Recify

About the project

A mobile application that suggests recipe based on the availability of the ingredients at home. There are times when you walk into your kitchen, glance through your pantry and refrigerator, and wonder what you might possibly prepare with what you currently have.

And then there are those times when you stand in front of your pantry, shaking your head because it's so cluttered and you have no idea what supplies you have in stock. Recify is the solution to problems like these surrounding one's kitchen.

Role : Product Designer

Tools : Pen and paper

Figma

01.

Deciding on a meal become an easy process.

02.

The physical location of each item is now mirrored and managed on a digital platform.

03.

Recify includes fun micro interactions that make a once-boring activity more enjoyable.

Understanding The Challenge

The main job was to "discover recipes using supplies you already have in the pantry," which was surrounded by a variety of other chores. For example, it may entail organising the pantry, locating products, deciding the cuisine, purchasing for new items, and so on. I didn't want to start brainstorming ideas based on assumptions right away. Instead, I wanted to learn as much as I could about cooking food in this limited period of time so that I could ensure that my concept was practical and useful to consumers.

Research

Cooking a meal is such a personal experience that practically everyone has their own interpretation. I made the decision to speak with five people in my network first. For improved generalizability, I tried to recruit persons who were distinct in age and race.

I left the questions open enough in the script for the participant to comment on their relationship with their kitchen. It was extremely vital for me to remain objective and open throughout this phase so that I could identify the pain points. The interviews were conducted in context. The participant and I stood in their kitchen and went through details of different tasks surrounding the topic.

Persona Development

I immediately coded the comments from the interviews and discovered that searching through the cupboard and deciding on a recipe were the most important chores because they happened almost every day and involved the greatest pain points, which will be detailed later.

Shopping for materials is not normally done daily, but it can be easily inspired by ideas from recipes they enjoy or crave.

Finally, I limited my scope to mobile apps because the participants continued moving between the refrigerator and the pantry while planning or arranging it, and they were continually using their hands to get products. The importance of mobility and portability cannot be overstated.

The feedback I received from the participants aided me in developing the following two personas, which will be described in further depth later.

Hierarchical Task Analysis

My next step was to tell a story of how my personas were currently carrying out the tasks.

My main strategy here was to use the two central tasks - organizing the pantry and planning a meal - as the "storyline".
Find where 'going through the fridge and the pantry, and shopping for items' fit in the stories.
Label the negative emotions (red) in order to tell where the problems are and what I could leverage in my design.

Competitive Analysis

Now that I had knowledge about the high and low in the user's emotion when conducting the tasks, I could look at some existing solutions to see how they are handling the issues. To build a clear and robust foundation for Recify, I had to look at what the most popular recipe apps were already doing and what user goals they weren't achieving. I looked into numerous characteristics that were rated important by users and determined which ones Recify could exploit to gain an advantage over competitors.

I discovered that none of the competitors provided users with pantry organization. Although all the competitors had a feature to create a grocery list, but customers had to manually tick off the items they already had, which was a task user did not want to perform.

Design: Sketching

As I moved into the design phase, I kept everything I'd learned so far in mind: the personalities, their pain spots, and the new flows. Out of my concept and idea I made rough sketches.

My Proposal: The New Flows

I proposed two user flows, one for adding item to the pantry, which is a reversible process when the user takes an item out, and one for planning a meal with the items available

During this phase, I focused on visual consistency as well as how my interface and interaction might support the essential functions.

The Onboarding Process

High-Fidelity Design

Organising the Pantry (Adding Items)

Planning a meal

Visual Design

Recify should be motivating rather than leading, therefore I kept that in mind when deciding on the app's aesthetic style. It must be able to support the content (food items, recipe, diversity). As a result, I produced the following mood board, which is dominated by a sense of simplicity. The UI, which is largely white and orange with a hint of peach, does not overpower the colours of the ingredients while still providing the app a fresh citrus flavor.