“YOU CAN COOK” GRC 462 - Senior Project Yenna Chen Chen
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TABLE OF CONTENTS About Me 4 Abstract 5 Background Research 6 IRB Statement 8 Problem Statement 9 Project Objective 11 Timeline 12 Project Process 14 References 22 Resources and Limitations 24 Reflection 26 Next Steps 29 3
ABOUT ME Hi! My name is Yenna Chen, I am a 5th-year Graphic Communication student graduating at the end of December with a concentration in Web and Digital Media. I love to use my creative and technological knowledge for problem solving through UX/UI design, and I hope to pursue a career in UX/UI design or photography.
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ABSTRACT You Can Cook (YCC), a cooking recipe mobile app prototype that allows users to understand better during their cooking process. I decided to develop a cooking mobile application, where I took photos from my cooking, created a logo, surveyed users, collected ideas from competitors, and created a prototype to represent the developed cooking mobile application. The application allows users to experience the cooking process in a different way by interacting with other users, following descriptive steps and photos, creating their shopping list, and using many other features. The reason I chose to create a cooking mobile application prototype was that I could combine my passion for cooking, photography and UX/UI design. I also wanted to improve my skill on management and mobile application development through this project by managing the progress time and using UX/UI knowledge.
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BACKGROUND RESEARCH
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Applications
Surveys Colors
I researched about cooking recipes mobile applications, like Yummly Recipes, Paprika, and YouTube. Next, I analyzed the design principles that were applied on their applications, such as alignment, hierarchy, space, color, proximity, and more, how they meet the users’ needs. By analyzing that, I was able to borrow some ideas and improve some weaknesses. I surveyed people at the beginning of the quarter to help me develop cooking recipes mobile application. I consider color is one of the important parts, even though I should not spend much time on it. I did research about what colors make people hungry? The result turned out that red causes people to feel hungry frequently. Orange stimulates the brain that increases mental activity and often stirs up sensation of hunger. I did not want to choose red or orange, because many recipe apps use red or orange, so I combined these two colors, and made up a primary color red-pink-orange to make it slightly standed out.
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IRB STATEMENT The project is not systematic investigations. It will not collect data from Cal Poly students or employees as subjects. It does not attempt to answer research questions. Therefore, this project does not need to be reviewed by the California Polytechnic State University Institutional Review Board.
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PROBLEM STATEMENT The inaccurate information and lack of features on cooking recipe mobile applications or websites, such as inaccurate ingredients’ measure, lack of steps, pictures, and description, have led them to produce unexpected dishes that create dissatisfaction.
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PROJECT OBJECTIVE Demonstrating development of a cooking recipes mobile application through prototype showcase. Understanding and measuring users’ needs and satisfaction by collecting their feedback so that we can bring up improvement to the cooking process. Also, allowing users to create connections with each other throughout the application and encouraging users to cook more throughout the cooking recipes mobile application.
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TIMELI Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Define the problem
Survey
Background research
Sketch ideas
Recipe tasks
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MELINE
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Recipe tasks
Photos editing
Name and logo
Colors and fonts
Create prototype
Revise prototype
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PROJECT PROCESS
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SURVEY
SKETCH
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RECIPE TASK
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COLORS & FONTS I tested the contrast difference and brightness difference between each color. This is very important because we want our product to be accessible to everyone.
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RESULTS I was able to deliver a cooking recipes mobile app prototype that adds features like a converter for ingredients, reviews from other users, well descriptive steps, necessary picture and gif on important steps, categorized dishes. This project includes three different recipes on certain areas that includes features, like recipes description and photos and videos taken by me, to help the cooking process. This application will also allow users to interact with other users and learn more about cooking throughout connection, such as their followers, followings, or chefs they subscribed with. After researching about cooking recipes background, the application prototype will allow users to check marks on their shopping list and icons are included on categories selection to make users easy to choose.
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REFERENCES Paprika, Panna, Allrecipes, YouTube, BigOven, Yummly Recipes, Kitchen Stories, Epicurious, CookPad, and SideChef.
Improvement Needed
Paprika’s ingredients list design needs to be improved by separating the number of ingredients from the text and indenting the number of ingredients to the left side. That would make users easy to read because they have to know what ingredient they have to measure before getting into the detail amount of it. Lowering the price or making the application for free would attract more users to download it. The application itself can collaborate with experienced chefs to share their cooking class on their own recipe and can a small amount to users for watching it or they can view the class for free. In addition, a good way to market in the app is that users can subscribe for classes or offer classes, and can promote their recipes by purchasing ads or collecting points by giving reviews or completing cooking recipes through the app.
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RESOURCES & LIMITATIONS Time, budget, and resources are the limitations for this project. Time is needed to include more than three dishes, to make the prototype more detailed, and to test it out with users so I can get feedback to improve it. Budget is needed to buy materials like dish ingredients, small cooking equipment, and equipment for photo shooting. Lastly, resources are needed to convert this prototype to a real mobile app, because there is a limitation on the ability to turn this into a viable product. However, this prototype shows the idea of a viable product that could be made in a future after enough user tests are collected.
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REFLECTION I learned more about Adobe XD after finishing this project, and by participating in Xplor and Adobe Creative Jams a few times, it saved me time when using Adobe XD because I don’t have to learn Adobe XD from the beginning. In addition, I created the dishes images 3 days in a row, so I don’t have to set up the lighting and camera again. The most difficult part was to create images for the dishes. Due to the viral outbreak, it was hard to get the ingredient I needed to create a specific dish, so I had to keep changing what dish I was going to make. Buying ingredients for the dishes was a challenge that I didn’t consider before. When measuring my ingredients was also a challenge, since I didn’t have much tools to measure it. Choosing and editing images was also a challenge because I had to choose and adjust every image to make them look good. In addition, when creating prototype was a challenge too because I had to make sure that I didn’t miss any detail I wanted to add to the prototype.
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NEXT STEP I will work on the prototype to add more details on it. Hopefully, I will get enough resources to convert the prototype into a viable product.
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