Apicius is a video based cooking app enabling family to share recipe tutorial clips and stories with friends, the world or just among themselves. Named after one of the world's oldest cookbooks, the recipe videos, known as "Pieces," can be made with the built-in recording and editing tools, or uploaded from videos produced on the computer.
Secondary research was conducted using competitive analysis of existing recipe and short video apps on the market. Through our research we found the target demographic for our app as well as various successful features to to include.
One of the more recent cooking apps. In addition to TikTok, Whisk partners with Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart to assist users with grocery shopping.
According to SimilarWeb demographics, Whisk is primarily used by women, and in the age ranges of 25-34 years old.
With many recipe apps, a few inconveniences may exist like metric conversions and dimming of the screen after a delay. Paprika minimizes these inconveniences, which is why many users enjoy cooking their meals. It also lets users interact with its interface by crossing off tasks or items along the way.
This recipe platform offers access to over 2 million recipes on a variety of web-based devices. In addition to allowing users to filter recipes by food allergies and preferences, it also learns user preferences. Therefore, the longer you use, the better it becomes at recommending your preferred meals to cook.
While not a dedicated cooking app, Snapchat repeatedly appeared in my initial interviews.
Content creators uploaded episodic cooking content in short demonstration videos. Despite the app's decline in relevancy, multiple interviewees we're vocally fond of the quick, informal cooking videos.
The second half of my initial research was comprised of a few informal interviews with young adults in our target demographic. Participants were asked about their experiences with recipe platforms as well as cooking content on video apps, like TikTok and Snapchat. The following sentiments are what stood out to me the most throughout the interviews:
Informed by the initial research and interviews, our design requires both the larger functionality of video social media along with private, family-oriented features. We incorporated a structure of two social circles to allow for both of these needs to bet met harmoniously. This allows for content to be shared between a variety of familiarity levels and allowing for different uses of the app.
This flow sketched out the interactivity desired by our younger userbase, ending with messaging and video comments. This was the first implementation of the design's "Palette" system, an algorithm similar to the content curation used by popular social media apps, but based off of an emoji feedback vote the user can interact with.
Another Minimum Value Product flow. This sketch illustrated a few redundancies in the ways users could be notified of content from family.
Informed by the initial research and interviews, our design requires both the larger functionality of video social media along with private, family-oriented features. We incorporated a structure of two social circles to allow for both of these needs to bet met harmoniously. This allows for content to be shared between a variety of familiarity levels and allowing for different uses of the app.
These are the main screens from the initial wireframe sketches, starting out with a design convention similar popular video apps, with scrolling rows and grids of suggested content.
These are the main screens from the initial wireframe sketches, starting out with a design convention similar popular video apps, with scrolling rows and grids of suggested content.
The goal was to create an initial logo combining the crested "a" and the pottery imagery. The "a" was worked into a pear shape and finally the teardrop initials "a.p." with a disk underneath suggesting a three dimensional vase or spouted container.
This was used to derive the font, the icons, the color family, and even the vector design style of the final Hi-Resolution wireframe.
I chose a modern, sans-serif typeface that approximated the rounded off stroke and weight of the linework in the logo. I decided upon "Dongle Light" for most of the features, as its thin lines suggest the minimalism and cleanliness one would want in a cooking environment.
For colors, a Peach Orange and a Slate Blue were chosen to evoke a motif of water and dough or salmon.
The visual motif of a weighted, rounded stroke in both the typeface and the negative space of the main logo dictated that we scratch build a custom set of vector icons with a rounded stencil design.
Informed by the initial research and interviews, our design requires both the larger functionality of video social media along with private, family-oriented features. We incorporated a structure of two social circles to allow for both of these needs to bet met harmoniously. This allows for content to be shared between a variety of familiarity levels and allowing for different uses of the app.
The Home and Social pages are the two main starting points of the design. The app logo that functions as a Home screen return on most sites and apps was given a toggle feature, to jump between the two main paths of the design flow, with corresponding color change in the visuals.
The Viewing Screen and its feedback overlays. It's main distinguishing features include a timer that the creator of the video "Piece" can implement for the viewer to pause and resume the video along with cooking instructions. Includes a "palette" feedback system suggesting videos for the user based on what flavors they appreciate.
The Recording Screen and overlays for creating "Pieces," the recipe content that populates the app. This element was designed to be self contained, to allow for users to quickly make a recipe "Piece" using just the app itself. Includes a simple audio adjusting timeline for sound level or accompanying music clips.
