For our in-depth interview, we created the following questions while the goal was to become aware of the meal ideation process

1- How do you plan your meals?
2- When do you plan your meals?
3- What do you think about fast food?

4- Do you cook regularly?
Yes => Where are your recipes coming from?
No => Name the reasons
5- What do you think about a meal planner?
We are developing an app which is recommending you recipes for food that you do not know how to use. It is new because your only input are the ingredients that you want to use for it; and allergies.
6- On a scale from 0 to 10, how willing are you to download an app which helps you with the cooking?
7- If you had such a mobile application, would you use it for your daily eating habits or occasionally?
8- Which ingredients generally remains when you must go for groceries again?
9- What colour intuitively represents food in your opinion?
10- What form of recipe is appealing to you the most?
A- Text
B- Pictures
C- Video
11- If you think about your social circle, to how many acquaintances would you recommend such an app?
12- How would you like such an application to be called?

In our project, it’s best to analyze existing software

1.Document your method and the type of data you are gathering.

During our research, we become inspired by a good working project that we discovered. Our analysis is done with the following steps: 1. Try out the use case written in the previous blog post in the app 2. Protocol during the process all thoughts and become aware of other (potentially for us interesting) use cases 3. Describe the other use cases.

2.Store your collected data.

Supercook was created by Assaf Rozenblatt an it`s an responsive website, Android and iOS App.

„Supercook wants to make life easier for everyone who cooks at home! Our mission is to enable smarter, quicker decisions about what recipes to make and what ingredients to use using advanced technology and all the recipe content on the web. Based in New York, Supercook has a distinct focus on solving the practical problems of modern home cooks: how to waste less food, how to use up perishable or seasonal ingredients and how to keep track of everything in the kitchen“ supercook.com can be easily found with a search engine, just by typing in the word supercook. You will find it on the the top. Similar in the Appstores.

You can see a tutorial screen with the information „Speak to add ingredients Adding ingredients is easy Open your fridge, tap the mic icon, say what you have“ and also „Every ingredient you add unlocks more recipes“, „vegan lasagna without tomato“ and „Search over 1 million recipes“. You can click on „Skip“ or „Get Started“ while both buttons bring you to the same start screen.

On this screen, you can see pretty clearly that it`s time to add ingredients here. You have 3 possibilities to do that. At the top of the screen, you can write in a search bar, after writing the first character you will see the available ingredients. The second option is in the middle of the site and it is a list of ingredients (sorted in meat, vegetables etc.) while each is clickable because they are buttons. The third one is to use natural language processing. At the centre of the screen is always a microphone, which is also a button. Additional to the important button „See Recipes“ which we will click now, we can see other buttons too which will be explained at the end of this analysis.

The relevant/ingredient-dependent recipes are „hidden“ behind one more button. Following it you will see the wished list of recipes for the ingredients chosen, while the same as before each is at the same time a button. Next to the recipes which can be done with the selected ingredients, we can see underneath some others which require 1 more ingredient. Next to this list, you can see filter like „video only“ or „meal type“ and you can also select more ingredients. With a click on a recipe, it`s clear that the categorization is done with tags because we can see here the tags. You can also see here a rating, the cooking time needed, the necessary amount or weight of the ingredients and nutrition facts. With another click, we will be forwarded to one of a few websites because Supercook does not host the full recipes. You can see here links to similar recipes under „You might also like“ too. If you step back to where we found the „hidden“ button we can also see the more ingredients selection and the filter. Additional: Some recipes are shown in a big horizontal slider with the headline „Featured Recipes“ or in many (>20) smaller slider with categories like „low carbs“, „gluten free“ or „cookies“; always with a picture.

Besides the „See Recipes“ button you can see a menu with the name „My Pantry“ where you can deselect your ingredients, a shoppting list which allows to save ingredients in a seperate list and an acctount mode. „If you sign up for an account, your ingredients, and dietary restrictions, will be saved on Supercooks servers. This means you can sign into your account from any device and everything will be synced up. Having an account also allows you to “favorite” recipes you like so you can easily find them later.“

Who did what?

Christian was writing and Mouadh was leading during the gathering

What did we learn?

To come closer to our goal this week was very helpful because we discovered a working product and it`s flow producing. The interview made us aware of the community of people who want to count calories and we will focus on that niche

What went well?

If we can continue like this week it`s very likely that our product will be great.

What do we want to improve?

All writing was good this week but we had problems with the data formating.

Define the goals of your data gathering session

Wir wollen unsere Funktionen durch die Meinungen der NutzerInnen in der Priorität einordnen können. Es geht uns also vorallem darum, einschätzen zu können, welche Features am Wichtigsten oder am Hilfreichsten sind. Was sind die Must- und was sind die Nice to Haves.
Außerdem wollen wir unsere NutzerInnen – mit den Funktionen im Hinterkopf – kennenlernen. Dabei kommen natürlich Fragen auf, was für Haustiere sie besitzen, ob diese Einschränkungen haben (für zusätzliche Funktionen zur Rücksichtnahme, vielleicht einer Abstufung an Schwierigkeitsgraden der Gassirouten) und auch allgemeine Fragen, die die Handhabung der App betreffen. Wie und wann würden die NutzerInnen sie benutzen?

Based on your goal, derive the kind of people you want to gather data from

Unsere Teilnehmer sind vorallem Hundebesitzer für das Interview und Haustierbesitzer für die Umfrage.
Dabei interviewen wir mit den längeren Interviews Hannas Schwester, Lara und Ailis‘ Kollegin.

Decide on your data gathering method

Which methods are you using and why?

• Wir werden größere Interviews mit Einzelpersonen durchführen. Desweiteren erstellen wir eine Umfrage mit einem Onlineformular. Ein Interview ist gut, um detaillierte Antworten zu bekommen, den Problemspace und die Fokusgruppe kennenzulernen & zu analysieren. Wir werden damit herausfinden, worauf die UserGruppe wert legt, lernen die Umgebung der user Gruppe kennen, und finden heraus, wie sie sich die App-Nutzung vorstellen und was sie sich von der App wünschen würden?
• Mit einer Umfrage erreichen wir eine grobe Einschätzung der Prioritäten von Features und Bedürfnissen der Nutzer. Wichtige Gründe für eine solche Umfrage ist die schnellere/einfachere Datensammlung und Auswertung und ein gute Vergleichbarkeit.

What type of interview?

Wir planen ein semi-strukturiertes Interview zu machen, welches mehr strukturiert ist als unstrukturiert. Wir arbeiten mit vielen geschlossenen Fragen , haben aber für jeden Themen bzw. Feature Bereich mindestens eine offene Frage.

What kind of data do you want to gather?

Mit dem Interview wollen wir vor allem qualitative Daten sammeln. Mit der Umfrage wollen wir hauptsächlich quantitative Daten sammeln, aber auch qualitative.

Decide how you handle the topics pilot study & data recording.

Eine Pilotstudie werden wir aus zeitlichen Gründen nur für die Umfrage durchführen. Hierfür nehmen wir Personen aus dem Bekanntenkreis, nicht aus der Fokus-userGruppe. Dabei liegt der Fokus auf der Formulierung der Fragen und der Verständlichkeit für den Teilnehmer.

Data Recording

• Interview: Notizen (schriftlich) – Das ist schöner für den Befragten und einfacher in der Auswertung.
• Umfrage: Tabellen, Schriftliches, … was das Tool hergibt, das wir benutzen. Je nach Fragetyp wird das unterschiedlich ausführlich sein.

Who is your user group?

Our stakeholders are hobby cooks at all levels and with different amount of spare time for preparing their meals. Our unique selling point is the special way how we approach the search of the recipe because the user will enter the ingredients and not the meal`s name.

What is the exact problem?

Take-away or food delivery is convenient, but it’s often too much plastic. To protect the environment we want to make it easier to find out which meal you can do with leftovers. From our own experience, we know: Even if we have ingredients, sometimes we decide not to cook because we are just too hungry and want to save time.

Where is your user group interacting with your software?

Because our goal is to encourage humans to finish everything at home before their food becomes bad, the people will use it at home, on the way home or before shopping, which is in most cases on the way home too.

When is the user group interacting with your software?

People are motivated the most to use leftovers when they are a few moments before mealtime like breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Why do your users need this software?

Inspiration helps with creativity and creativity helps to make delicious and novel meals.

How do you want to solve the problem?

The existing recipe websites will provide a valuable source of data. Our interview partner are frequent delivery user and we will make it with react native or flutter.

Use-case

a-Cook opens the application after he/she looked up his groceries at home
b-Cook selects the ingredients with the quantity where he/she can select single ingredients or a selection. For some items, the cook can select the weight(like cabbage) for others he/she needs to choose the amount (like eggs).
c-App start searching for dishes, possible to make with the ingredients.
d-Given the ingredients, the application will return a list of dish suggestions

Nice-to-have

-The function add new recipe. Since in the world of social media the mindset and practice of sharing is very popular we expect that a lot of people person will create content (the recipes) the same way they consume it… and the food.
-Machine learning to identify food in pictures. The user just needs to take a photo of the inside of his fridge. We can use this solution or that one.
-Shopping recommendations according to your previous dishes.

Marketing

Start a campaign where people post photos of the inside of their fridge #youarewhatyoueat #hellofridge

Who did what?

We did the brainstorm together but Mouadh was more involved in the research while Christian more involved in the writing. We lost Julian on the way.

What did we learn?

We identified some interesting solutions already and also had additional ideas.

What went well?

We had a good conversation and both of us are excited to make this project alive

What do we want to improve?

In the future we want to improve our writting tool because currently it`s bold.

• Project 7
• Week 1

1. Who is your user group?
   Anyone interested in politics and news.
   
2. What is the exact problem?
   Today’s news is often inherently biased and lacks nuanced journalism. Some more, such as breitbart news, and some less, such as reuters. With the recent surge of social media, a large share of unsuspecting readers fall into a so called filter bubble, i.e., they only see news of specific political backgrounds, which they are anticipated to like. Some think, this may lead to political extremism [https://www.connectsafely.org/social-media-can-lead-to-political-extremism/], further deepening preconceived opinions and ideas. Anyone interested in politics and news.
   
3. Where is your user group interacting with your software?
   When the general public are using, e.g., social media, and want to fact check an article or get a different view on the topic the article is about.
   
4. When is the user group interacting with your software?
   The “check” might be both 5 minutes for the particular single news and also longer time, depending on how much the user wants to learn about different sources.
   
5. Why do your users need this software?
   We believe that the majority of readers in filter bubbles are simply unaware of other political views, but when notified of their biased opinions, are willing to get an overview of the entire political spectrum. Usually, people seek to find out the truth, making this software particularly interesting.
   
6. How do you want to solve the problem?
   We want to provide a web page where users can provide an url of an article which, then, gets placed onto a political compass. Other articles of the same topic will be shown on the compass too.
   
   

Reflection

On our first meeting we decided to give ourselves some time to come up with ideas and look for possible interviewee. We presented each idea and after thorough discussion agreed on the final one that we will work on during the semester. We considered all the pros and coins and general details that we need at this stage. Formulating the pitch was quite straightforward after that. As our users group is quite wide we need to definitely work on narrowing this group of interests before starting gathering the data.