Kitchen Consultant, an AI-Powered Meal Planning App
Overview
Kitchen Consultant is a hypothetical AI-powered app designed to revolutionize meal planning and cooking. This portfolio project showcases my journey of leveraging AI tools to enhance the product design process.
Project Duration: 6 Hours
My Process
Research & Discovery
To begin the project, I identified key user needs through a combination of personal experiences and online research. This helped me create a comprehensive list of user needs that the app might address:
User Needs
I want to come up with a meal for tonight that uses what i have on hand
I want to cook several dishes at the same time & coordinate effectively
I want to create a balanced meal plan for the week
I want to easily generate grocery lists
I want to learn fundamental cooking skills
I want my recipe suggestions to be tailored to my dietary preferences, budget, and household size
I want to cook one-of group meal that suits all guest’s dietary preferences
I want assistance during the cooking process coordinating and executing recipes without needing to look at a screen
Feature Ideation
With user needs in mind, I engaged with ChatGPT to brainstorm feature ideas. After refining suggestions, I established a feature list and again used ChatGPT to craft hypothetical app store content to showcase the app’s features.
UX Design
The UX design phase involved mapping user flows with ChatGPT's assistance. I edited the generated flows to suit the app's purpose and structure.
User Flows
Account Creation:
Gather user preferences, experience, equipment, and family details.
Customized meal planning based on user input.
Meal Planning:
Tailored questions for meal type, participants, ingredient usage, and recipe selection.
AI-generated meal plan with modification options.
Learning & Notifications:
Push notifications for cooking lessons and tips.
Educational insights related to upcoming recipes.
Cooking Assistant:
Chatbot-guided cooking process with voice commands.
Step-by-step instructions and timer alerts.
Feedback & Personalization:
Gather user feedback and preferences for future recommendations.
Next, I curated some reference materials for UX/UI flows and design patterns related to chatbots, meal planning, and cooking.
UX References
My next step was to create some low fidelity wireframes for the key features. See some screenshots below, or step through the Figma prototype.
UI Design
Next up I set out to create high-resolution mockups of 1-2 screens. At this point I only had about 1 hour left in the time I allotted for myself so there wasn’t a lot of time for exploration.
I used Midjourney to generate some ideas using the prompt “mobile kitchen app, ux/ui, dribbble, figma, modern, clean" and got the following results. A long way to go before these are very useful, but I found the compositions useful for inspiration.
I wanted the app’s UI design to make its users feel empowered; now that AI can save them time, they are free to focus on the art of cooking, learn new skills, and level up as a chef.
I opted for a dark mode design with orange and red accent elements because reds and oranges are often used in restaurants to stimulate appetite. I also used Midjourney to generate beautiful and consistent imagery for the recipe cover images.
Final Composition
Takeaways
AI enhances design processes by shifting the focus from tasks to prompt creation and refinement.
Conversational interface flows differ significantly from traditional interfaces.
AI-generated images inspire aesthetics but aren't decisive for UX/UI patterns.