The document discusses the development of a mobile app called "What's for Dinner?" that helps users easily plan and prepare meals based on the ingredients they have available. It aims to solve the problems of people not having enough time to cook or find recipes that require ingredients they don't have. The app would suggest recipes based on what's in the user's fridge/pantry and provide instructions and cooking times. It would also show where to buy ingredients cheaply and allow purchases directly from the app. The developers conducted user research through surveys to ensure the app meets people's needs and then created user profiles to better understand different types of target users.

1. What’s for Dinner?
By
Prasanna Suresh, Tommy Roberts and Mats Aalen

2. Today, many people commute into cities in order
to work. A large proportion of these people will not
have much time to cook meals in the evening, or buy
ingredients for the same. People just seem to be too
busy to be able to cook, and at the same time find it
to be impossible to make good tasting food.

3. The major issue is just lack of time; people
don’t have the energy to make anything more
complicated than a sandwich if they have to
look up recipes as well. “What’s for Dinner?”
alleviates this problem by suggesting easy to
make food based on the items in your
fridge/cupboards, and providing recipes and
times.

4. Our Key Insight Statements
There are different ways through which our customers can achieve
what our app does, but there is nothing that combines all these
features in an organised way that makes all the features extremely
accessible. Also, there are many cookbooks that people can use to
make recipes, but the problem with this is that people might not
necessarily have all of the ingredients so that it is possible for people
to make all the recipes, which is a problem that our app aims to
solve by providing recipes depending on what ingredients our target
customer has in his/her fridge. The problem that we are trying to
solve is one that some websites, such as BBC Good Food and
Tesco Real Food have tried to solve, albeit unsuccessfully. It is the
aim of our app to solve the problem of not having enough time to
cook, as well as making it easier for everyone, of different ages and
calibres, to make good tasting food.

5. Our Elevator Pitch
MPT is developing a mobile app to help people with a limited amount of
time make meals easily based on ingredients they already have, and on
time taken to make recipes. Our cookery app incorporates lots of
different functions that help to make cooking easier as a whole. It is
possible to only search recipes based on the ingredients that you have,
and also it shows you the cheapest places to buy ingredients, allowing
you to buy them directly from your phone. A calendar also helps to
organise when to make different foods, and can help to plan out the food
schedule in the future. Finally, the interactive instructions and variety of
different recipes means that this app benefits a huge range of people,
from those who have just started cooking, to those who are experts in
the field. Therefore, this app will definitely get rid of cooking’s status as a
household chore.

6. Our Research
After we had designed our app, although we had a clear idea of our
app’s functions, we still needed feedback in the form of surveys to find
out whether we had designed an app that would be popular with our
targeted audience.

7. Responses:
· Doing all the various things at just the right time, with just the right amount of ingredients. This is a
complex task that I have not been able to master.
· Making food taste good
· Frustration when some recipes do not work properly.
· Trying to find a very good recipe for cooking a certain meal, which has easy to understand instructions to
prepare. Also if there are multiple recipes available then I would like a comparison of all these recipes
suggesting which is the best one and for what reasons
· Preparation time
· Generally none, except for the reactions of others eating the food I cooked
· I don't cook
· Finding good instructions and the right ingredients.
· Time
· I can’t cook very well, all I can cook is steak and bacon and sushi.
· Recipes, gathering ingredients.
Many of the responses that we got were based around the fact that it was hard to find good
instructions, the complexity of cooking some foods and how well the food would turn out.
However, one comment that we could take into account if we were to redesign the app would
be the part about suggestion multiple recipes for a certain meal. This would mean that people
who struggled to make a certain food with a certain recipe could look to another recipe that
would suit them better.
Question #1: What would you say your
main problems with cooking are?

8. Question #2: Do you find cooking takes
up too much time and effort?
From this question, it is possible
to see that most of the
respondents found cooking to
take a lot of effort. Although
some people did say that
cooking was never a waste of
time for them, this is positive
feedback, as our app already
aims to take the effort out of
cooking tasty food. This also
shows that there is a wide
market awaiting the sort of app
that we are planning to make.

9. Question #3: Do you sometimes find that you
want to prepare food, only to find out that you
don’t have all the ingredients?
Once again, for this question, it
was possible to see that many
people felt frustration when
they realised that they did not
have all the correct ingredients.
Our app already incorporates
this, so this is more positive
feedback for our app. As this
feature being one of our USPs,
it shows that there a lot of
people who might be willing to
buy our app for use.

10. Question #4: Would you want to have an app
that would collate all of your cookbooks
together?
For this question, it is possible to see
that people would want an app that
would make it easier to organise
their cookbooks etc. This would
therefore link to the idea that many
people needed a handy tool that
would help them with their cooking.
To suit the needs of the minority
who would not want such an app,
as cookbooks have to be bought to
be used on the phone, the
cookbooks could be sold at
discounted prices e.g. 69p. This
would make it more attractive for
potential customers, as it would be
much cheaper to gain access to
cookbooks, and all the data would
be stored right in your pocket.

11. Question #5: How would you rate an app that would
help you to make good tasting food with only the
ingredients you have in your home?
This question is very much linked
to the last one, so to suit the
needs of the people who rated
in at 1 star, we could make it so
that it appeals to people to use
rather than old fashioned
cookbooks. The part of the app
that allows you to find the
cheapest place for people to
buy ingredients and the
calendar organiser could also
appeal to our potential
customers. We therefore
believe that the added features
could make our sort of app
more appealing to our

12. Question #6: How old are you?
We tried to get a wide variety of
people to answer the survey,
from working mums who would
benefit as they do a lot of
cooking, to the elderly, who
might need such an app to
make cooking much easier for
them. We also targeted 10-20
year olds, as in this category
there would be many people
who would be becoming to get
independent, so this app could
be vital for them to develop
their cooking skills.

13. The User Profiles
The insight gained from our interviews proved invaluable in making the
next step towards an app that, with multiple facets, would be able to
satisfy every person in our target audience.

14. About K.R. Sampath:
· Retired man
· Lives in Mumbai, India.
· Old man who cannot work a lot due to age limitations.
· Wants to have an easy retirement without hassles.
· Wants to make others feel happy with what he has done.
· Wants to be as organized as possible.
· Unimpressed with current cookbooks that are a pain to follow,
especially for someone of his age.
We can therefore deduce that he needs an app that organises recipes in a
better way that cookbooks do, and also has added features that make all
the different steps before starting to make a recipe as easy as possible
too. We have taken these comments on board by having a calendar and a
way to order ingredients from shops directly on the screen of the phone.
User Profile 1: The Elderly
Gentleman

15. User Profile 2: The Independent
Cook
About Philip Wright:
· Student at school.
· Lives in Chalfont St Giles.
· Thinks of himself as an independent person.
· As a new cook, wants simple recipes that taste great.
· Does not want to get confused by complicated recipes.
· Loves saving money.
From this user profile, we can see that our app is perfectly suited towards
the younger generations as well as the old. For the independent
youngsters who want to try something new for change, this app would be
great, as it would suggest simple alternative recipes that would be make
great tasting food without being too much of a challenge to prepare. Also,
with the in app feature which shows the cheapest place to buy
ingredients, this app is great for people, like Philip, who want to save
some money when buying ingredients.

16. User Profile 3: The Parent with a
Limited Knowledge of Cooking
About Prahlad Sampath:
· Works for an IT firm
· Lives in Bangalore, India
· Extremely busy, cannot waste time
· Wants to have comparisons to know which recipes are the best
· Be able to organize when he is going to make certain recipes
· Be able to impress others with the food he makes
· Wants to know the best places to buy the cheapest ingredients
· Disappointed that it is extremely hard for him to find good recipes that
work well
Like the previous user profile, our app has improved with the use of this
interviewee’s opinion, as with a simple User Interface that is easy to
navigate through, as well as the simple cooking recipes, anyone with any
knowledge of cooking should be able to use our app with ease.

17. User Profile 4: The Passionate
Cook
About S Suresh:
· Works as a Management Consultant.
· Lives in Amersham.
· Loves cooking, but is a busy man.
· Wants to make brilliant tasting food that would not waste his time.
· Wants to save a lot of money.
· Wants to enjoy cooking as well as making a tasty dish.
· Thinks that the current solutions are all right, but would prefer
something would make cooking less of a hassle but more of an
enjoyment for him.
To make cooking less of a hassle, we have incorporated an interactive
cookbook, and this means that, due to timers and interactive instructions
that flash on the screen, none of your time is wasted waiting for food to
get cooked. With a huge variety of recipes to choose from, the user of our
app would be spoilt for choice when selecting a good tasting recipe they

18. User Profile 5: The Busy Mother
About Anuradha Suresh:
· Has a job as a teaching assistant.
· Lives in Amersham.
· Has to cook every day, although she has a busy lifestyle.
· Wants to cook food as quickly as possible.
· Wants to cook food that tastes good hot as well as cold.
· Wants to be able to organise when she cooks food.
· Wants an app that will bring together lots of different cooking functions.
We have tried to solve most of her problems with our app, such as the
many features that we have incorporated, as well as the easy usability of
our app that would suit her busy daily lifestyle. The interactive instructions
and the calendar means that she does not have to waste time, but can
organise her cooking schedule seamlessly with the rest of her daily work.

19. Competitors that already exist in
the market
• Before we started to design our app, we researched alternative
solutions that it would have to compete with in the current market.
Thankfully, we had successfully managed to find a “white space” - a
place where no other apps existed. Our app, if completed, would be the
first app of its kind on different app stores.
• Albeit this very encouraging information, there are competitors that exist
generally on the web, such as BBC’s Good Food and Tesco’s Real
Food. This was slightly disconcerting information for us, but websites
like this do not offer the wide range of features, such as a comparison to
find the cheapest place to buy ingredients, as well as buying recipes
direct from your phone. BBC Good food offers a way to search recipes
depending on what ingredients you have, but this is painfully
unsophisticated and will not work as well as the same feature on our
app.
• We believe that there are different solutions that offer the same features
as our app, but there are hardly any that combine and blend all these
features into one, extremely useful product.

20. Minimal Viable Product User
Stories
Here are a couple of comments we had got from users of our MVP:
• “The App has many useful features, but the UI can be quite chaotic for a
first user. Although this is the case, I think the app would still be
manageable.”
• “Incredibly easy to use, and very hard to get lost in the app.”
• “Good idea with lots of good features, but might be slightly hard to
implement in some places.”
• “Lots of strong features, but the links can be slightly confusing sometimes.”
From these comments, we kept all of our features, but arranged buttons at
the bottom of the screen to take the user anywhere in the app. We have
therefore kept it simple using the three touch rule - it is possible to get
anywhere in the app with three touches of the screen.

21. Key Features of our app
There are a number of different features incorporated into our app:
● Give recipes depending on ingredients that you have:
○ Many of our competitors only give recipes depending on what you search, but our app
feature gives our customers the ability to make recipes without having to go to the
shops, which gets rid of the hassle of having to go to the shops to buy new ingredients.
● Being able to find the cheapest place to buy ingredients as well as being able to buy
the ingredients straight from your phone:
○ Even if our customer needs to buy ingredients, an interactive screen pops up that, on a
map, shows nearby shops where the ingredient can be bought. As well as being able
to find the cheapest place to buy an ingredient, and being able to buy the product direct
from your phone, this feature once again gets rid of the hassle of having to go to the
shops.
● Simple, interactive instructions that are easy to follow:
○ By having this feature, it allows everyone (from youngsters to elderly people) to be able
to easily make good tasting food, due to the easy to follow instructions.
● Calendar for organising when to make food:
○ This feature is for the people with busy lifestyles. This feature means that people who
have less time on their hands than they wish would be able to easily organise when to
prepare certain food (cooking for special occasions etc.)

22. Integrating the Critical
Comments that we obtained
Our App had lots of good feedback, but our main point of improvement was
that our app looked quite cluttered, and sometimes seemed to be quite
confusing to our users. After much contemplation, our team came up with
the idea of adding a bar of buttons at the bottom of the screen, like many
apps nowadays. By doing this, we could get rid of lots of “back” buttons that
plagued our app screens and made our app flow much more confusing to
follow.
As well as this, one of our comments was to add a comments page for all the
recipes (as well as ratings). We heeded this advice, which means that all
the recipes on our app would be reliable and have some credibility, as
people would have commented on how well they thought the recipe works.
We therefore believe that the comments that we obtained have really helped
in the progression of our app to a product that has the potential to become
an extremely desirable and usable app.

23. The Flow of our App

24. Opening Screen Searching for Recipes Possible recipe
Key Wireframes #1

25. Where to buy other ingredients Planning FeatureBuy other ingredients
Key Wireframes #2

26. Key Wireframes #3
We tried to make our app
wireframes as similar to a proper
prototype app as possible, with
all the MVP features put in. The
feedback that we got from
people viewing our wireframes
was vital in making sure that we
modified and improved our app,
to make it as desirable to our
potential users as possible. In
particular, from the feedback we
obtained, we made several
steps forward in improving the
layout of the buttons, to make it
as user-friendly with all of our
target audience age groups as
possible.
Planning Feature

27. The Feasibility of our App
As a group, we believe that our app has the ability to target all of our specified age
groups, by bringing in a new type of product to the world of consumer apps. Although
this is the case, there are a couple of pitfalls that could hinder the progress of making
our app, if it were to be made.
Firstly, before our app would be launched, either a huge database of different recipes
would have to be made, or our app would have to collate different information from
the internet. The second option would be much more preferable, but there is a
chance that the use of their information might be rejected by the organisations who
put the recipe onto the internet.
This is our main feasibility issue for our app, as most of the other features can be
incorporated into our app with ease. For example, the feature which finds the
cheapest place to buy ingredients and allows you to buy them from a phone has
been tried and tested by many other companies, so there is no reason why our idea
should not work, if the customer were to sign into their Tesco Direct or other
supermarket account on their phone. The only other issue that might be faced would
be trying to promote our app has trustworthy, as the app would require access to
accounts, therefore also requiring access of credit card details. To deal with this
problem, we would have to create a safe place to save people’s data, which would
not be accessible to any other parties.

28. Our Customer Pledges
After asking multiple people at school and home, we
decided that people would be happy to buy an app that
would cost a small fee, but found that some might not
want to pay for the app unless they found out whether
it actually was any good. To make sure that customers
would be willing to pay, the best course of action would
be to maybe offer a free trial, or to ask for people to
survey a prototype model of our. This would help us to
find whether people really would be willing to pay for
our app.

29. Our Marketing Strategy
We are planning to release two versions of the app.
One will be free with limited features and the other will
be the premium version priced at about £1 which will
have more features, which are yet to be decided. We
are also going to try and limit adverts on other apps
and the number of adverts within the free version by
being sponsored by shops who will appear in the map
feature.

30. MTP CONCEPT TRAILER
A short video created by Tommy and while it is very
low budget it serves to show who the app is aimed for
and the problem it solves.