Pepper: Recipe Voice Assistant
An Alexa Voice Skill designed during CareerFoundry’s specialization course. It allows users to request recipes by meal type, dietary restriction, or ingredient. Then, the skill walks the user through the recipe providing guidance along the way.
Challenge
An increase in working from home has led to an increase in cooking from home - a new challenge for many young professionals.
Young professionals working from home need new recipes and cooking inspiration so that they don’t lose interest in cooking and spend money eating out.
Role
VUI Designer: Research, Voice Script
Timing & Tools
July 2021
Alexa Skills Kit
Deliverables
Task analysis, personas, sample dialogues, user flows, voice script
Pepper’s Features
Choose Recipes
Sort by dietary restriction, ingredient, or meal type.
Step-by-Step Instruction
Easy to understand instructions that you can repeat or go back to.
Built-in Timer
Never panic at the smell of burning dinner again.
System Persona
It was important to me that the system persona aided in retaining users by being helpful and positive.
Studies on using positive reinforcement in the work place show that positivity can significantly increase desired behaviors and productivity. I wanted to apply this to user retention by making Pepper not only instructional, but motivational.
User Flow
In order to attract as many users as possible, recipe selection is highly customizable by dietary restriction, ingredient, or meal type.
These many options provided to the user were illustrated using a user flow that helped me discover holes in Pepper’s messaging depending on recipe parameters given by the user.
User Testing
Testing Insights.
Keep it simple! Before user testing I had concerns that when providing a list, the persona script was not providing enough information. Instead 4 of 5 users needed to ask for information to be repeated or commented on it being too long.
Communication is key! Users were very conversational during the usability test and 2 of 5 users asked to check in with the persona during the test. Either to check the most recent instruction or be reminded of the timer.
Conclusion
In further iterations of Pepper I would want to hone in on the instructional and timer features. It is important to me that the app be accessible and in this particular instance, accessible for adults with executive dysfunction. In user testing I learned that one of my test users has ADHD which impacts their ability to multitask or remember instructions given in clusters. While recipes are typically given step-by-step, depending on the amount of information in each step, it could be difficult to follow. Also, given the time sensitive nature of cooking, the time blindness that folks with executive dysfunction experience makes a built-in timer crucial to the usability of the app. For future testing I would want to focus on these parts of my system script and test with users who would benefit from the additional support given by Pepper.