SmartChef 

Want to cook multiple dishes quickly at the same time, just like a professional chef?

With this mobile / mixed reality app, you can view and listen to the cooking steps (video + audio) on selected dishes. No need to open multiple recipes and spend time tracking each steps.

UI/UX Design | Visual Design | AR/MR Design 

Tool

Sketch; Photoshop

My role

UX Designer & Researcher

Duration

1 Week

Traditional recipes only list static cooking steps per course.

How can we help people follow procedures and minimize cooking time when they need to cook multiple dishes at one time?

Solution

I designed an app with the following features:

Before cooking

Allow users to add multiple dishes they are interested in to "cook".

While cooking

Real time step by step cooking guidance & timer

After cooking

Uploading photos & recipe review.

Research

Competitive Analysis

Target Users

People who want to cook multiple dishes efficiently, quickly, and easily at the same time, like housewives who need to prepare meals for their family or people who want to prepare meals for a party. 

Research

The goal of the research is to figure out how to help users reduce the difficulties of cooking multiple dishes and make better use of time during cooking. To better understand user needs and frustrations, I conducted 4 user interviews with people who like cooking and need to prepare multiple meals at one time. 

The research shows that users have needs to eat diversely. However, due to the limited time, they always just cook one dish. 
In addition, users would like to see videos and images when reading recipes, rather than just text.
If cooking multiple dishes, they need to know each step before cooking. When mixing the cooking steps together, they want to know which dish each step belongs to so that they will not lose the overall picture.

Wireframes

Audio Input

I did 3 usability tests on our wireframes. One valuable feedback I learned is that the app should allow the audio input so that users don’t have to look at the app or tap it when they are cooking. In this way, they don’t have to wash their hands over and over again along the way.

Design

Mobile App

Augmented Reality

Wearing a head-mounted device (HMD) such as Microsoft Hololens or Google Glasses , users can project the cooking videos to a larger space, and interact with the instructions via voice input. In this way, users will not need to touch the screen and can focus on cooking.