icook_image

iCook

A Free-hand Cooking Product Design.
My Responsibility
    UX design, UX Research, UI Design, HCI Design
    Timeline
      Jan. 2020 - Mar. 2020
      Introduction
      iCook is a cooking assistant that ameliorates the original cooking process, focusing on the inconvenient cooking experience with personal applications.
      Background
      Starting from finding in my personal life that due to the pandemic, more and more people begin to cook at home. Cell phones have become the primary kitchen tool of choice for home cooks, while the experience is not always delightful. Using user research and the human-centered design method, I analyzed the problem with user needs behind it and came up with a conceptual product design to help improve the inconvenient cooking experience.

      Final Design

      The service provides users a quick and easy way to explore, collect, study, organize and share various recipes across their mobiles and follow the step-by-step cooking tutorial on the tablet application. Empowered by the intelligent hand gesture recognition developed by Python language, the product offers an experience of physically untouchable human-computer interactions in kitchens.

      Design Process

      How to get there?

      Popular Media Scan

      Sense Intent

      To identify broad topics related to the project, I look for what is being written about on blogs and websites, to find out the current and emerging cultural trends in online cooking tutorials.

      Sense Intent

      How to get there?

      • It is a common phenomenon that people cook at home with mobile devices.
      • People have increased interest in cooking new recipes.
      • Mobile phones bring thousands of bacteria, while few people realize.
      • A few people use voice search product during cooking process.

      Research

      Next

      • What specific problems will there be during the cooking process?
      • What’s the current market?

      Observation

      Understanding Problems

      To develop a deeper understanding of users’ behaviors, I went to a user’s home, direct observing her process of learning new recipes with her phone. Then, I summarized the problems that happened during the process below.

      Interview

      Understanding Problems

      In order to better understand the users’ inconveniences through the process of cooking with cell phones, I interviewed 12 users of different ages, who are users learning and cooking new recipes, including students, housewives, doctors, and neighborhood committees.

      Competitive Product

      Understanding Context

      I researched 3 competitor products in 3 categories, printed recipes, cooking apps & videos, and the Amazon Echo Show, and found that current solutions might solve problems.

      Key Findings

      • People cook with mobile devices may face risks of attention distract, reading inconvience, equipment detruction, food contamination, and gas explosion......
      • The current users were people from 20-40, who are familiar with digital devices.
      • Based on competitive research, using digital devices for cooking is a leading trend in people’s daily life, while they might not good enough to create delightful experience.

      Frame Insights

      Next

      • How can I help the general public to have a better cooking experience with digital devices?

      Persona & User Journey Map

      Pain points & Oppotunities

      Based on previous research, I summarize a typical user experience flow of using phones for cooking tutorials and then discuss the biggest opportunities for making the user journey compelling and delightful.

      Business Model

      Stand in the future

      I created an initial business model with a value proposition for the expected product design, defining its values for my customers and further business.

      Solutions

      • A community for discovering and sharing recipes.
      • A recipe keeper for collecting and organizing users’ favorite recipes.
      • A meal planner + shopping list that helps to prepare cooling essentials.
      • A teacher that provides cooking tutorial step by step.
      • A physically untouchable screen which prevent making voice and frequently screen-touching.

      Ideation

      Next

      • How can I realize these functions?

      Information Architecture

      Ideation

      iCook consists of a mobile application and a tablet. Users can discover recipes, keep grocery lists, photograph their handiwork, look up the names of raw materials, set timers by the mobile application, and learn cooking steps on the tablet.

      Wireframe

      Ideation

      After defining the information architecture, I draw a low-fidelity wireframe. I conducted a usability test with 3 tasks and interviewed four target users. Following the results of usability testing, I iterated the wireframe for further development.

      Iterations

      Usability Test

      # Discover recipes

      • “I'd like to see how many people collect the post. I’m always engaged by post that is liked by most people.”
      • “I want to keep track of bloggers and their recipes.”

      --- Quote from usability test

      # Recipe Introduction

      • “I'm losing weight recently, so I’d like to see its colories.”
      • “I really love cooking, but I don’t have too much time for it, so every time when I’m browsing recipes, I want to know how long it takes, so I can plan in advance.”

      --- Quote from usability test

      The Gesture-Based Technologies

      • Gesture-Based Technology is an emerging trend that supports gesture recognition and touchless interface.
      • It is seen as a way for computers to begin to understand human body language, thus building a better bridge between machines and humans than older text user interfaces or graphical user interfaces.
      To realize the physically untouchable interaction,  I explored devices and python languages with gesture libraries to see its possibilities.

      Devices

      Ideation

      Based on my previous research and with the technology tutor’s help, I connect a computer board with a screen to create a carrier for my iCook application.
      The Raspberry Pi operates in an open-source ecosystem. It runs Linux and its main supported operating system, Raspbian. Python is a wonderful and powerful programming language that's easy to use and, with Raspberry Pi, lets me connect my project to the real world.

      High-Fidelity Prototypes

      • UI Style Guide
      • Usage Scenarios & Interface (Mobile and PC end)

      Homepage On PC

      Usage Scenarios & Interface

        The PC is designed as a kitchen tool. The product recognized hand gestures across the camera. When users do the Gesture 1 and stop in front of the intended button, it will go to the linked page. Instead of asking users to follow steps, the system works with users’ pace.

        Tutorial Process On PC

        Usage Scenarios & Interface

          Users can also do Gesture 2 and 3 to scroll dow and up pages. Users can also do the Gester 1 to click arrow to order it scroll down and up.

          What I learned

          Reflection

          • Innovation and Challenges
            It is my first project and first time self-taught programming with Python and realizing its function of hand-free cooking guidance. Coming from an artistic background without much support in technical aspects, I faced great barriers in coding, but I persisted. The success offered me a great sense of achievement from creating a design of practical functions and bringing actual interactive services for people determined my career objective as an interaction designer.
          • Through the process, the project can go in very different directions, and that is normal.
            Creating something from scratch requires a lot of research, creative thinking, and the courage of taking risks. Of course, it is therefore stressful and one gets even more nervous as things do not go as expected. But I realized that this dynamic range is the beauty of the creative processes. Along the way you explore so many things that you keep developing the product more and more, resulting in something significantly different from the beginning.

          Next Steps

          • Find a more complete library for hand gesture recognition
            The hand gesture recognition project is done using Python programming language and a gesture library, while the current library only includes five gestures for recognition. For further development, I will cite a complete library like OpenCV to recognize hand movements more accurately.
          • Conduct additional usability tests with real users
            Though I have done usability tests based on wireframes during the progress, I expect more feedback to ensure the plan for a product's functions, features, and overall purpose is in line with what users want by observing how real-life people use the product.
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          © Yiying Zhou
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