Cook Cool

"Design a mobile application that teaches UTD students easy, budget-friendly, and delicious recipes."

Problem identification started with the above prompt given by the UX Challenge. As a self-cooking college student myself, I identified two main problems in the current recipe application market that needs to be addressed to target college students. First, students have limited resources when it comes to acquiring ingredients, whether it be money, time, or grocery stores nearby. Second, students need exposure to a variety of food choices to be motivated to proactively maintain healthy and consistent diet.

Due to the time constraint provided by the UX Challenge, the user research phase was simplified with provided user informations. With the three model users, I conducted user analysis through visualizing user personas, creating empathy maps, and conducting extra surveys and market research based on the target personas.

Based on the user research conducted, I was able to conclude three major problems to tackle:
1. Dietary restrictions: To make the app accessible to everyone, I needed to target those with common dietary restrictions, including lactose intolerance, vegetarianism, gluten intolerance, or kosher. Potential solutions include linking commonly intolerable ingredients with substitutes.
2. Efficiency: All competitors in the field of mobile applications estimated cook time or even food preparation time for each recipes. For college students who are in constant lack of time to spend cooking, cook time is a valuable information when it comes to recipes. A potential solution could involve an interactive sliders that can specify cook times when searching.
3. Approachability: On limited survey performed alongside the user personas, I was able to find that many users had recipe applications on their phone, while only a small portion of them actually utilized the app regularly. This is because the app hasn't made way into the users' daily habit. Potential solution for this involves strong branding and easy-to navigate visuals.

From screen planning to wireframes and branding, I focused on keeping the brand identity speaking clearly and directly to the users. The app was to be kept simple, with clear guidance to the user's navigation and search.

Introducing Cook Cool, a simple recipe application that focuses on the flexible search capability and alternative suggestions. Extra functionalities such as expiration date tracking, meal planning, and grocery list keeper are boldly removed to focus the application's personalization capabilities to the search function.

Although limited by time constraints, my research observations suggested that college students would use recipe apps as a non-essential part of their daily routines. Therefore the most important design principle I kept in mind over the brainstorming phase comes from John Maeda's famous The Laws of Simplicity : "You will see more, by seeing less". As a recipe application for everyday college students and not for communities of cookers, Cook Cool seeks to solve only the most important pain points of us busy students.

I started designing this application as my very first design project two weeks into my experience with Figma, so the design process posed a big learning curve. The biggest takeaway about the software was on how much intricacy and complexity the design tools provide; the better I understand what Figma has to offer, the more wonder I can create! Even after the project, I still feel there is much more I should be exploring with this marvelous tool.