FINICKY FOODIE Inc.
Cooking Application for people living alone
The number of people living alone is on the rise in Canada, either voluntarily or circumstantially. Especially in Toronto, because of high price of the food in restaurants the interest about cooking of the people is being increased. The application, SINCOOK, is a cook helper which can understand and meet the needs of the current generation, especially young adults who are living alone and living their busy lives.
Say “Let’s cook!” instead of touching your phone.You are not interrupted anymore by using your devices to follow a recipe while cooking.
SINCOOK gets detailed information from users when users open the app for the first time. Depending on collected data such as allergies, appliances and preferences, personalized recipes are recommended.
SINCOOK recommends hyper-relevant recipes at the right time based on users’ cooking level and preferences.
You can add the ingredients to your shopping list from recipe detail pages. Based on the point cards that you have, SINCOOK shows discount information to assist your grocery shopping.
Preparing meal is not ended with just eating. SINCOOK offers not only recipes, but also lifestyle tips for users to live a healthier lives.
Most of the young adults (25-35, Millennial Generation) who live alone are not professional cook. Even they are willing to cook properly, more than that, they prefer to cook simple and fast without breaking their budget. They already have tried to cook with quite a few Youtube videos and online recipes, but those information is too complicated and make them to give up quickly. Even they find a good and simple recipes, because they can’t use their smart phone easily while cooking and it delays cooking hours.
SinCook, which is designed for young adult who lives alone, provides not only optimized information as a cooking assistant, but also helpful living tips to the users.
Provide the information quickly and efficiently considering the lifestyle of the target, young adult who lives alone.
Perform the role as a cooking assistant through various supportive functions.
Deliver information about lifestyle to the users, also being a marketing opportunities for stakeholders (eg. Food companies, retail businesses)
As my research kept going, I found that more and more people are not only looking for faster ways of making their meals but also, they are eager to save their money. This fact made me to focus on building the application which can satisfy and meet the needs of Millennials as a smart cook assistant.
Source: Statistics Canada, Census of Population, 1981 and 2016.
Source: Google Trends, Keyword Sheeter, 2015 - 2019.
The one-person household is one of the fastest-growing demographics in our country. According to the research by Statistics Canada, the number of persons living alone in Canada is more than doubled over the last 35 years, from 1.7 million in 1981 to 4.0 million in 2016. And now, more than 28 percent of Canadian households are home to one person only. However, the price of food purchased at restaurants have increased significantly and have been known to more than double the general inflation rate. Because of this phenomenon, young adults are trying to cook by themselves not to waste money. However, Since this generation is living a fast-paced life, they don’t want to waste their time to cook. According to Google trends, people have more interest on the instant cook appliances than before and more interest on health diets. Also, It has been found that majority of people directly search the recipes by the name of it’s ingredients.
One of the important thing that I focused on was how we should collect data and use them to personalize assistance effectively. Even though there are some popular cooking apps which recommend recipes based on users’ information, they either make users frustrated while collecting data by too many questions or collect too little data to offer personalized information.
Because users are busy while cooking and not free to use their hands, SINCOOK offers voice assistant on cooking step. After users pick recipes and see the detail of the recipes, SINCOOK can be controlled by users’ voice if the voice assistant is turned on.
Even before users start thinking about cooking, SINCOOK starts guiding users and assists users on every single step of preparing meal.
The onboarding process was designed to get qualified information from users without making users frustrated. Even the users who skipped onboarding can explore the app without personalized recipes. All users are able to set or change their settings whenever they want in the app.
Through various types of search options, SINCOOK helps users to decide what to eat.
Depending on the resources, interfaces are different on Recipe detail page. If the recipe is customized by SINCOOK, step-by-step recipe and voice assistant is offered.
Because onboarding process is the first face of the app that users meet, I Focused on building onboarding UX and UI to be simple and fun with friendly welcome words and intuitive graphics elements. After the onboarding process, users can explore personalized and curated content through various types of dynamic UI. Cooking process including voice assistant was designed without any descriptions. Instead of extra introduction, simple layout and big visual will guide users intuitively.
This system includes a series of graphic elements used at various times to create a comprehensive, cohesive and recognizable identity that represents SINCOOK publicly.
The preferred use of the signature is in full colour. If this is not possible then on a pure colour or on a white or light background. This application of the logo should always be considered as the first design option.
