Design of a recipe app
The goal of the app is to make it easy for the user to follow a recipe and manage her pantry.
Recipes list
When opening the app, this is the first page that the user sees. She opens the app for mainly two reasons:
- she wants to cook
- or she wants to check her groceries list
If she wants to cook, she will want to answer these questions:
- “What do I want to eat?”
- “Is it easy/fast to cook?”
- “Do I have the ingredients?”
The main view of the app answers all those questions.
Adding recipes
We can fairly assume that the user will mostly add an already existing recipe (via a book or website), and rarely write a recipe by hand. Therefore, the user should be able to add a recipe by taking a picture or giving an url. The app then parses correctly the details of the recipe and a second screen lets the user validate and modify the data parsed.
Cooking
The user follows the recipes step by step, and all the ingredients are display during each steps. She doesn’t have to go back and forth between the instructions and the ingredients.
The back and next buttons allow her to navigate through the instructions. They are big enough so that she can easily tap them. Her hands will probably be busy (with a knife, spoon, etc.) and/or dirty.
At the end of the recipe, the app automatically removes the ingredients used from the pantry. This action is kept in history, and the user can modify it later if she wants. For example, she might have use less sugar and wants to update her pantry accordingly.
Managing her pantry
The app keeps track of the user’s pantry. Adding or removing ingredients are mostly automatic and easy thanks to the scanning feature and history. The app also suggests ingredients to buy when the quantity is low.
Adding ingredients
When the user wants to buy ingredients for a recipe, all those ingredients will be added to the groceries list. However, she will probably buy ingredients with a different quantity than the recipe. For example, a recipe might need 150g of sugar, but the user will probably buy 1kg or 500g. Therefore, when the user finishes her shopping, the app lets her scan the product’s barcode, and adds automatically the ingredient.
Some ingredients will not have a barcode (fruits, veggies, …). The app assumes that she bought the quantity specified but still provides an history of purchases that she can easily modify.
The user might also buy ingredients that were not on the groceries list. The app provides a way to let the user type those ingredients.
The history of purchases allow the user to easily add ingredients previously bought. The quantity will probably stay the same because packaging (and user habits) tend to stay the same (500g of sugar, 200g of butter, …).
Removing ingredients
Ingredients are removed automatically at the end of a recipe. The user can also remove ingredients manually or use the history.
Summary
All those features make it easy for a user to cook and manage her pantry. Surprisingly, current recipe app don’t have them or fail to manage the full workflow of the user.
One striking example is when, at the end of a recipe, the user needs to manually remove the ingredients she just used. Another example is when the user needs to go back and forth between instructions and ingredients while cooking.