Explorations in and Outside the Kitchen
UXDI — Project 1 Retrospective
Timeframe: 4 days
Project 1 asked students to create an interactive solution to a classmates problem. Shannon and I partnered up and she choose “cooking” as her topic of interest. Feelings of excitement surfaced because I happen to enjoy spending more time in the kitchen than any other room in my home.
“Cooking (from scratch) is the single most important thing we could do as a family to improve our health and general well-being.” -Michael Pollan
Part 1 — The Research
What’s PAIR?
PAIR is for the savvy home cook who loves the idea of creating a healthy and delicious meal but is often faced with many barriers in the kitchen. It’s a service that provides users with a personal cooking coach through video chat or in-home cooking sessions. Additionally, the app has a “substitution feature” which allows users to explore alternatives to ingredients found in recipes they don’t have on hand or want to avoid because of certain dietary restrictions.
Insights and Key Takeaways
Some important questions I wanted answers to; “What do you like about cooking?”, “When do you usually like to cook?”, “How important is cooking to you?”, “What is your cooking process like?”, “What inspires you to cook?” and “What holds you back from cooking?”. I created a mind map to better organize my thoughts.
Sharon did her best to answer all my questions and I collected some great data from our interview. I went to the drawing board and started mapping out her quotes. At this point, I felt like I needed to know more to support the existing data, so I interviewed another classmate, Anna, about her cooking style.
After collecting data from both Sharon and Anna, I created an affinity map to gain a better understanding of underlying themes throughout the cooking process. I found that healthy meals and a sense of creativity are both important to home cooks. Alternatively, a lack of confidence, fear, confusion and frustration are all emotional barriers preventing people from cooking.
Taking these insights and developing a design strategy took more time than I initially expected. I not-so-seamlessly shifted between a-ha moments and moments that felt like I was sitting in a dark room, with a blindfold on and ear plugs in. As I navigated between these two feelings, I simultaneously developed problem statements that summarized my themes.
Problem Statements
- People lack the confidence and tools needed to prepare meals at home using the ingredients they have on hand.
- Planning meals can be frustrating when busy people don’t feel empowered to be creative within a limited amount of time.
- People hesitate to experiment in the kitchen because they don’t want to be left with ingredients.
- When home cooks are left with ingredients, they don’t know how to creatively incorporate them into a meal.
Taking these insights and turning them into a design direction happened pretty naturally. It felt like assembling a puzzle as I pieced together certain buzzwords. I eventually arrived at a cohesive strategy that touched on all important points.
Design Direction
A. Design solutions will inspire home cooks to embrace their individual creativity so that they can properly plan healthy meals without feeling frustrated.
B. Design solutions will empower people to prepare meals using the ingredients they have on hand without confusing setbacks.
Part 2 — Ideation & Design
After developing a clear design strategy, the ideation process began! This may have been my favorite part of the entire project. I sat down with one of my teaching assistants, Ace, and together we created some real and not-so-real solutions. Skies the limit for this project, right?
From there, I narrowed it down to two decent ideas. I wasn’t in love with either one of them, because I wanted to push boundaries with this project and neither idea seemed groundbreaking to me.
After throwing in the towel and nourishing myself at Whole Foods, I came back to the table with a full belly and a fresh perspective. This is when PAIR was born.
Wireframing and Prototyping
A holistic approach to PAIR that addresses the design strategy. The home screen, depicted in the top/left sketch displays 3 buttons. 1. substitute and ingredient 2. video conference your coach 3. in-person coaching
The account page is where members can sign up and access billing info and previous coaches. A more detailed description of all three options is below.
The “in-person coaching” feature allows users to view a list of all possible coaches, their experience and cooking styles. The user can then select a coach and view a more detailed bio.
The video chat option allows busy home cooks to explore a faster way of accessing help. Chat helps users figure out what to make with the remaining ingredients their refrigerator or organize the mise en place.
The substitution list gives users ingredient replacement options. Out of sugar? No problem, grab the honey or the maple syrup.
PAIR, the at home culinary innovation that’s reshaping the way home cooks put meals on the table.
