BakeSmart
A Platform that makes Baking Easy-Peesy
Team
Problem and Design Overview
Baking, while therapeutic for many, can also be a source of frustration and anxiety due to its demanding requirements of precision and the need for proper tools. This dichotomy highlights the critical role of community support in the baking journey. Recognizing this need, there arises a constant demand for a flexible learning platform tailored to bakers of all skill levels, aimed at fostering personalized skill development in the art of baking.
Enter BakeSmart - a comprehensive solution in the form of an app – designed to address the challenges faced by the baking community. Through extensive research and interviews, our team identified a significant gap: the absence of a unified platform that seamlessly integrates personal skill development and community building. BakeSmart fills this void by providing bakers with a space to chart their journey towards success while fostering connections with peers. By offering a wide range of functionalities, BakeSmart encourages individuals to embark on their baking journey or nurture novice bakers, ensuring that the passion for baking thrives under the guidance of professionals.
BakeSmart is a one stop app that makes improving your baking skills and connecting with experts much smoother.
Design Research Process and Key Insights
The overall goal of our design research is better understanding the baking processes among bakers, focusing on how our project can help bridge the gap between them, ultimately demystifying the complexities of baking. Our research method involves conducting interviews with bakers of different skill levels, and baking observations with novice bakers. Thus, our participants include:
- Beth, a professional baker with 10+ years of experience.
- Baljeet, Bailey, and Bjorn, novice bakers with 2-3 years of experience.
- Brent, a non-baker with no experience.
Researching among the variety of bakers allows us to compare the likeness and difference of the baking process between bakers. In addition, the interviews let us examine the unique perspectives and consider the diverse needs and expectations of our intended users. By directly observing the novice bakers, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of their behaviors and thought process in the act of baking. Through our design research, we have found the overarching themes to be centered around the need for a structured approach to baking for novices, inspired by the methodologies of professional bakers to bridge the gap between novices and professionals. Novices would benefit from a community to discuss outcomes and user-friendly ways to record their baking sessions, which could accelerate their learning curve. We found three key insights that could provide novice bakers the proper structure to aid their journey to baking expertise.
The Methodical Approach
Echoing the discipline of professional bakers, there is an urgent need for novices to adopt, or have access to a platform that offers, a more methodical approach to their baking endeavors. It includes having step by step guidance, the small details that professionals follow but somehow overlooked by novices, and a gamified approach to make the process enjoyable. The interviewees expressed a significant need of building something that would keep them encouraged to continue in the long run. To ensure this, we initiated an approach where user can compare their every progress and can compare it with a professional one.
Initial design idea: A methodical approach where user gets to record themselves, compare their videos with a professional one, and based on their self ratings, they get to go through a progression tree.
User-Friendly Documentation
The path to perfection is paved with the notes of past experiments. Facilitating a user-friendly way to document (and easily review) their baking process will empower novices to find their way to success. We decided to have more usability & accessibility for people from all across the world and non tech savvy backgrounds through incorporating more common used icons instead of just relying on a lot of writings. And for recipes having a voice over option to help the users in various ways.
Initial design idea: User friendly documentation on the interface with more usage of commonly used icons of videos, mood board, and notes.
Initial design idea: User friendly documentation on the interface with more usage of commonly used icons of voice over, language, and help.
The Power of Community
Novices are in dire need of a baking community where they can share, learn, and grow – a digital 'sourdough starter', if you will. Within this community, novices can seek advice from professionals, while professionals could gain fresh new perspectives from novices, such as learning a new recipe from a different culture, thus elevating the baking experience for all through reciprocal exchange.
Iterative Design Process and Key Insights
From our design research process, we narrowed our design focus down to two key tasks that our design aims to accomplish: Choosing a Recipe from baking skills or a baking quest, and Baking and Refining a Recipe. To start our iterative design process, we created a paper prototype that went through heuristic inspection and usability testing. From these tests, we found that our participants thought positively of the methodical approach, the availability of community, and the ease of documentation presented in our design. However, from these three insights found from our design research, our participants were left wanting clarity from some of them or a greater emphasis on them from others. The feedback received from our participants lead us to three key insights we improved on: Linear Baking Quest, Accessibility towards Community Engagement, and Simple Recipe Editing Process.
Linear Baking Quest
Prior to the development of the linear baking quest, our design had a non-linear web design for our baking quest. During the heuristic test, our participant found that the web design may be “too confusing” and had potential visibility problems, violating the multiple heuristics but notably, 8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design. In our revised paper prototype and later our digital design, we switched to a linear quest approach commonly seen in other mobile educational applications, improving the usability of the design.
We have gradually improved from confusing tree progression to linear progression that locks the previous progress levels as the user finishes it.
Accessibility towards Community Engagement
Prior to implementing greater accessibility to our community page, our design only had a few places that could access the community tab. During a usability test, our participant found that the community tab seemed like an “essential component” of our design and wanted easier access to the page with direct interaction on a certain recipe. For this reason, we included obvious accessibility to our community engagement page that would link to a discussion board on the recipe the baker just made.
Our community page before usability testing (on paper) and after testing (digital version).
A More Complete Recipe Editing Process
Prior to implementing a simple recipe editing process, our design simply let bakers give a rating to a recipe that could lead to editing. During our heuristic evaluation and usability tests, our participants did not find the editing buttons during the feedback process and gave feedback that they were unsure whether the feedback was for themselves or the recipe. This implies that the intention of these pages could be unclear to potential bakers. We revamped the feedback process to include both feedback for the recipe and a personal rating with the ability to comment for both and clear buttons for the editing in our digital design.
Final paper prototype that shows how users can get help from community experts and refine their recipe!
Resulting Design
The latest iteration of our digital interface reveals a user-centric design that streamlines the culinary journey, featuring a linear baking quest path to enhance navigation and engagement. The revamped interface includes a nuanced star rating system for recipe complexity, allowing users to intuitively select recipes that match their skill level, as showcased in the visuals. The user experience is elevated through a simplified feedback process, enabling bakers to provide and view responses with ease, as illustrated in the accompanying images.
Task 1: Choosing to Work on a Baking Skill or Baking Quest
1A: Choosing a Recipe from a Baking Skill:
The user journey begins with selecting "Work A Skill" on the first screen [shown in the very top picture], leading to a scrollable list of baking skills with a search function. Users can choose multiple skills, and upon confirmation with a green checkmark, they're directed to a list of matching recipes, sorted by popularity. These recipes can be further refined by difficulty using star ratings. Each recipe offers options to view a video tutorial or user-submitted photos. Selecting a recipe takes the user to a detailed step-by-step guide, with an option to view the recipe overview at any time. Progression through the recipe steps is managed by clicking "finish" after each step.
Task 1A: Different options of steps in Baking Skill to choose from for users and led to a recipe of various difficulties.
1B: Choosing a Recipe from a Baking Quest:
Selecting "Baking Quest" offers users options to 'Continue Quest', 'Start New Quest', or 'See Quest History'. Choosing to continue, they're shown a scrollable list with their goal recipe at the top and subsequent recipes listed in recommended order. Selecting a recipe reveals a progress map highlighting the goal and any prerequisites. A further click provides recipe details similar to Task 1A, leading directly into the first step of the recipe.
Task 1B: Digital mockup of what happens when a user chooses a recipe from baking quest.
Task 2: Baking and Refining a Recipe
2A: Baking a Recipe: As the user starts one of the recipes of their choice, they are guided through each step and only proceed to the next one after completing the previous one. For example, if the first step is measuring, the pop up button will remain on until the user clicks on the button – and gets proceeded to the next step. The user would also have the option to go to one of the previous steps by hitting the back arrow button in the upper-left corner. Each of the steps would have it’s own integral functionality like having smart tools integrated with the measure step and also there will be a timer pop up when something is baking. Once the user has finished all the steps, they get to the DONE! Page and has the option to connect to a community and give feedback.
Task 2A: User starts baking and they have different assistant tools for perfect measurement, temperature etc.
2B: Refining a Recipe: When a user clicks on the Ingredient or Step button, it takes them to a separate screen that shows the specific steps or ingredients needed for the recipe. The step button allows the user a specific step they wish to edit, and lets them to document the changes and leave a reasoning as to why they wish to change the recipe step in the form of notes. The Ingredient button lets them edit the ingredients list, document changes and leave constructive feedback. Once a user finishes editing the ingredients, it will take them back to the Step or Ingredient tab, where it now shows the modified step or ingredients list, as well as a note tab that shows the user feedback.
Task 2B: Users get to refine a step in their recipe or ingredient according to their own suggestions!
Task 2B: Users get to connect with community and refine the recipes according to the suggestions!
In the refined feedback section, bakers can now gauge their performance alongside the recipe's effectiveness, supported by a dual-rating system captured in the screenshots. This allows for targeted enhancements and fosters a community-centric approach to culinary mastery. The inclusion of a digital scale interface, as depicted, integrates technology with traditional baking, offering precision and efficiency. Altogether, these digital advancements form a comprehensive baking assistant, enriching the connection between the baker and the broader cooking community.