My Recipe Book, the success story.

The story started from a very basic need 2 years ago: my partner was looking for an App on the App store and could not find exactly what she was looking for. She is a very good cook, I mean, a real one. And not every single cooking app could meet the requirements she was having at that time: find a recipe efficiently based on what ingredients she had available, know exactly how much time she would need, what utensils were required and of course, how much money my recipe would cost.

The research phase was actually quite easy: there are tons of existing food and cooking apps on the market and it was really easy to search for pain points, general concepts and target. I would also keep in mind that my app would be different and unique: keeping things simple, straight to the point, with a taste of computer vision via augmented reality. These were clearly the key things. After a couple of week of research, I was able to deliver a first prototype (see below). I’ve used it to initiate a first series of test: identify pain points, assess usability, and get the first user feedback from my ideas.

I did take most of the feedback into account and polished the main concepts before delivering the wireframe. Going through another series of tests, I was able to start developing mock ups, giving my testers a sense of what the app would look like.

This is when I realised the value added to my work since I’ve started working on the project: ideas and concepts were in a good shape and people could finally see the added value of the app: needs and targets seemed to be met. This was extremely rewarding and gave me the strength to move forward to the next steps in the final design and final testing series.

When a first final version of the app was finally ready and tested using the same methodology, I asked my partner to be my final (and personal) judge: she was really happy to see that all the requirements (even the one that she could hardly express) were met: the information was there, the pain points were gone and the outcome was delivered: food with a smile is definitely the final outcome of this project.

Not sure this could have been done better J