SB3: RecipeBook

RecipeBook have a website and an app available on android and Apple. 

The Website

This is the home page for the website, it features a live contest 'Send Your Delicious Wraps And Rolls Recipes And Win Exclusive And Exotic Prizes.' with an image of some sort of rolls and sauces. Along the top options are contest, recipeblog, faq and login. The recipeblog opens a new tab and takes you to another website that focuses on helping people create food blogs.

The contest page shows any live, any upcoming and past contests.  The page design is quite basic and straight forward, you wouldn't have difficulty finding what you are looking for and each contest has a little description sentence over the pictures so you don't have to click to get an idea for what it is. 

When you click on one of the contests, the details and rules are listed - there isn't much information about what the prize will be, nor what should be included in the recipe/method. 

The faq page is standard and features questions and answers that users might find useful. 

Back to the main page and there are a few features/ what is trending at the moment on the website. Recipes relevant to the time - Holi and summer drinks. The recipes are uploaded by members, not many of them if any have been rated by other users and the images uploaded are very off putting - I would not try any of them. 

The image here is not very appetising at all and it is also pixelated so you can't even see it properly at that large size. The recipes are tagged with their main ingredients, what course it is, as well as the season it would be ideal for. 

The ingredients list is clear in readable text, however is taking up far more space than necessary - it could be in a table with columns. Adding the cooking time split up into the prep and actual cook is helpful for the user. 

The method or directions vary for each recipe as they are written by different people and there is no standard of how they should be split up into steps. This specific recipe has 7 steps, the recipe seems pretty basic and the style of writing isn't the best. The fact that each letter is capitalised also makes me doubt how much I should trust this person. 

The App

The app has a slightly different feel, the bar at the bottom includes: feeds, explore, upload, notifications and profile - not as much emphasis on the contests and blog if any. You can follow your interests, however doing this requires you to have an account first. The explore page is a long one, with different features such as editors choice. As you scroll there are many categories to choose from, you can also search using the bar at the top for any recipe you may want. Clicking on the lines to the left brings up this menu, contests, shopping list, explore channels and settings. I feel this is a bit all over the place as any one of those options relate to the whole app, not just the explore category in which it is shown. 

When you click on one of the options shown on the explore page, such as editors choice, you are taken to a new page that showcases the recipes from this category. The recipes have thumbnail pictures, the name, who has uploaded it along with how long it takes to make. 

When you click on one of them, it takes you to the ingredients and method, the page also includes features such as 'like' 'save' 'share' 'whatsapp' and follow. Similar to the website, they have not utilised the space given in the design, there is no need for the information to take up so much space, this just means more and more scrolling for the user. 

The ingredient list is similar to the website version, including specific measures of ingredients. Back to the main explore page, there is a 'shake n make' option in which you either tick or type and add the ingredients you have available/ on hand and the app gives you a list of results. However first to receive the results you have to shake your phone - I tried to get results another way but as you can see on the page above there is no 'search' or 'go' option - who wants to have to shake their phone for search results - not me. It also isn't even clear that you have to physically shake your phone for this, there are no instructions or prompts. 

There is also an option to snap and cook - search with image. However this didn't work at all and I can't see the point in it, if it is in your kitchen then you are going to know its name and be able to just type it in and search. The upload tab takes you to a process of uploading a recipe. First of, you have to add a recipe name, then an image and optionally a youtube video url, then you choose whether it is veggie etc, add the servings, prep and cook time. 

After adding this info, you have the options to add one ingredient at a time, you must include a number to ensure you are adding the quantity and then the directions are added as numbered steps. The app quite happily let me call the recipe 'fish', add one ingredient, one step before taking me to the preview page - not high standards for checking legitimacy. 

The above left is the recipe preview that I added, all I would have to do is tick and it would be uploaded onto this app - complete rubbish. Finally the account tab isn't accessible until you login, difficult if you have no social media as they only two options to sign up is through Google or Facebook. Why no simple email option?