YouCook | Project Notes

UW | Capstone | Jan 2014 - June 2014

Description

Capstone: A group project to design an app for YouTube Cooking Shows to measure user engagement. I collaborated with Leah Kim to solve an information problem. We found an information problem in YouTube: YouTube cooking shows can't not measure if their viewers are cooking.

Deliverables (View / Download)

  1. Project Proposal
  2. Personas
  3. Use Cases
  4. Storyboards
  5. Sketches
  6. Wireframes
  1. Mobile Prototype (Axure)
  2. Desktop Prototype (Axure)
  3. User Test 1 2
  4. Refine 1 2
  5. Web Prototype
  6. Design Specification

Methods Used

  • User Research
  • Personas
  • Use Cases
  • Sketching
  • Wireframes
  • User Testing (Surveys, Interviews)
  • Prototyping
  • Design Specification

Tools Used

  • Paper / Pen / Pencil
  • Axure (Prototyping)
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • HTML, CSS
  • Javascript, JQuery
  • API Integration

Summary

Problem

Through researching YouTube Cooking shows (YTCS), we discovered that YTCS want to interact with their users and know who is using their recipes. YTCS cannot get this information through YouTube's user engagement methods, such as commenting, liking, and subscribing.

Solution

Leah and I designed a YouTube application called YouCook that give users recipe suggestions, a cookbook, a meal plan, and a grocery list. YouCook records and analyzes user data and in return provides YTCS with metrics to measure what their viewers are cooking.

Evaluation

4 out of 5 users are able to perform basic tasks on YouCook.

Benefits

YouCook bridges an information gap: user will be able to have cooking resources in one convenient location, and YTCS will have more data and analysis that will allow them to cater to their user's needs by providing user-centered content based on user’s interests.

Process

  1. 1. Writing a project proposal
  2. 2. Research YouTube Cooking Shows and YouTube viewers
  3. 3. Design/User Test/Refine YouCook Application
  4. 4. Create a Design Specification of YouCook

We took a very agile approach in step 3, where we iteratively designed YouCook, tested it, then made changes several times.

Throughout this whole process, we documented all our delivers at: http://projectomnomnom.blogspot.com/*

* Some of the links in the project blog may be broken, such as the prototypes