Target Audience

At first the target audience was geared towards millenials but we soon realized that we would be limiting the application a lot if we made it too main stream. Our end scope of audience was anyone who is old enough to cook a meal and use a phone, so roughly (13-60). This allows us to have a nice variation of recipes and difficulties, so someone who can make a mean bowl of cereal can input their recipe as well as someone who can make a well crested salmon and both users will have the same experience.

Competitive Research

When you type in food or recipe or cookbook in the app store you will be greeted by an overwhelming amount of results. Those results range from pretending to be a short order chef in a small mini game to taking you to food networks mobile app. In the end none of these applications have the users experience in mind. Each one is cluttered with 3 different navigations that come from all sides of your device, making it extremely hard to use and navigate.

Icon Research

Icon Research In my pursuit to the most friendly, and well precidented icon i came across a couple that worked and alot that didnt. After analyzing all of the icons their were a couple of key factors i noticed in the difference between a successful app, and icon vs. a non successful app and logo. Those factors are one they need to be unique forms, two there should be a max of three colors, and three they should be simple. If you look at facebook, vine, twitter, and snapchat they all of simple designs with bold color, and would be considered highly successful. With finding this out the "Budget Chef" had to be just that, clean and simple.

Original Idea

W2M or Word To Mouth was supposed to be a site that had allowed its users to go to the store, and if they came across a deal just simply take a photo of it upload what the deal is and where it was and that would be it. Users would be able to search different deals by hashtags placed on the image and then if they used the actual deal like it and give it a street cred backing. This would allow users to see if the deal was still available and if the deal was real or not. With some quick research in hand and Kevin watching his daily dose of television we quickly had found out that this app already existed and it was back to the drawing boards.

Wireframes

These low fidelity wireframes were all part of the beginning process of decifering a user friendly interface. During the research and development phase, i came across alot of clunky interfaces with tons of sliding navigations and buttons everywere, making the user the last thing on their mind.With that being said that was not the category i wanted the Budget Chef to get thrown into so with alot of app research and trying out different navigations i finally came to the conclusion that a simple bottom navigation would be best with the iconic classical top collapsable navigation as well.

Identity

Branding

The Budget Chef is a mobile application that will allow you to create and find recipes within your scope of friends, followers and within the search. It allows you to input recipes into your own cookbook as well as "clip" recipes you may come across on your feed.

Visual Output

The color palette of the Budget Chef is of neutral yellows. the yellows promote a clean environment for the food photos, some might say it compliments them. The photo button is a peach color solely for the purpose that a red button is way to harsh for the design of the Budget Chef. While we are still trying to draw your attention to post recipes we dont want to distract you from the beautiful cuisine masterpieces you may be viewing in your feed

Typefaces

The typefaces chosen for the Budget Chef have been chosen to create a neutral type presence visually, but still allow for hierarchy to be made. Familiar Pro and Arvo are both from Font Squirrel, and the body copy is just Helvetica Light.

Create Screens

The Create Screens for the budget chef were a very important part, If the create screen was too complicated or annoying to use then the app would be a failure and nobody would want to use it, because lets face it the whole point of this app is for the user to have an easy and enjoyable experience with it. With research in hand we came to the conclusion that keeping it super simple was the best, the less buttons the better the interaction.

Recipe Feed & Cookbook

Recipe Feed

In your recipe feed you will find all of your friends new recipes for you to clip to your own cookbook. In the feed It will just show you an image of the recipe and the name, if you click the dropdown button it will give a little bit more of the information of the recipe but not all of it.

Cookbook

Your cookbook houses all of the recipes you have created as well as all of the recipes you have clipped. They then are organized into chronological order based on how much the recipe costs. In your cookbook you can view the directions and ingredients and to toggle between is as simple as a tap on your device.

Kitchen Hierarchy

Climbing the Kitchen Ladder

To increase usage and buzz users will complete tasks "potentially in the kitchen" to climb the hierarchy ladder in the Budget Chef. Your goal as a user is to become Head Chef in the app, completing the tasks, and achievments in game is the only way to do so.

Profile & Achievements

Profile

Your Profile allows you to view your own data and statistics.These stats are what help you gain rank in the Budget Chef as well as completing achievements.

Achievements

The Budget Chef has a couple of achievments integrated into it to keep buzz and the audience still wanting to use it. With these small tasks for people to commit it entices them to use the app more, and keep the popularity of the Budget Chef up. With each achievemnt there is an icon, but also a points system integrated as well to create some friendly competition.

Documents

Click here to download the PDF!