Ratatouille
The idea came from my own experiences during college. I noticed how frustrating it was for my friends and me to deal with leftover ingredients and limited budgets. Many of us loved cooking but often struggled to turn what we had in the fridge into satisfying meals. Additionally, I observed that most of my friends, including the interview participants, relied heavily on YouTube for cooking tutorials and recipe ideas. This inspired the idea of integrating a recipe finder and ingredient delivery app with a social platform to help people make the most of what they already have while making cooking feel more creative and less stressful.
The Problem
For many college students and young adults, cooking is an uninspired, repetitive task, often leading to wasted food, expensive takeout, and missed opportunities for creativity. Before going into research, I brainstormed about the challenge points that the user might face and I found three major problems:
Food Waste
Most of the time, leftover ingredients frequently go unused because it is hard to find recipes that use them effectively.
Reliance on Expensive Alternatives
The challenges of planning meals often push young adults towards takeout or deliveries, which can be costly and less healthy.
Repetitive Meals
Because of limited knowledge or inspiration for recipes, young adults often fall back on the same simple dishes.
So I thought of methods to help users make better use of the ingredients they already own while making cooking more creative and less overwhelming for young adults.
But before going into too much detail, I wanted to interview people who cook often and understand their perspectives on the problems above.
Research
I’ve decided to narrow the target audience to young adults, aged 20-30, who enjoy cooking but want to save money. I interviewed 20 people and summed up their user needs and pain points with three cases:
Nick
Nick just started his career as a back-end engineer. After work, Nick usually cooks dinner but often struggles with a lack of ingredients for a certain recipe he wants for the day. He wants to get ingredients without spending too much time going grocery shopping.
Kevin
Kevin is a junior in college and regularly cooks to save his budget. He struggles to deal with leftover ingredients in his fridge, which most of the time goes in the trash. He wants to know different recipes he can make with ingredients in his fridge.
Yejin
Yejin is a graduate student and likes to cook and bake. She often struggles to organize and keep track of the recipes she finds on different social media platforms. She wishes there was a single platform to easily discover new recipes, save them for future use, and share her creations with a like-minded community.
Through my research, I noticed recurring themes in people’s cooking habits. Reducing food waste, saving money, and managing time were common challenges. Many appreciated the idea of quick, practical solutions, like finding recipes based on what they already had and having ingredients delivered. Social platforms were a big influence, with participants relying on them for tutorials and excited about features for sharing photos and videos. They were also willing to try global recipes and learn new techniques if they could use the leftover ingredients.
Based on the participants’ responses, I made an affinity diagram to understand core issues.
These insights inspired me to focus on simplicity, usability, and features that not only save time and money but also encourage social engagement and creativity in the kitchen.
With the insights, I built a user journey map summed into one user based on all the participants’ responses.
Design Process
Low Fidelity Testing
I mocked up the app's main screens, focusing on the ingredient management and recipe discovery features, as these were the app's primary functions.
Ingredient Management
Recipe Discovery
Ingredient Input
After a workable prototype was done, I tested it with participants to gain more insight. My primary focus was ensuring users could easily manage their ingredients and improving the accessibility of the recipe discovery feature. Before moving on to the high-fidelity prototype, I wanted a better idea of features that users would value.
Ideation
Based on the pain points and opportunities from the user journey map, the app focuses on three core features:
Ingredient Input
Simplify the process of tracking available ingredients: input by text, receipt scan, ingredient scan
Recipe Suggestions
Offer recipes related to the user’s available ingredients
Community Platform
Enable users to share and discover recipes
Feedback
Participants highlighted that inputting ingredients felt too lengthy. Initially, ingredients were divided into separate categories, requiring users to navigate through multiple pages. This approach was overly complicated, prompting the need for a faster and more streamlined input method.
Additionally, participants suggested adding filters to the "Available Recipes" feature to refine search results. They also expressed interest in having a search page to explore recipes, regardless of the ingredients they already had.
To address this feedback, I refined the prototype by introducing new features and finishing up the overall design.
Final Design
To reflect the concept of a clean, modern fridge, I chose a minimalistic white background with grey accents. To balance this monotone theme, I chose a variety of vibrant colors to represent ingredients, making the interface more engaging and visually intuitive while enhancing the categorization and recognition of items.
I chose a distinct font for the ingredients to help users to quickly and easily identify searchable and buyable items. This contrast enhances clarity and improves the overall browsing experience.
Below are the final prototype screens, showcasing the ingredient management page, input methods, recipe-related pages, ingredient ordering function, and social platform.
