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BUTTER - HANDS-FREE COOKING APP
Principles of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Jan-May 2024
Role: UX Designer
Skills: User Research, UI/UX Design, Prototyping
OVERVIEW
butter transforms your favorite online recipes into a fully customizable, voice-guided experience, designed for all levels. With a hands-free interface, the platform simplifies each step of the cooking process, helping users conserve time and effort in the kitchen.
butter also fosters community engagement by allowing users to share, discover, and interact with recipes created by others.
69% of Americans cook on a regular basis, averaging 10 home-cooked meals a week (StudyFinds).
THE PROBLEM
Today’s home cooks struggle to find a recipe that fits their dietary needs and execute it in a time-efficient manner. Moreover, navigating a screen while cooking proves to be a messy, frustrating experience.
How can I design a hands-free cooking experience that helps home cooks find delicious recipes and prepare them with ease?
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RESEARCH
Competing cooking assistant solutions in the market
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Chef for Blue Apron
Blue Apron’s technology is tightly integrated with its own meal kits, meaning it only supports a fixed and limited set of recipes within its platform.
As a result, users cannot rely on the app to support all of their favorite recipes, limiting flexibility and long-term adoption into practice.
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Voice Assistant
Voice-powered assistants (eg. Amazon Alexa) offer hands-free recipe narration, but require pricey hardware and provide an audio-only experience.
Without visual guidance, users are left guessing how to execute cooking techniques, making these tools less effective for skill-building and novice cooks.
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Recipe Keeper App
While this app centralizes recipes, shopping lists, and meal planning across devices, its functions are largely static.
Users lack hands-free interaction and miss opportunities for social engagement, such as sharing recipes, techniques, and feedback within a community.
BUTTER'S COMPETITIVE EDGE
butter allows for an unlimited amount of online recipes to be stored in an account's database.
Our library of cooking technique videos gives beginner cooks the guidance they need to make the dish of their dreams. Finally, the social media aspect of the platform allows users to build community.
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Next, I surveyed 25 peers to assess interest in a product like butter. The results showed high enthusiasm for a hands-free cooking assistant, with the majority of participants indicating they would use the tool often.
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How often would you use this intuitive cooking assistant?
What is the likelihood you would use a platform controlled by your voice?
DESIGN FLOW
Target audience is home cooks, from novice to advanced level
Platform should be intuitive and have needed skill videos integrated
Deciding what to eat for a meal is a largely visual experience.
Explore page should primarily feature images of finished dishes.
Recipes are found via social media, hard to save in one place.
Virtual recipe book for saving and revisiting your go-tos.
Using touch-based technology during cooking is slow and messy.
Adaptable, hands free platform is cleaner and more efficient.
THE SOLUTION
1) Social media-like community to share and discover diverse recipes
Features:
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“Explore” page: Scroll through visual database of recipes posted by your favorite chefs, influencers, and friends
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Each post includes picture of dish and information like preparation time, serving size, and difficulty level
2) Interactive personal recipe page
Features:
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Playful, visual interface to scroll through your saved recipes
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Recipes labeled with a picture, date added, and difficulty level
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“Quick scroll” through the recipe card before starting cooking experience
3) Voice-controlled interface to adapt recipes to preference
Features:
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Voice-controlled chat that prompts integrated skill videos when needed
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Adaptable recipe card that saves your changes at the end of cooking session
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Integrated timer for specific required times in recipe (eg. resting, baking)
LEARNINGS
Showing written instructions from an online recipe isn’t helpful for beginner cooks – integrate a video demonstration instead.
Permanently update recipe cards with ingredient substitutions as you go – value add for users with unique use cases like allergies.