Kitchen Ninja
Mobile app
Product design
Introduction
Introduction
What is Kitchen Ninja
Kitchen Ninja is a cooking Planner app that helps to cultivate the habit of cooking at home for the user by suggesting recipes, help in meal planning, quickly prepare grocery lists, organizing groceries in the pantry and reduce food wastage.
Challenges
When I wanted to cook something, I didn’t know where to start and what dishes I will be able to cook. When I searched on google I got an N number of recipes, but I was wondering what were all these new recipes I never heard of before and I was desperate to cook something. And then I thought this could be the first problem for any wannabe cook who wants to start cooking. So I thought of building an app that could help anyone to start cooking without any frustrations and confusion. I thought Motivation & Planning is the key for anyone to start off cooking. If u have a cooking plan made with your roommates, cooking every day is fun and easy for anybody.
So come, Let's dive deep into research with some real-life scenarios in cooking.,
Target audience
Amateur cooks — Working young adults, age 25 – 35.
This app may not be useful for experienced cooks.
Promo Video
Check out this video promo to get a brief idea of the product.
Insights
Insights
Why people should cook at home?
1. Live a Healthy life
2. Cooking is a stress reliever
3. Save money
4. Can help in fitness planning
5. Have a good family tine
6. Try new tastes and dishes
7. Unleash your creativity — Experiment with different combinations, different methods of cooking.
Effects of eating outside
1.Toxic Cooking Oils
2. Expensive to eat outside everyday
3. Hidden Added Sugar
4. Lower-quality ingredients than you would buy on your own
5. Quantity is less and each meal is higher in calories
6. You don’t really know what’s in the food or how old the ingredients are
7. Toxic plastic exposure6. Try new tastes and dishes
Research
Research
I conducted qualitative and quantitative interviews with 10 People who are my colleagues and neighbors from different countries, cultures and have different eating habits. I got real-time problem statements which were quite common among all.
Data mapping:
I used an affinity mapping to find common patterns in my observations and group them. It helped me to get classify the target users.
Problem Statements
Problem Statements
Finding recipes with available ingredients
“I don't know what to cook when I get back home after work. I will be mentally tired”
Watching tutorials while cooking.
“It's difficult to toggle between screens/ steps in guided recipes. When my hands are wet, oily or dirty i have to wash hands frequently.”
Planning and organizing prior cooking
“ Our jobs are keeping our life busy and everyone needs everything fast. If we have a plan for a week, It will be easy to organize cooking “
Personas
Based on my research, I created primary and secondary personas.
Primary persona: the group of wannabe cooks who occasionally cook at home
Secondary persona: the group who is interested in cooking and wants to explore more recipes.
Journey map
A journey map/ user story helps us to concentrate on their needs and the context of use.
Empathy map
Empathy is a critical part of human-centered design. Empathy map helps us to get inside the user’s head and visualize their attitudes and behaviors
Information architecture
The way how the content is organized is as important as the content itself. In my case, it's finding the best recipe based on the user's persona as quickly as possible.
Lo-fi Wireframes
Hi-fi Wireframes
Usability testing
Usability testing
Expectations Vs Reality
I presented the High fidelity wireframes in Figma prototype to 7 participants, assigned tasks for them to perform. I asked the participant to speak aloud while performing the task. I noted all my observations in sticky notes and recorded the video. During my usability testing, I realize that in a few modules my vision is not matching with the practicality. User testing gave me a lot of insights which I implemented in Version 2 of the wireframes.
Before
After
There are too many options like scanning the fridge and sanning the vegetables to choose the ingredients which were confusing for the users.
Most users tried to search for the ingredients they have. So the priority is given to the search bar and removed the scan fridge and scan vegetable options.
Before
After
The participants were not able to find delete and shuffle options initially as they will appear only on swiping the recepie left.
The options are moved to a new overlay screen which reduced the clutter in the plan list screen.
Final Output
Final Output
Recipe suggestions
Problem statement
“I don't know what to cook when I get back home after work. I will be mentally tired”
Possible solutions
Suggestions
Recipes suggestions are based on
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Mood based recipes,
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Recipes based on time availability,
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Diet plans,
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Seasonal recipes,
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Special occasions,
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Recipes for Sickness
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Favorite Ingredients
Find recipes from available ingredients
The app can suggest recipes based on the ingredients available with the user. The ingredients can be manually entered, chosen from the pantry or from the user’s favorite ingredients
The user's favorite ingredients are drawn from the preferences' user enters while onboarding.
The recipe suggester can automatically suggest the best recipes based on the ingredients chosen by the user.
Hands free navigation
Problem statement
“It's difficult to toggle between screens/ steps in guided recipes. When my hands are wet, oily or dirty i have to wash hands frequently.”
Possible solutions
To minimize hand washing between every step we can use hand Gesture Recognition Using an Infrared Proximity Sensor
Air Gesture -
No need to touch the screen
This feature allows the user to navigate through the screens while cooking without physically touching the screen
Weekly Planner
Gamification
The app analytics will keep a log of all previous cooking time data for the same recipe to track progress.
Variable Reward
We are more likely to engage in activities in which meaningful achievements are recognized.
“Random“ rewards make powerful motivators; they seem scarce and unpredictable.
We're more motivated to reach a goal with an uncertain reward.
Problem statement
“ Our jobs are keeping our life busy and everyone needs everything fast. If we have a plan for a week, It will be easy to organize cooking “
Possible solutions
For the weekly planner, I was curious to know how many people would really plan for the whole week in advance.
This may not be helpful for the experienced cooks but I thought mature cooks would feel it helpful. So I gave a mock-up planner to a few participants to test meal plans for a week.
Mockup planner
I asked the participants after using the planner what they feel about planning meals in advance.
Their feedback was:
Pros
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Saves time and can have peace of mind not thinking of what to cook.
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Reduce wastage since they buy only required vegetables
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Super useful for people going to Gym
Cons
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People are lazy to plan what to cook. Would prefer suggestions instead.
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The participants felt the recipes would be mostlyrepeated every week. They wanted to explore new recipes.
I decided to provide an easy meal planning tool for a week which can suggest new recipes based on their relishes, allergies, diet plans, Ingredients available and favorite ingredients. The ingredients automatically get aggregated into a shopping list helping the user to purchase based on their meal plan.
Organizing Ingredients
Problem statement
“I throw away lots of unused vegetables and dairy products, It is difficult to keep track of when I bought them and when they will expire.”
Possible solutions
1. I buy produce.
2. I keep it eye-level in the fridge to remind me it’s there.
3. I wait too long to use it.
4. I throw it away…wasting money & good nutrition.
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Sound familiar?
This virtual pantry might help
Know what is about to expire
Virtual pantry
A virtual pantry which can display the grocery items which is unused for a long time and expiry date of diary products approximately from the date of purchase.
See inside the fridge from anywhere
Check what you need.
A camera inside the fridge can show what's inside the fridge. This can be accessed from anywhere using IoT and users can check what to buy while shopping.
Sync shopping receipts
The purchased groceries from the supermarket can be moved to the virtual pantry by syncing the e-receipt from supermarkets or by manually adding the items into the pantry list.
Here is an example of a purchase receipt from a supermarket which contains purchase date and items which can be used to track the quantity and expiry date of groceries.
Grocery list
Problem statement
“I miss out to buy some ingredients while shopping and manage to cook without some ingredients.”
Possible solutions
The grocery list items can be quickly entered or automatically aggregated into purchase list from the meal planner
Auto-Suggest the grocery items to quickly create a list
Never miss any ingredient
The grocery list can be easily checked out while shopping and the items can be moved into the Pantry so that user can keep a track of his inventory
Interactive Prototype
Click here to view full screen
Future plans
Future plans
Using smell as a motivator to cook!
Yes, I believe the smell of home-cooked food can be used as a trigger to make him/her cook. You get the smell of biryani from the next house, wouldn't you be triggered to have a cook at your home?
Our nose is the most underrated stimuli. You can motivate someone to cook by showing them the visuals of food ( Eyes ), Telling them how delicious it is ( Ears) or showing a sample taste ( Tounge ) but apart from all this if u can just send him the smell of food, he will definitely like to eat that food. So what if u can evoke that smell at home?
If you are wondering how u can record the smell of the food you cooked and recreate it again, check this link for inspiration.
Live cooking
Cook with the live guidance from the famous chefs, Friends, and family. Webinars thought the app from the expert cooks.
Conclusion
Conclusion
To y’all saying I ain't got time to cook every day!
Driving to and from the restaurant, waiting in line, waiting for your food and waiting for your bill. It usually takes up to an hour and this app can show you how to get a healthy meal on the table in under 30 minutes!
I am not against eating out, because what motivates people to eat out is the refreshment they get by going out. But I would suggest people to avoid eating out on weekdays and eat out once or twice a week.
Hope this app will motivate you to cultivate the cooking habit and live a healthy lifestyle.
Become a kitchen Ninja!
