Pantry
An Ingredients First
Cooking App
Pantry is an ingredient first recipe app designed to make cooking more enjoyable by looking at what's in your pantry. By allowing users to search for recipes with the ingredients they have on hand, users create less food waste and create more delicious meals from what they already have.
Type
Mobile App
Timeline
4 Weeks
Tools
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
BACKGROUND
I love to cook. But as a university student, sometimes ingredients can be scarce and expensive and time for shopping for groceries is lacking. Inspired by the French cooking technique, Mise En Place, I designed Pantry, a recipe app that works with whatever ingredients the user has on hand. The idea is to prepare all of your ingredients and set up your workplace first before getting creative, creating a less stressful and more enjoyable cooking experience.
RESEARCH
During the research phase of this project, I wanted to fully understand the current recipe applications that are being used. By the end of my research, I interviewed 5 chefs, 1 recipe developer and 8 regular recipe users. I wanted to interview chefs to learn more about cooking processes and ways of creating a methodical cooking environment.
And then interviewing recipe developers to gain better insights into ways of providing users with easy to follow recipes. I then interviewed recipe users to gain a better understanding of the pain points of the recipe following experience.
INSIGHT
From a Chefs perspective:
- Cooking should be a methodical and enjoyable experience
- Mise En Place is a must. For a kitchen to operate efficiently and in an environment with the least amount of stress, preparation is a must. "When you aren't organized and your station is a mess, you create a mess."
From a Recipe Developers perspective:
- Listing preparation time and cooking time is vital for busy cooks.
- Ingredients lists are the most important part of a recipe. They need to be organized in chronological order based on when they appear in the recipe. State and amount also matters. If they're canned, frozen, thawed, or the exact amount needed for a recipe.
- A small description to tell people a bit more about a recipe can go a long way for people who are new to cooking.
From a recipe users perspective:
- Finding a recipe is often the most difficult task. From choosing what that they might enjoy to finding a recipe they feel competent in making. This is a stressful step for users.
- Following recipes on a phone can be difficult with standard scroll down articles with smaller font sizes.
- Having reviews or stars on recipes can help undecided users judge whether a recipe is good or not.
JOURNEY MAP
PERSONAS
CHALLENGES & GOALS
From my research and insight we can identity a few challenges and goals for this project
Challenges:
- How can I devise an interactive method of following a recipe while managing a users stress levels?
- How can I relieve stress for users who aren't comfortable with cooking?
Goals:
- A user can search recipes based on the ingredients in their "pantry"
- The app curates a list of recipies a user may want to try based on previous recipe data
- An app that explains a recipe to a user step by step while a user is cooking with dirty hands.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
WIRE FRAMES
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
ON BOARDING
While designing the onboarding experience of the app, I took a lot of inspiration from dating apps. This was to create a quick, efficient and frictionless sign-up process that also informs the app on user preferences. In this case, dietary needs and skill levels.
FEATURE: PANTRY SEARCH
At the centre of Pantry's product is the ability to search for recipes based on ingredients. When first opening the app you're invited to list the ingredients you'd like to cook with before the app curates all of the recipes based on what you've inputted.
FEATURE: COOKING MODE
From insight gathered from user interviews, reading a recipe with hands covered in food can be a stressor to a user while cooking. "Cooking Mode" is designed so that users can tap or swipe to go through each step of a recipe.
The typography is also set to allow a user to quickly identify which step they're on, the ingredients they need in a step and how far along in the recipe they are.
WHAT I LEARNED
- Empathy: Not everyone loves to spend hours in a kitchen and so for this project I had to really put myself into the users shoes.
- Ballancing number of features to simplicity
WHAT I WOULD ADD
- Timer for areas requiring a pauce such as baking or resting.
- Conduct user tests to find ways to make features more simple and clear.