Master the Basics
I worked with the The NYT Cooking team on a consulting project in 2021 to conduct a competitive landscape analysis against their competitors.
Retention and engagement were their biggest challenges; they only saw consistent usage around holidays months despite the fact that cooking was a year-round activity, due to the mental model that recipes were for occasions, rather than for everyday inspiration.
Motivated by these learnings, Master the Basics became a little pet project where I designed an experience that helps home cooks master different core ingredients or food categories — like salmon, cocktails, or burgers.
Dashboard
A home for all of your courses. These self-guided courses each focus on a different primary ingredient and leverage existing NYT Cooking content.
View progress on courses you've started, revisit courses you've mastered, and get inspiration from other home cooks via an instagram-style photo sharing feed.
Cooking guides
As the first step of each course, home cooks review the associated cooking guide to learn the fundamentals.
Now off to the kitchen!
To practice what they've just learned, cooks recreate 3 recipes that feature the primary ingredient. Users can browse existing NYT recipes and drag recipes of interest into the menu on the left.
The Chef's Table
For each featured ingredient or food category, users can browse user-generated content with the associated recipes attached.
One of the insights from research was that food is
inherently social — people love eating together and notably, sharing food with one another. Seeing photos of others' kitchen creations also increased confidence in home cooks that they, too, could create something similar.
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