As someone who struggled to cook in college, I wanted to make a mockup for a potential recipe generator. I know fellow students in my program have suffered the same problems as me: not being able to cook because of budget and time constraints. Moreover, I know that it's difficult to even find the time/money to even learn how. I tried thinking of a creative way of addressing this, and I decided to think about how I could make cooking "fun" and accessible.
Targeted towards college students, design a recipe generator that encourages experimentation in cooking.
Needed to think about the process in how recipe generation would work: what would the potential recipe/search parameters looks like?
I wanted the palette to have a vibrant and lively feel because I wanted the interface to feel "fun" and encouraging for those who are trying to learn these recipes. BD Supper Bold as a heading font helped amplify this feeling.
Readability was a priority when considering how this app was going to be used. Georgia was specifically chosen for its readability and because I wanted a font that could be used in a traditional cookbook.
I had fellow college students test out my initial prototype, and I recieved feedback on how the interface could be better formatted and what information that they would most be interested in.
1. Creating a more user-friendly interface
2. Establishing parameters for recipe generator
I implemented the feedback that I received into making the recipes more detailed so a user knows exactly how long and what price a recipe is supposed to be.
Additionally, I added a Library Manager to keep track of recipes that have been generated so a user can revisit them if they want to. This is much preferred over a recipe generation history tracker because it allows users to be more selective about what they want to potentially cook.
I decided to create four categories: cuisine, time limit, budget, and difficulty. Cuisine and difficulty helps narrow down what recipes the generator can provide for the user while time limit and budget takes into consideration what limitations a user may be under. I changed the interface based on suggestions and added sliders for a more personalized range.
I also added the option to decide what sort of appliances that a recipe can use: this is to help users who may live in housing situations (like student dorms) where they are limited by what appliances are available to them.
With more time I would want to increase search parameters so that it could filter out certain ingredients or even cuisines; maybe even have it so that the generator could categorize and sort food by taste.
This exercise taught me the importance of feedback and how data can be interpretated by different people: in my testing phase, I received feedback that would contradict each other. What was most controversial was whether my range in the search parameters should be a slider or not. Some thought it was fine as is, but others thought a slider would provide more accuracy for a user's needs. I ended up implementing the slider because I could imagine a scenario where someone wanted to be very specific with their time/budget and would need the accuracy that the slider could provide over a drop-down list. It was truly up to my discretion to figure out whether I should implement the feedback ot not, and I really had to think about why I wanted to choose certain features over others.