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Figure 1. The recipe directions one participant produced
We gave our participants a short recipe for basic chocolate chip cookies and they found the
process long and laborious. Many of them complained about the length of time it took to enter in
the recipe and explicitly wished there were other options for adding recipes, such as ability to
import photos or scans of a recipe and have the site use natural language processing to add it.
Others wanted to be able to add photos of their dishes and add specific notes for each ingredient.
Despite these problems, our participants liked how the site displayed their recipe input. One
commented that it looked like a “real recipe.” They also liked the idea of being able to keep all of
their recipes in one place.
Recommendations
We suggest that the “Add New Recipe” page should be easier to access and more prominent on
the site. The top navigation drop-down menu, for example, could list “Add Recipe” in addition to
the “Saved” option. Users wanted to reach these pages from a variety of places and by making
them more accessible through the navigation header, users will be able to take advantage of
features.
Regarding the “Add New Recipe” page, we recommend adding dynamic clues about how this
page works, especially regards to the text box where users add the recipe’s directions. For
example, add text field suggestions that inform the user how to enter their directions in.
We compiled a list of additional recommendations of varying degrees of importance that can be
found in Appendix F: Additional Recommendations.
3. “Edit Shopping List” is hard to find and needs to include more information
The “Edit Shopping List” page was well received by our participants. Many of them liked that the
system automatically made the list and sorted it by grocery aisle or section. One said “Oh, they
separate them [the ingredients] just like my mom used to.” However, participants wished they
could locate the page much easier. They expected to find shopping list option in the top navigation
bar. They also had trouble with the meaning “location” and did not appreciate being forced to
Usability Testing Report 8