I designed a mobile app that brings people separated by distance closer by helping them cook together virtually over video.
With more and more people maintaining connections virtually, our team wanted to create a progressive web app for people to connect through cooking.
We began by validating whether home cooks might be interested in doing this virtually via video and exchanging recipes online through a social platform and learned there was a market and interest for our idea.
We began by conducting a survey with 43 respondents and 5 user interviews to understand the existing problems people have with cooking recipes and speaking with friends online.
San Francisco Project Manager
University Student in Manhattan
Based on our research, users wanted to be able to connect with friends and family (social), in order to share recipes (cooking), and cook together over video conferencing. To ensure we create a great minimum viable product we decided on the following core features:
I began by designing low fidelity prototypes for several features, which I’d then use to collect feedback. Below is a small preview of them:
1. By first searching/selecting a recipe, and then scheduling a call from that recipe’s screen
2. By first going to the events page and scheduling a call, selecting a recipe here
We recruited 5 more home cooks to usability test our low fidelity clickable prototype made in Figma before moving further in the design process. There were a few adjustments needed.
We began to design our high fidelity prototypes which we also usability tested with users. Here were some key improvements we made:
Below is a look at the final build of our solution that help connect users online through cooking:
As a cooking-over-video platform may be new to users, an automatically scrolling carousel gives information about how it works to get them cooking and connecting. Users can access some basic features, like seeing recipes to create some trust and buy-in. Users can write a short bio and rate their cooking skill level.
In order to facilitate the social connection, I designed a profile and friends section, where users can add people in order to easily invite them to cooking video events and see what recipes they like.
Users didn’t just want any recipes. They wanted good recipes tailored to their tastes and available ingredients. I addressed this by designing user-centric filters as well as reviews and ratings from other home cooks.
Users expressed frustration with applications like zoom, that are often challenging to schedule and organized. I designed an events page that keeps your events organized and easy to create and schedule.
Users expressed frustration with applications like zoom, that are often challenging to schedule and organized. I designed an events page that keeps your events organized and easy to create and schedule.
Do users sign up for the premium version of the app after seeing the recipes and what the app can do?
Are people using core features (adding friends, participating in video calls, creating events based on recipes)? How many people in each cooking event?
To gage whether users can successfully create events from a recipe as well as from the events screen.