ChefMate – Cook Smarter, Not Harder
Messy cooking, clean phone: a cooking assistant with step-by-step guidance and voice control, and a look at how it could work in AR.
Challenge
My phone always gets dirty while I cook, and I knew I wasn't alone with this problem. So I came up with an app that gives clear guidance while cooking and can be used with voice commands: your phone stays clean while your hands get messy.
Taking the thought further: what will cooking be like when devices other than phones are available? I made concept images showing how an app like this could move to AR headsets. Even fewer devices to clean after cooking!
Results
An app with step-by-step instructions and voice control to keep the phone clean, plus an AR function that could make cooking even easier in the future.
Competitor analysis
With the cooking app in mind, I looked at other apps with the same profile to see what has been done, what works and what needs improvement.
-
SuperCook
Strengths
- Ingredient-based search
- Shopping list
Weaknesses
- Sends you to other platforms for the recipe
- Long recipe texts
-
Kitchen Stories
Strengths
- Simple UI
- Utensil and nutrition list
- Portion change
- Pictures and videos for a step-by-step guide
Weaknesses
- Long recipe texts
- Search only by dish name or browsing
-
Chefkoch
Strengths
- Meal prep (behind a paywall)
- Nutrition list
- Portion change
- Video for a step-by-step guide
- Connected to Bing and Rewe
Weaknesses
- Long recipe texts
Pain points and feature ideas
From the positive and negative features in the competitor apps, I put together the main pain points these apps leave unsolved, and a feature to answer each one.
- Dirty hands, dirty deviceSolution: voice control.
- Long, hard-to-follow paragraphsSolution: step-by-step recipes.
- Some ingredients at home, but what to cook?Solution: an ingredient filter in search.
Additional features:
- Diet stated in the profile (vegan, vegetarian, halal etc.)
- Weekly menu planning
- Adding your own recipes
- Automatic shopping list
- Additional information about the dishes
Structure of the app
After collecting data, I made the structure of the app to see the exact flow, features and system I would use.
From the home page, the navigation bar opens up the explore page, the grocery list, my recipes and meal prep. These make searching and planning easier.
The recipe screen has three options:
- Recipe page: information about the dish.
- Add to: a grocery list, meal prep or favourites.
- Start cooking: step-by-step cooking with a timer where needed.
Wireframe sketches
The first sketches gave me an idea of the layout and elements, and let me see my ideas turn into visuals.
Sketching the cooking steps over real cooking scenes
Finished app
After the sketches and many iterations through the high-fidelity prototype, I had a clickable product in Figma focused on visual clarity.
Open the prototype (opens in a new tab)
What about the future?
I played with the idea of how things will be in the future, and came up with an AR extension that makes the whole experience even easier and cleaner.
See the AR screens (opens in a new tab)
Conclusion
It was a challenge to build something from scratch without a team, but it was fun, as I could explore Figma, its features and designs at my own pace.
The AR concept images were harder: while I see apps every day, I had never tried AR or VR. As a completely new experience it took more work, but in the end I got a nice outcome.