Sharing and preparing food together is one of the earliest ways that humans have bonded and shared stories, with an outcome of increased empathy and understanding between people. The culture and history of food are all around us, and could serve as an easy source for people to connect and relate to each other. Considering the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on in-person meal sharing orgs, my focus shifted to alternative ways for people to share their culinary knowledge and expertise.

I researched several factors in building a business case and solution that would answer my problem statement: the devastating effect of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, a booming digital sharing economy while folks stay at home more often than usual, and the popularity of food content especially as more people are cooking at home and seeking new ideas and recipes.

These were all research-based factors I worked with to conceptualize my idea- the next step was to ideate and build up a prototype to get in front of some users. Below, you can see a mind map I created to help define my problem space when I was considering in-person meal sharing solutions, as well as a few early ideation sketches of solution layouts.

I began wireframing the solution in Figma shortly after sketching out layout ideas - I needed to work quickly to build a convincing prototype to get into user testing as soon as possible. The images below illustrate a quick transition to a branded, content-filled prototype.

I started reaching out to potential users by creating a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) survey that would help me gauge their habits around food-related content, following recipes, and buying ingredients online. Out of the survey respondents, potential users were selected to test the prototype, being asked complete a few simple tasks. I created an affinity map to help gather and prioritize my next iteration phase (below, left), and started adjusting my interfaces to help meet user needs (right).

I adjusted features in my prototype to fit user needs after creating personas from the main themes that I found in my user testing. Users had a lot of input on recipe features, and how they would utilize recipe videos live and after streams were over. I noticed a divide between wanting to cook along with streamers live and just watch the streams for entertainment while saving the recipes and videos to watch later. I also noticed a divide between buying groceries online via OpenKitchen, and wanting to save the ingredients to a list to take to the grocery store in person. Building features based on user persona needs enabled me to consider multiple uses for OpenKitchen beyond just sharing recipes in a live stream format.

OpenKitchen has now become a tool for users to:
• Share recipes and the stories behind them, live
• Save recipe streams for later, with step markers linked in the video timeline - and in the written steps below the video
• Have private "kitchens" where anybody can start a live stream and share it privately
• Have bookings available for private sessions or even classes
• UI options for users who are cooking along and have messy hands
• UI options for users who want to save lists or steps to their phones

Check out a video demo of OpenKitchen below: