Before we could even begin to think about design, we had to think about the users. We focused our research on gaining better insight into their existing recipe selection and cooking process. Through learning the informational and emotional needs of our users, we were better able to design a recipe search that was both easy and fun to use.

To do this, we employed three techniques:

• Directed storytelling sessions with targeted users
• Competitive evaluation of existing recipe search web sites
• Brick and mortar analysis of recipe information organization in the physical world