Easy Peasy RecipEZ
Contributors: Carson Anderson, Felix Breuer, Nancy Qu, Timothy Zhong
Overview
Making diverse and exciting meals can be a daunting, difficult, and expensive task since you have to plan out recipes, create and purchase a long list of groceries, and cook a variety of meals, taking up a significant amount of time. In our user research, we found that many people found time constraints to be the biggest barrier to cooking. Furthermore, meal prepping was a common activity that many participants were either already doing or were interested in starting.
To address these concerns, we designed a mobile app, RecipEZ, that makes the process of planning meals simpler and faster while encouraging a greater diversity in the meals one can make. In this app, the user inputs preferences such as the number of meals, cuisines they enjoy, and nutrition goals they have, and is given recipe suggestions according to these preferences. The user can swap these recipes until they are satisfied. They are able to save a collection of recipes as a meal plan. We envision that whenever users want to plan their meals for the next few days, they would use our app to quickly and easily create a meal plan, find desirable recipes, and use our ingredients list to help with grocery shopping.
Initial Paper Prototype & User Research
Our initial paper prototype featured four main pages: home, details, recipes, and ingredients.
Using this prototype, users could create new meal plans on the homepage. They would then select recipe preferences on the details page, get recipe suggestions on the recipes page, and view aggregated ingredients on the ingredients page.
We conducted usability testing with three participants, which helped us identify elements of our design that were potentially confusing or cumbersome. In particular, participants noted the lack of clarity on how to traverse to previous pages and the difficulty in changing the number of recipes in each meal plan. To address this, we decided to add back buttons with descriptive labels and allow for easy addition or removal of recipes on the recipe page itself. Furthermore, we wanted to greet the user with a help page pop up when first opening the app.
Polished Digital Prototype
After conducting testing on our paper prototype, we moved on to creating a digital prototype. You can view an interactive version here: https://www.figma.com/design/YYZWUiVxJtIZPFgsfokz3a/CSE-440--Digital-Mockup?node-id=0-1&t=WEj49jlYOy56Nvfd-1.
We imagine that a user would open up RecipEZ when they want to create a meal plan for the next few days. The first time they open the app, the help screen pops up first; otherwise, the default home page shows up first.
The user can create a new meal plan by pressing the “Add New” button.
The app will take the user to the “Preferences” screen. From here, the user will name the meal plan and select preferences to cater to their tastes. They also have the option to enter keywords to further customize their plan from within the drop-down menus. Once they are done, they can click the “Recipes” button.
The app generates recipes based on the preferences chosen by the user, with a default of four recipes. If the user wants, they can swap the generated recipe for a different one, add a new recipe, or remove a current recipe. This random generation allows users to branch out to recipes they wouldn’t know of otherwise, while still maintaining desirability via the preference selection screen. From here, they can click “Ingredients” to move on.
The ingredients screen aggregates the ingredients needed across all the recipes, providing an overview of all the grocery items they need. When the user is satisfied, they can select the “Home” button to save and return to the homepage.
At this point, the user is able to go back to view previously completed meal plans. They can click on the meal plans to see the recipes and ingredients, or edit the preferences and recipes as needed. They may also create a new meal plan if desired.
We made some additional changes to the design to increase the digestibility of information. On the ingredients page, our paper prototype had nutrition and dietary restrictions under one drop-down menu, whereas our digital mockup split the two categories. Furthermore, on the ingredients page, we added the number of items and estimated cost to give the user some aggregate information about all the ingredients. Additionally, we put the ingredients in drop down menus rather than one long list to make it less overwhelming. To make it more clear what page the user is currently on we added titles such as “Choose Preferences”.
Conclusion
Cooking is not always the desired method of getting food: it can be difficult and expensive, since you have to plan out recipes, create and purchase a long list of groceries, and it can take up more time than you have available. In our user research, we found that many people cited time and money as their most significant barriers to cooking. Our application helps reduce the amount of time spent on cooking, with the goal of reducing time spent on finding recipes, and reducing the amount of money spent by allowing the user to access varied recipes that share ingredients. The app does this by letting you input preferences, such as what ingredients you want to be in the meals. It then gives you recipes based on these preferences and provides a grocery list to easily know what you need to purchase for cooking. We expect this to help working individuals create meal plans for their work week by assisting them in finding recipes without spending too much time on it, and making cooking multiple meals easier, such that they start seeing cooking as a worthwhile task, not a burden.
