FoodAi
Immersive & Accessible Cooking Experience
Project Overview
FoodAi appliances and systems incorporate smart kitchen countertops with step-by-step cooking tutorials to assist people with intellectual disabilities in learning to cook. Users can get real-time feedback and information while cooking.
Film making & Editing
Graphic: Branding, Final render
Business Pitch, Team management
UX Design: Wireframe, Prototype, Coding
Conduct Design Research: Focus group
Team
My Responsibility
Anni Cheng: Industrial Prototype, Marketing research
Shawn Cotter: User Research, Business Pitch
Wanting Li: Industrial Prototype, Business Pitch, User Research
Immersive & Interactive
Accessibility
Safety
Value💗
Problem
How might we support people with intellectual disabilities to learn to cook independently?
Solution
The smart kitchen counter screen works with an overhead camera to display step-by-step tutorials and monitor the motion and ingredients that give users real-time feedback and information to assist them while cooking their meals
User Research
Co-Design with expert
We worked alongside one of our teammates, Shawn who has down's syndrome, and his family to get his insights on the learning process of cooking with new recipes.
Focus Group
We met with inclusive SU students with intellectual disabilities in Central NY and gained insights about their cooking experiences in group discussions.
Market Research
18.3%
Smart Kitchen Appliances Market
CAGR Growth Rate
Research Finding
Reading recipes while cooking is overwhelming and frustrating
Playing tutorials on other media like tablets or phones moves attention away from the current task and disrupts the flow, which keeps users hard to keep track of.
Lack of immediate feedback on whether doing the step correctly gives user stress.
Design & Refine
Approach 1
Low-fi Approach: We utilized overhead projection onto the desktop and printed paper images of ingredients to test the tutorial video we created, which was filmed from a first-person perspective.
Usability Study Feedback
Video can be disturbing because it doesn’t match with reality setting.
Approach 2
We then designed digital interfaces with different colors, images, audio, and text instructions to ease the cognitive workload and keep the design accessible and clean.
Usability Study Feedback
Having real-time feedback makes users more certain during cooking.
Accessibility Concerns
Assist people with vision impairment, Improve visibility
High contrast of colors
Subtitle
Assist people with hearing lost
Audio Narrative
Improve readability
Moving Forward
We have been actively developing the system and trying to bring more engineering standpoints.
Reflection
I learned not to make assumptions fast but instead to hear and see users' pain points. Also, I learn more by working and co-design with the expert, which will eliminate a lot of bias.
One thing I could do to improve is to learn more from an engineering perspective and bring functionality to the design.