to the problems I had identified. Then, I narrowed down even further to think of possible features:
Cooking up some ideas
After laying out some ideas for features, I sketched out some of the main screens to start to visualize how the features could work.
Sketching screens
Working out the flows
The user flows get a little complicated because I wanted users to be able to access different features from multiple different pages. For example, I feel it’s important that a user can add an ingredient to their shopping list from the browse ingredient page, from a recipe page, or by searching.
Ingredient-focused features
In order to get the most out of the ingredients in their kitchen, people need to have a certain level of understanding about each item. I created several features to give users the information they need about what they have in their kitchen.
Ingredient profile
Users can get information and inspiration by searching for an individual ingredient and viewing its profile. On the profile, they can see different ways to cook the ingredient, what it pairs well with, and recipes that feature the item. Users can add the ingredient to their pantry if they already have it, or their shopping list if they plan to buy it.
My Pantry
Users can add ingredients to their pantry to keep track of what they would like to use for their next meal and to see recipes that include things they already have.
Shopping list
After browsing recipes and ingredient profiles, a user may find ingredients that they would like to use that they don’t already have. They can easily add these items to their shopping list and cross them off in the store as they shop.
Navigating the flows
Planning out the user flows posed an interesting challenge because I want users to be able to access the main actions in several different ways. For example, I want a user to be able to use the ‘add to shopping list’ function whether they’re browsing ingredients to get inspiration, looking at a specific recipe they want to make, or have a particular ingredient already in mind. The same kind of functionality also needed to exist for the ‘add to pantry’ feature. I also needed these two functions to be distinct so that users wouldn’t get them confused. I ended up designing several different ways that a user could complete these actions to make the app as intuitive as possible.
Add item to pantry flow
Add item to shopping list flow
UI toolkit
I wanted to create a brand that feels fun, bright, and fresh. I kept the color palette light and within the family of the colors I used for the illustrations. I chose. Rubik as a font because it has a unique personality but is still very readable.
Illustration library
I created colorful little illustrations for each of the ingredients in the main flows. I aimed to make these illustrations cohesive by using similar color palettes and lighting for each object. The use of illustration gives the app its own unique personality and hopefully the bright, illustrations will inspire users to try out some new ingredients and recipes.
Testing the features
I tested all of the main features, including, add item to shopping list, add item to pantry, search ingredients, and search recipes. Users were overall able to complete the tasks successfully, with just a little variation in their pathways.
Next steps
Moving forward with this app, I would like to explore doing more with ingredient pairings and substitutions, which was something that came up a lot in user interviews. I could see potential interesting features that focus on ingredients in recipes that are interchangeable and would make recipes more flexible for users who only have a few ingredients on hand. There are many different directions to follow concerning opening up how people think of recipes and encouraging developing an intuition through experimentation.