The UX of Conversation: Research on Cooking
- Irene (Shiyin Zheng)
- Oct 20, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 3, 2019
The UX of Conversation
Team
Yixuan Wang
Beibei Li
Deepika Grover
Irene(me)
We focused on research methods in the first week. We divided ourselves into two groups. Deepika and I mainly focused on the AEIOU research method in the first week, and our topic was about "cooking".
It took us more than one day to finally decide the topic together on "cooking", which came from the idea of smart kitchen. Then we did the research separately.
"AEIOU" Method
Speaking of the "AEIOU" method, neither of us had heard of this method before but luckily, one of Deepika's friend had once tried this method in her work. Her friend did that by living in a local family, observing and taking notes for like a whole week. I also read materials concerned with this method. From my point of view, it was more like a basic observation, but the method told you what to observe and how.
Speaking of cooking, we came up with kitchen, and, three different kinds of kitchens, home kitchen, restaurant kitchen and open kitchen. Unwilling to constrain ourselves, we did all three of them. We used realtime board tool to write down the categories and the contents of observation. We designed some questions as well, using them on classmates, friends and relatives. I did one interview on my roommate and more on my friends.
Shared kitchen in my place for the home kitchen.
For the restaurant kitchen part, I advised we could do some real research in a nearby restaurant. It was the most challenging part because we got rejections from most of the restaurants. I took the time-lapse video and all other pictures, and we added the background sound afterwards.
For the open kitchen part, we went to the Mercato Metropolitano for observation.
To show our research findings, I advised that we could make three physical kitchen models by making vertical background pictures. I collaged the background pictures and we sticked them on big papers, shaping a kitchen-like physical environment.
Through the observations, we found that the procedures of cooking changed as the goal of the cooks differed.
Interesting things we found from the home kitchen cooks:
Time Management
Evenings when the users reach late, cooking a new meal is difficult.
Recipes are sometimes chosen depending on the time available or the day of the week.
Taking Inventory
Some people choose to try new recipes when there is an occasion.
Check to see what ingredients are needed and plan for it.
Check to see what can be made with the ingredients available at home.
Decision Making
Check online for recipes: YouTube, google, chefs.
Ask family or friends for a recipe that they really liked of theirs.
Consult their notes or rely on memory to make something.
Mood is often given priority for the meal plan.
Post Cooking
Some people like to post pictures of their food when they try a recipe for the first time or for an occasion.
Opportunities we found:
The machine can help cook for moods - happy, depressed, etc.
The machine can learn the food choices and suggest recipes.
The machine can help determine the portion sizes in a restaurant by finding a trend of food sales.
The machine can suggest the kind of food that can be prepared for a special occasion.
The machine can help in planning the diet of different individuals and help keep track if the people are following it.
Storyboards and Tests
We did some tests among our classmates using 10 storyboards.
Reflections
Looking back on what we have done on first week, I felt that we were too broad on the research part. We did not allocate the time well and wasted too much time on deciding the topic. We could, however, decide on "cooking", and home kitchen cooking specifically, and carry out further research inside home kitchen only. We could find out more by narrowing down our topic first.
Also, we separated too much on the first week. We two, Deepika and I focused mainly on AEIOU research method and we paid little attention on "speed dating" method. That is partly because that we knew little about "speed dating" at first and we did not realise that these two methods had a sequence themselves. For one, we missed an opportunity to learn a new method. For another, we found different design opportunities and this became a problem continuing to the second week.
Speaking of the result of our research, I learned both from the tutorial and the outcome. We used videos, sounds, physical models, picture and words to fully describe what we have observed instead of simply using one medium. The sound was especially significant, contributing to a "thick description". The research itself was like a splitting process but the outcome should be a combination and thick to audience. Being thick is because results all have their various reasons, and it is normally not a one-line explanation to everything. This also applies in design.
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