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Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

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Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#21

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

I think it looks fantastic but I'm not sure it's not a bit style over substance.

What you really need is the critical path mapped out rather than multiple tasks in parallel. People generally cook doing one thing at a time - prep this, chop this, add to pan, now chop this so on and so forth.

For a nervous cook I can see this being slightly confusing, or at least a non-optimal presentation of the information. For an experienced cook it's just noise.

I think you're onto something laying things out visually, I'm just not sure that this is the way it will work best.

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#22

Post by king_jester »

rossj wrote: post #2

For those of us that end up making notes whilst trying to work out the timings for meals - this is genius and will save me lots of time. If I still had an iPhone I'd be all over this, but... 22 recipes doesn't seem like a lot - a way for users to submit their own recipes (webapp?) for use with the app would be fantastic.

A feature to add/edit your own recipes in the software would make this killer. Most recipes I cook come from books, so this app has limited use to me without the ability to bring the things I like to make into it.

Also, I had to borrow someone's iPhone to check this out. Having a demo video on the site might help to get an idea of how it works for those that don't have access to an iPhone.

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#24

Post by aerique »

tomjen3 wrote: post #6

Nice idea, but I would be concerned about using my iPhone in the kitchen - how do I avoid it getting greasy.

Use your pinky to interact with the phone. (Seriously, I keep my iPhone in the kitchen when cooking and my pinky generally doesn't get greasy.)

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#25

Post by swalberg »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #21

I think it looks fantastic but I'm not sure it's not a bit style over substance. What you really need is the critical path mapped out rather than multiple tasks in parallel. People generally cook doing one thing at a time - prep this, chop this, add to pan, now chop this so on and so forth. For a nervous cook I can see this being slightly confusing, or at least a non-optimal presentation of the information. For an ex…

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this app doesn't target experienced cooks. I classify myself as one of those and would agree, a lot of this is (beautiful) noise. Some recipes won't translate well either.

But for people who are not at all adventurous in the kitchen, I think this is a great way to get them into cooking more than just hamburgers and frozen pizza.

Consider a recipe like chicken cacciatore. It's easy to make, but involves several parts. Experienced cooks recognize the patterns; prepare sauce while you get the chicken started, then braise. But look at the recipes out there and it's a mess. A flow diagram is a great way to getting someone to say "this is something I can do".

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#26

Post by jerguismi »

wallflower wrote: post #19

Love your graphic style. Very cute, reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons. Warm, fuzzy feeling. However, the icon is a little too cluttered and does not represent your app well in a first-impression sense. How are you representing the critical path? Some minor issues. 1) Since the Food Gantt chart is displayed landscape, not intuitive that you have to swipe left to go back to the main recipe list. 2) If you are scr…

Thanks for the suggestions!

We haven't though much about how to evolve this thing further, gotta think it through before i start implementing things.

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#27

Post by darreld »

roel_v wrote: post #20

Awesome, I've been wanting someone to make this for years, and I even drew up some specs to make this myself. It's in principle quite similar to http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ . But the make or break deal on this is going to be the online recipe collection / organizing application, so that you can plan meals on the website, upload the shopping list to a shopping app (or make it so that another app can download i…

I second the Android request. It seems this is an app that would fit my way of thinking well and would ease some pain in cooking.

I'd love to have it and would gladly pay for it and a dynamic recipe collection.

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#28

Post by jerguismi »

roel_v wrote: post #20

Awesome, I've been wanting someone to make this for years, and I even drew up some specs to make this myself. It's in principle quite similar to http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ . But the make or break deal on this is going to be the online recipe collection / organizing application, so that you can plan meals on the website, upload the shopping list to a shopping app (or make it so that another app can download i…

Yeah, you can't add more recipes as a user. At the current state it's just a minimum viable product, but I guess we will be developing the app furiously further.

Android version will be coming, but one of the difficulties is that I won't be able to sell android applications from Finland.

Re: Rate my iPhone app: cooking recipes as Gantt charts. Tell me what you think.

#30

Post by aw3c2 »

Elite wrote: post #9
tomjen3 wrote: post #6

Nice idea, but I would be concerned about using my iPhone in the kitchen - how do I avoid it getting greasy.

This is a pretty big flaw. I would highly recommend the developer add a simple voice recognition functionality. Even something as simple as "next" & "back" which scrolls the screen would improve the usefulness of this app.

And automatic scrolling.
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