User Flow
Database Structure of Oops! I Can Cook
A learning app for beginner cooks that combines guided recipes, personal creations, and monthly cooking quests.
Short description: Oops! I can cook is a learning app for beginner chefs. Users can create and edit their own profiles, learn pre-made recipes in a monthly “Quest mode”, and add their own recipes and search for them.
Oops! I can cook is designed to teach beginners how to cook from scratch, build confidence in the kitchen, and stay motivated to prepare home-cooked meals instead of relying on takeout.
Oops! I can cook is for inexperienced home cooks who want to start eating healthier and learn to cook for themselves.
Explore the interactive prototype here:
Figma Prototype – Oops! I can cook
The evaluation suggests that the app’s core structure is sound, but several small to medium usability problems accumulate and could noticeably slow down or confuse users—especially beginners, who are the target audience. Navigation clarity, consistency, and visibility of system status are the most prominent themes across the identified issues.
Addressing the high-severity items, such as navigation clarity, missing UI elements, and unclear dropdown behavior, will significantly improve the overall user experience. Enhancing the Quest screen’s visual clarity and motivational cues will further support the app’s goal of keeping users engaged and encouraging repeated use.
H1: Visual cues in the interface significantly impact how users interact with the app, influencing navigation efficiency, content recognition, and overall enjoyment.
Do first-time users navigate to main features more successfully with or without onboarding instructions?
Do colored recipe cards improve users’ ability to distinguish recipes compared to neutral cards?
Do gamified quest screen elements increase users’ perceived enjoyment?
The aim of our user test was to find out, how the visual design of our app impacted the user's interactions with it. We specifically looked at navigation efficiency, content recognition, and overall enjoyment. We also wanted users to test each of the app's features, so the tasks are 8 users participated in user testing. We used SUS and SEQ to assess perceived difficulty and usability, as well as interviews to gauge mental models, expectations and pain points.
The raw collected data and the user test documents can be found here:
CCL3 - User Test Excel Sheet
CCL3 - User Test Document
Users rated the usability quite high at 88,4375 on average. The app performed well in terms of SEQ as well, with an overall average rating of 6,3 across all tasks.
!! PLEASE NOTE: I accidentally switched the numbers around, so 1 was the easiest and 7 the most difficult. I very confidently stated the wrong figure during our presentation. Sorry! I corrected the numbers in our documentation. !!
Q1: Do first-time users navigate to main features more successfully with or without onboarding instructions?
For this task, users had to create an item (recipe, stack, etc) in the app and then go back to find and edit it.
We asked some users to fulfill the task with clear and thorough instructions, and the rest with very simple instructions. Users that had more extensive instructions completed the task slightly faster than those without.
This is also the task with the highest task-time and the most user-errors, most likely due to the fact that users were still unfamiliar with the user flow and functionalities of the app.
Q2: Does using colored recipe cards improve users’ ability to distinguish recipes compared to neutral-colored cards?
To answer Q2, we had users complete two tasks: one to locate specific recipes, and the other to see how many recipes they recalled after a short break.
Users were able to correctly find and identify on average 84.3% of recipes and they recalled 92.1% correctly after a short break. Important to note for task 3 is, that this task also showed fairly clearly, that the color of the recipe cards was not determinative to how well users could distinguish and recall recipes.
Q3: Does the gamified design/ the gamified elements on the quest screen increase the users perceived enjoyment when using the feature?
This task just consisted of testing the quest feature and assessing how users interacted with it. Most users responded very positively to the feature, and found it easy to use, with the mean SEQ score for this task being 6.625. This task showed quite well, how some users prefer to use gestures like swiping over pressing buttons to advance the quest cards. Some never pressed the button to finish a quest, but rather used the X at the top left corner of the screen to exit out of the quest.
Overall, the data shows that users found the app intuitive and easy to use. Even without thorough instructions, users can navigate the app successfully. Slight visual changes seem to have little to no effect on the users' ability to find and recall content. The gamified quest-feature adds positively to the experience, without harming usability.
The qualitative data of this user test was collected by conducting an interview before and after the tasks, and having the participants think out loud during the tasks as well. This method yielded a lot of useful feedback that we were able to use to improve the app.
8 users participated in user testing, with their ages ranging from 18-29. 3 participants were male and 5 female. 6 out of 8 indicated that they liked to cook, even though only 3 participants stated that they cooked for themselves 5-7 times a week.
63% use recipes most of the time or everytime when cooking, 25% use them only a few times, and 13% don't use them at all.
Most would rate themselves fairly confident in the kitchen.
All participants reacted favorably to the app, with 75% mentioning that they would use the app in their daily life.
What users liked the most:
Overall, users responed very positively to Oops! I can cook. Most noted the gamified and highly stylized components as standout features. The most glaring issues during testing were definitively the unfamiliarity with android interfaces, as well as the layouting issues on a smaller screen. However, the app definitely shows potential, with 75% of users indicating that they would use it in their daily lives.
After reviewing the user test results, we implemented several improvements throughout the app. We updated the styling of the recipe and stack forms to create a cleaner and more consistent visual experience. The Quest feature was further gamified to increase engagement and better support user motivation. On the profile screen, we improved the UI by splitting the layout into thirds and reducing the overall height of both the profile section and the search bar, making navigation clearer and more comfortable on smaller screens. We also redesigned the stacks by giving each one its own color and adding optional emojis — an idea inspired directly by user feedback, as one participant mentioned that emojis felt “cute” and more personal than images. These changes helped refine the overall look and feel of the app while addressing real user needs.
This CCL was definitely the most relaxed one so far. Working with Katharina felt easy, and I felt that we both carried our weight well in this project. I particularly loved seeing the concept come to life and actually have people test it out and give their opinions. Having a large percentage of testers that said they want to use the app in their personal life was a huge morale boost as well! I felt like the workload was shared equally overall, although I took on more of the test planning and evaluation in week 2, while Kati focused on fixing bugs and implementing improved features. Overall, I enjoyed those two weeks! Thank u Kati for keeping me going <3!!!
For me, this CCL was one of the most relaxed ones at the beginning, but toward the end it definitely became more stressful. Our first concept for the app came together quickly, both in theory and in the initial code skeleton. What challenged me the most was the styling and visual design elements. I had a clear picture in mind and it looked great in Figma, but once it appeared on a real phone, it sometimes felt completely different or even strange. I also kept wanting everything to be perfect instead of simply functional, which definitely cost me some time. One of the most interesting parts of the project was seeing people actually test the app we built. Some users gave feedback I would have never expected, like the vegetarian option for the Quest feature, which was immediately obvious to the vegetarian participant but something that hadn’t crossed my mind at all. Sadly there was no time to implement this. I really enjoyed working in a team, even though I was a bit hesitant at first. But Toni kept me motivated, and sharing the struggles along the way made the process so much nicer. Even though I picked up more of the coding in the second week, Toni handled the user test development and many other tasks. The split wasn’t planned this way, but it worked out very well, and I feel like in the end we both contributed equally. Love to Toni. ❤️