Cooking Dual

As more upperclassmen in universities and new graduates who just started their career in the USA begin to learn cooking at home after moving away from the campus, Cooking Dual, as a unique recipe app, can help novice users collaborate with another person, who they are familiar with, to get started with cooking.

UXDesigner
UXResearcher

Role

35d

Timeline

Background

Right tool for the right time

For upperclassmen in colleges and recent graduates (20-25) in the USA who have started working and moved away from the campus, cooking for themselves has become a new challenge, especially after the pandemic, as there has been a significant increase in the number of people choosing to work from and cook at home. Furthermore, according to my initial research, for cooking novices, the cooking together leads to better experiences than cooking alone. Plus, it is also reported that current recipe apps are difficult to follow and don't guide cooperation.

+23%
Employees choose to work remote/hybrid since pandemic
-14%
Eating-out times each year of US citizens since pandemic
~90%
Participants who cook together mention cooperation was hard in the beginning
14%vs67%
Bad experience ratio of cooking together (experienced) compares to alone
Problem

So, how might we make it easier for upperclassmen in colleges and recent graduates (20-25) in the USA who just moved away from the campus to get started with cooking and collaborating in the kitchen?

Process

Learn! Design! Iterate!

Research

Get users' voices involved

Research Strategies

What is the recipe in cooking?

User Testing

Bring the "chefs" in

Used "Wizard of Oz" method to control the low-fi prototype created based on research result and record how users interact with my prototype to collaborate in kitchen.
Tested with 3 groups of participants of different relationship  (student friends, couple, new roommates)

Iteration

"Cooking Fool" to Cooking Dual

Based on observations from testing and users feedback, I conducted an iteration and created a high-fidelity prototype.

Key Functions

What makes Cooking Dual Special?

“We don’t have to be great to start, but, we have to start to be great”

Cooking Dual allows two users to choose steps to play the roles of chef and assistant and provides collaboration-related guidance along the experience. This helps users to build confidence and understand their interests and strengths as they get started with cooking.

Witnessing the footsteps of becoming a chef together!

Users can add skills they wish to keep developing as vision boards for themselves. Duringthe cooking process, the assistant receives reminder to help taking photos for the chef whenever the current step involves a target skill for the"chef". The photos would be automatically sent to the chef's corresponding vision board for later decoration or modification. In this way, collaborators would progress through mutual witnessing.

Truly for beginners!

Novices often feel lost when looking at traditional recipes (applications), much like looking at a jumble of parts for the newly purchased jigsaw puzzles without knowing how to assemble them together. Cooking Dual provides users with guidance that integrates text, visuals, and videos, breaking down the comprehensive content of each step into sub-steps, which makes cooking as easy as assembling LEGO. Besides, before each step, preparation and behavioral instructions would be presented to help users work with manageable number of stuffs at one time and develop good cooking habits, ensuring a smooth experience both before and after cooking.

Mock-up

Here we start, chef

Result

Cooking Dual would help!

In the final testing, all testers (novice cooks) successfully completed the dishes, with 80% of participants providing positive feedback for Cooking Dual on their collaborative experience, expressing a desire to continue cooking together next time.

Future Steps

Cooking never due

What about the rest 20%?

  • I need to further consider the scenarios where more than two participants are involved in the cooking.