Food For Thought Documentation
Access the prototype from https://food-for-thought.000webhostapp.com/food%20for%20thought/index.html
- Enter the homepage of the website.
- Click on the icon on top left opens the main menu.
- Submit request for traditional recipe page via the Submit Recipe option on the main menu.
- Return to the homepage.
- Explore the recipes that are displayed on the homepage.
- View the story and recipe, comments and the variations of recipes.
- Click on the icon on top right to return to the homepage at any time.
As food is constantly being adapted to be made in newer forms of cooking, preserving tradition is often not a priority and it is not uncommon for the traditional methods of creating incredible meals is lost to time. This project centers around the preservation of recipes and the stories behind them - by doing this, these recipes are stored for future generations as cultural heritage.
The design process began with the research that needed to be conducted in order to answer the questions we had - why would there be a need to preserve the traditional recipes of various cultures. Through our research we came to the conclusion that people didn't necessarily want to preserve food; it was far more apparent that people wished to simply preserve their culture and food played a considerable role in a number of these cultures. To further complement this research, we decided to have interviews with our target audience to see if this was correct. Each team member had a different cultural background, which we used to our advantage to see how different cultures wished to preserve their traditional recipes.
Initial interview and results see here
From this, we decided that an app that could preserve these traditional foods (especially their origins and their original recipes) would be an ideal way of reaching our goal.
Our plan for Food for Thought was an app that could allow users to post recipes with their origins and original recipe and other users could view them and learn about them and their respective cultures. The primary target audience of Food for Thought was determined to be young adults and older who were interested in either their own culture or other cultures (with a smaller target audience being people interested in foreign cuisine). Additionally, we looked at similar apps which would be used by this target audience to see what potential features we could implement within Food for Thought.
We decided to go with a 'globe' style approach (similar to Google Earth) upon which each country would hold each of its' respective recipes. This would be accompanied with a filtering system to filter recipes by dietary requirements and countries, and also a search bar. On each individual recipe page, information regarding the recipe or the variations posted by other users are shown. These concepts were formalised into the first prototype:
We did additional background research to extract design direction. Family as an important subject of culture preservation was then paid attention to.
As the primary issue with the initial design was the way the recipes were found, we decided that a more forum-style approach (similar to Reddit) would be necessary. Furthermore, an upvoting system would also be implemented in order for the most popular traditional recipe to be seen on the top of the page.
The first user testing involving a few users was done to evaluate these change. Results can be found here
After analysing results of testing, the second prototype was developed and was tested in the second user testing. It is showed that by presenting the recipe in this way, the recipes are much more accessible. A further improvement was also suggested for the actual logic of the application - as there are often a number of meals which are essentially the same, but made in a different country. The suggestion was to take both of these recipes, because although they were highly similar, they both had a significant difference in terms of cultural history.
The third prototype was presented at the showcase as our current solution- and while being fairly similar to the second prototype in terms of functionality, it was intended to be a horizontal prototype and covers more aspects such as the capability to submit recipes which we have not tested before.
A task flow for the current solution is shown below.
The results from interaction with the showcase prototype yielded a number of useful improvements. It was suggested that the filtering system provide a time filter - which would fit as several of these recipes are highly dated and being able to sort via time fits thematically with this prototype. Another suggestion was to try and better encapsulate the social aspect of the application - while the concept of variations was a start, it could be improved significantly.
- Worked on the Marvel prototypes
- Completed several user tests
- Assisted with high fidelity prototype
- Assisted with poster content
- Built the high fidelity prototype
- Assisted with the digital prototype on marvel
- Planned the contextual interviews for initial research
- Generated Possible user scenarios
- Conducted user tests for all iterations of the project
- Recorded notes from all team meetings and stand-ups
- Assisting with content and layout of the showcase poster
- Created digital prototypes with Marvel
- Planned the testing of prototype one and two
- Responsible for the aesthetics of the project
- Laid out and created graphs for the poster