Make
Everyday
Cooking Fun!

Cookpad is a recipe-sharing platform started in Japan. It now has over 60 million monthly unique users and over 4 million recipes. The platform champions home cooking worldwide and is available in over 70 countries and 23 languages.

Services

Product design
Growth
UX Design
UI Design
Brand development
Design system
User testing
Prototyping
Mobile apps

Drive higher
engagement of
Weekly Cooksnap’s

On Cookpad, users show appreciation for an author's recipe through a ‘Cooksnap’. This is a photo of the readers own creation and often used to say thanks.

Our goal was to research, ideate and produce solutions that would drive a higher engagement to their Weekly Active Cooksnaps (WACs).

Cooksnap is photo of another users creation of a recipe.

Discover

What are our users doing and does this match their motivations?

DiscoverUser motivations

We conducted a series of qualitative research sessions that included 5 users varying in experience with Cooksnaps. From an author who frequently receives Cooksnaps to an active Cooksnaper and a user yet to add their first Cooksnap.

Example Questions

What are your cooking habits?
More about your last Cooksnap?
Have you received a Cooksnap on your recipe?
How did this make you feel?

A service map of the current Cooksnap flow and how it interacts and influences an author and other cooks.

DiscoverUser insights

From our qualitative research, we heard a degree of insights that would make it very easy to start brainstorming some ideas around.

"Forgot to photo after cooking"
"Wasn’t happy with the result of my creation"
"Comments are commonly thanking the author of the recipe"
"Cooksnap should look like the recipe photo"
"Wouldn’t Cooksnap the same recipe again, but something similar"
"Seeing Cooksnaps on a recipe makes it feel more achievable"
"Interesting to see if the Cooksnap changed anything in the recipe"

DiscoverData Insights

Cookpad has a great data analysis team that provided us with additional insights to compare to our qualitative insights and also led to generate new ideas.

A user's motivation to Cooksnap varies over quantity added and maturity on the platform. Looking at examples we drew up the following hypothesis. We wanted to nudge the 0>2 Cooksnaps to the behaviour we see of 5+ users.

46

of Cooksnapped recipes were previously bookmarked

16

of Cooksnapped recipes were previously screenshotted

53

of Cooksnapped recipes were previously screenshotted or bookmarked

DiscoverThemes

From our insights we were able to identify some key themes to inform new solutions to drive towards our goal of increase weekly active Cooksnaps (WACs).

Visibility

Raise visual awareness and placement of Cooksnaps across the platform
Recipe detail view
'Cooksnap' to become a branded term
Cooksnap icon to be consistent across platforms
Create more prominent actions to add a Cooksnap

Creation

UX improvements can be made to the creation journey

Use new triggers to remind to Cooksnap
Capture more written context
Enhance the message of giving back so its not the content of the Cooksnap
Capture variety with failures and WIP
Leverage previous Cooksnap

Develop

How to fix the problem

A sketched user flow from a Cooksnap creation point of how a user could start to feel their contribution is part of a bigger community and not just an exchange to the recipe author.

Sketch wireframes were quickly produced to explore the scale of a solution.

DevelopTheme 1/3: Visibility

High-fidelity prototypes were mocked up to present back to the immediate team and share with stakeholders.

Concepts to raise the visibility of Cooksnaps through various spaces in the app.

DevelopTheme 2/3: Creation

UX improvements can be made to the creation journey.

Improvements through the creation journey from more entry points including a saved recipe and to also humanise the final outcome. Communicate its helping others, inspire to create more than the final dish.

DevelopTheme 3/3: Community

Communicating their Cooksnap has more impact on a wider community than just a one-way review of the recipe author.

Playback that their Cooksnap is helping others decide what to cook, judge the complexity of it and grow their network.

Deliver

Launching the solution

DeliverIt’ll help others

A prominent message of their Cooksnap helping others to decide on this recipe in the community was often overlooked.

A visual praise for the effort a Cooksnaper has taken to submit their creation to make them feel enthused to do it again.

Communicate this Cooksnap is helping others decide what recipe to cook. Users told us Cooksnaps make a recipe feel manageable and influence their choice.

DeliverPassive reminders

Working with data analysis, we used this approach to target a number of different ways in which we could start to learn how to take an educated guess that a user had cooked a recipe using triggers like recipe view duration, open rate and latest saved.

Building up from our insights of 46% of recipes were previously saved. Making this recipes more apparent in the product.

DeliverActive Reminders

Using the data analysis to gain a confidence level of if a user had cooked a recipe, we would use an active reminder to encourage a Cooksnap for recipes we were certain of.

Being more progressive based on our confidence of a recipe being cooked. Building up from our insights of 46% of recipes were previously saved. Making this recipes more apparent in the product.

DeliverActivity

Populating the hero area of Your Network feed with the latest Cooksnaps. Leading from users they follow and interjecting with Cooksnapers outside their network with the saved recipe in common. This would act to grow the community and open the value of a Cooksnap.

Exposing their networks Cooksnaps in their Network feed.

Impact

Weekly active Cooksnaps overtook weekly active authors for the first time.

+12%

Cooksnaps to recipes published in 7 days

+0.6%

Daily active users

Evolve

Broader visions and scalable product directions.

EvolveCooking variations

Concepts that would look to encourage Cooksnaps as a way for users to be experiemental and develop tweaks to existing recipes.

EvolveYour Cooking

Creating a space that feels like the user's own cookbook. Saved recipes are the recipes they’ve not cooked yet, Cooksnaps are their attempt at that. Bringing Saved recipes and Cooksnaps closer together and suggesting content from this.