Savour

Problem Space

The specific problem space my project targets is young adults’ inability to feed themselves delicious and nutritious meals due to a lack of knowledge and skill. As the global health crisis intensifies and economic uncertainty grows, this issue continues to gain urgency. More and more young adults are struggling with the consequences of poor diet and reliance on costly, unhealthy food options. My project aim is to address this problem by empowering individuals with the life-long skills, confidence and motivation to cook at home, subsequently improving physical and financial wellbeing.

Design Concept

For my capstone project, I have created a design that combines my love for visual aesthetics, problem-solving and delicious food. Taking inspiration from popular information-sharing sites like Goodreads and LetterBoxd, I am designing an ‘all-in-one’ community-based encyclopedia for recipes and cooking resources. Young adults are the target users for this project, as they are the most common demographic that is newly moved out of home but lacks foundational cooking skills. This phenomenon is becoming increasingly common as there has been a reported deskilling of domestic cooks within the last 100 years. Consequently, young adults are not equipped with the skills to feed themselves upon gaining independence and don’t know how to learn. Considering this, I am going to create a mobile-optimised platform that aids young adults in the pursuit of self-taught cooking while addressing the cognitive barriers to learning a new skill. My application will be a community-based encyclopedia where recipes can be uploaded, ranked, commented and reviewed. A detailed sorting and filtering algorithm will then be implemented to ensure effective search capabilities and adaptability for users’ recipe wants and dietary needs, no matter how specific.