Mom’s Recipes
2022 | NYU
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By collecting "secret" recipes from around the world to bring the taste of home to the dining table, Mom’s Recipes hope to inspire more people to cook again at home and lead healthier lifestyles.
Team with:
Ruoxiao Sun
Mission
Our mission is to bring back family togetherness and share the worldwide taste of home in a relaxed and pleasing way.
Team with:
Ruoxiao Sun
Mission
Our mission is to bring back family togetherness and share the worldwide taste of home in a relaxed and pleasing way.
Interviews
We conducted several interviews with people in New York. Through our interviews, 80% of the interviewees mentioned that they would cook following their mom's cooking style. Whenever they want to cook, the first thing that comes to their mind is the taste of their childhood home.
We conducted several interviews with people in New York. Through our interviews, 80% of the interviewees mentioned that they would cook following their mom's cooking style. Whenever they want to cook, the first thing that comes to their mind is the taste of their childhood home.
Mom's Recipe derives its name from the days when mothers always played the role of cooking and caring for the entire family. When we think of a mother, we think of family, the people who's always strong and always there to support.
- “If there’s anything I wanna try to make, I probably just gonna ask my mom.”
- “Always learn from my mom while helping her when I was little.”
- “Ask my parents some recipes that they did before, I will also ask how do others cook and learn their recipes.”
All interviewees mentioned having watched cooking videos on social media.
- “I’d like to improve cooking and search by Google and Instagram, which are my favorite tools.”
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“In terms of format, it’s usually helpful when it comes with both text and video, and steps.”
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“Physical Cookbook, NYTimes, Google search, Sometimes my mom wrote down and send to me”
Competitor Research
User Testings & Learnings
Click to see user test videos ︎︎︎
Learnings for “Children”
- Visual accessibility design: Distinguish the color and size of the buttons, using 60px to enhance readability so everyone is able to click accurately.
- Too much information on the home page, reordering information base on what users want to see the most.
- Most interviewees prefer to have step by step text+image descriptions with short videos.
Learnings for “Moms”
- Privacy settings: Private or Public Visibility
- Size of the cover image on editing page: the conflict and debate between aesthetics and usability
- Text descriptions on where to input
- Different processes based on user operability (smart generate short videos into one/ clip one video into separate steps)
Design Decisions
From laptop to mobile
We found through user test that it is very inconvenient for our users to use the laptop while cooking. Mobile is a more suitable platform for all kinds of our users.
Game mode to short video
We started with trying to make the cooking process enjoyable and fun, therefore we designed multiple versions of game-mode cooking steps. There is too much content and hierarchy in the interface for the user to find the focus of attention. The horizontal screen's purpose is to zoom in on the video and provide the ability to jump to the step the user is performing.
In-App timer
After multiple user testings along the way, we decided to eliminate the game-like looks. But to focus on pushing the combination of image+text with short videos. This also correspond with users’ habits these days.
We kept the timers feature from game mode. Often times people are struggling with switching apps for timings while cooking. Also multiple timers help the users multi-tasking during the process.
