Cookmark Final Master's Project
Deliverables: Proof-of-Concept Interactive Prototype, iPhone Component
Role: In-Depth Interviews, Storyboard, UI Design, PHP Implementation, Logo Design, User Testing
Cookmark is the culmination of seven months of user-centered research and design. Two classmates and I designed a web application with an iPhone component to bring efficiency and joy to the often stressful task of cooking many dishes with friends and family. Cookmark acts as a head chef to assign tasks dynamically to cooks based on their personal preferences and the dependencies within each recipe, while providing insightful information about the chemistry and background of the dishes being cooked. We presented Cookmark as our final Master's project.
We conducted 11 in-depth interviews to understand subjects' relationships with food and cooking, and distributed an online survey, coding and analyzing the responses. Our findings suggested that while people find cooking to be too timing consuming and stressful because it's difficult to time multiple dishes, cooking can be immensely rewarding because of the creative, experimental process of transforming raw ingredients into a tangible and tasty creation.
Creating storyboards helped us explore different ideas, and conducting a competitive analysis gave us an idea of what had already been done in the field. We tested our idea for Cookmark as an experience prototype (using paper) and iteratively created interactive prototypes, starting from paper and progressing into a full-fledged proof-of-concept prototype coded in PHP and Flex. Along the way we tested our prototypes on 10 users, who produced delicious meals, and asked them to fill out a survey discussing their experience with the prototype.
Cookmark was demoed at the Pervasive 2011 Conference. I am taking Cookmark further as a personal project; it is in the initial stage of development.
"Cookmark does the delegating, leaving more time for enjoying others' company and drinking wine."
"I trusted Cookmark not to leave out any steps, and it was easier to focus on the task at hand instead of stressing about the larger picture."
"Cookmark made it possible to relax between steps!"