3.31 Speed dating ideas

We decided to speed date single ideas instead of complete concepts and storyboarded variations of the same idea to receive feedback on the extremes. Here’s what we heard:

Group 1

The first group of ideas were around a parent having access to the ingridients in their children’s kitchen. They were:
- Seeing a list of the ingridients
- Virtual view and access to the kitchen
- Adding ingredients to their child’s shopping list
- Being able to order groceries online for their child

While parents liked the fact that they could pro-actively suggest recipes to their children, they felt that this group of ideas made them feel like they were not letting their child be independent.
They also said that it was enough if their child told them what ingredients they had and did not have to have access to their kitchen.

Group 2

The second group revolved around helping parents and childern schedule time to talk to each other (considering time-zone differences). The ideas were at extremes:
- A basic shared calendar
- A wearable that tells the parent what the child is doing and vice-versa

While parents and children thought that a system that considers time zone differences would be helpful, they felt like a scheduler was too mechanical and was not personal. They also questioned how the system would know when they are ‘free’? There were also concerns of privacy.

Group 3

Group 3 tested in what ways parents were ready to share recipes with their children. We asked for feedback on 3 ideas:
- Parents actually cooking and sending a video to their children
- Parents virtually cooking
- Parents verbally instructing children

While parents said they could cook the dish if their child really wanted them to, but in most cases was not necessary. They felt that verbally instructing their kids was good enough and that it would be great if a system could de-code the conversation into a recipe.

Group 4

The ideas in group 4 tested how the child would like to receive a recipe. The ideas included:
- A video of the entire cooking process
- Short video snippets
- Augmented instructions
- Real-time + tagged instructions

Children though that the entire video was a waste of time, especially since they knew how to cook a dish, but did not know only some steps. They did not want to be watching the whole video and liked the idea of short snippets.
An idea that people loved was the tagged instructions. They felt like this would really help with multi-tasking during the cooking process and also cook dishes again and again (with or without parent’s help).

Group 5

Group 5 was about sharing the result with the parent. We tested:
- Sharing the complete video of the cooking process
- Updating her recipe according to the child’s taste and sharing

While all the participants agreed that sharing aspects of food was an important part of their conversations with their families, they felt that sharing entire videos was a waste of time. They said they are very happy sharing images of what they made and how it turned out.

Group 6

Group 6 explored what and how the parents wanted to see when they were helping their children with the cooking. It included:
- A first person view of the cooking process
- A drone camera showing over the cooking area
- A camera that they could remotely control

While parents said that it would be helpful to see the cooking area, they felt that they did not need to control the camera. While they were not particular about the first person view, the consensus was that they want to see their child, and see the cooking area when giving cooking instructions.

Group 7

This group explored the different ways in which the child could interact with the parents:
- A screen that moves according to his gaze
- A window like screen with the parent on the other side
- Merged environments
- Masking out certain areas of the kitchen

While people really liked the idea of being able to interact with their familes on large screen seamlessly, they thought that merging spaces and holograms was unnecessary. They said that it felt like trying to make something unreal real.

Group 8

This idea was of a magic box that can be used to communicate measurements, share taste and smell and even see each other.

While people were fascinated with the idea of being able to share taste and smell, they felt that they did not need something like this to communicate measurements. They also wondered how the ‘seeing each other’ would be very different from a skype experience.