Cook & Connect

@Apr-May 2023
UI/UX | IoT Design | App
DESCRIPTION
Many families use cooking and daily meals as a common opening topic when communicating but face the challenge of coordinating meal preparation and communication when they are not physically together, leading to missed opportunities for quality time and shared experiences. My proposed intervention is a smart kitchen platform that connects to a mobile application, allowing family members to cook and communicate remotely, promotes family bonding and shared experiences.
Deliverables
Mobile App

Design Tool
User Research
Empathy Map
Persona
UI/UX Design
Wireframes
Lo-fi Prototypes
Responsibility
Personal Project

DEFINING PROBLEM

In today's fast-paced world, the precious moments families spend together have dwindled, whether they live miles apart or in the same city. The demands of our busy lives often leave us with limited opportunities for meaningful interaction.
Simultaneously, cooking, an essential daily task, often becomes a rushed chore rather than a cherished tradition.

The challenge is clear:
how can we bridge the gap between our hectic routines and the need for quality family time?

Objective & Goals

The proposed solution, "Cook & Connect," addresses this modern-day dilemma. It's a revolutionary concept that ingeniously combines the act of cooking with the art of connection.

The main idea is to create a dedicated 15 to 20-minute window during meal preparation, where family members, no matter how far apart, can come together virtually and bond over cooking.

Design Progress

To work on this project, I took the Design Thinking Method as a basis. Is a non-liner, iterative process that I have used to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solution to prototype and test. The main advantages of this process are that it allowed you to accurately define your users, their tasks, and the environment.

Design Proposal

My proposed intervention is a smart kitchen platform that connects to a mobile application, allowing family members to cook and communicate remotely, promotes family bonding and shared experiences.

Empathy Map

The empathy map helps to understand user’s needs, what they are thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, and doing.

Insights

Streamlined Cooking and Meal Planning
● Use AI recognition and voice demand to automatically record and organize the cooking process and ingredients used;
● Generate a grocery list based on the recipe for easy shopping and preparation by other family members;
● Define different levels of complexity for recipes to accommodate different skill levels.

Personalized Nutrition and Recipe Recommendations
● Summarize weekly and monthly data to analyze the nutritional balance of family members based on their eating habits;
● Suggest optimized diets based on individual needs and preferences;
● Recommend new recipes with similar tastes by analyzing people's dietary preferences.

Gamifying Remote Cooking with Video Filming
● Smart device's camera can capture the cooking process and facial expressions of family members during remote interaction;
● Provides an opportunity for family members to bond and create memories;
● Motivate family members to cook more frequently and experiment with new recipes.

Scan and Plan: Food Management with App Integration
● Scanning food in the fridge or on the table with a smart device to generate recipe suggestions;
● Record the shelf life of purchased food through the app to plan and dispose of food wisely and reduce waste.

Persona

By on the data I obtained from the small and quick research, I draw up two general user personas that reflects the app’s users.

Information Architecture

Optimize and organize the structure, helping users navigate them to find and process the information they need.

Lo-Fi Prototypes

Optimise and organise the structure, helping users navigate them to find and process the information they need.