I’m not a big app user, so I’m unlikely to use the one you’re proposing, but one thing I will suggest, is that you link to recipes with a set number of ingredients, like 5 or less. That way, if the user does pick up the item, the extras that need to be purchased, or that you need to remember if you have them at home, are kept to a minimum.
I have not had good luck with that method. A few weeks ago, I wanted to get my dad a bottle of Wild Turkey Rare Breed because I know he likes Wild Turkey but would probably not get it for himself. Damned if I could find it in a store though.
Stores have negative interest in facilitating that for you.
What I don’t understand is how this app would provide an advantage over simply googling. Why not just type “salmon recipes” into a search engine, rather than call up the app and scan the barcode?
We’re not talking a venture capital pitch here. This is a student project. It’s by definition unnecessary, the necessity is created by fiat by the professor/curriculum. And if necessity were the criteria for app creation then all the app marketplaces would be a LOT smaller.
Enjoy,
Steven
If you’re trying to prove this can be done; yes, it could make a nice class project.
But if I know what salmon is, Google, Google image search, or various recipe apps can already do these functions.
If I don’t know what salmon is, see previous statement.
Target has a mobile website that will tell you the isle and bay number of any product stocked in the store. I’ve used it several times. Very useful when all i want is to run in and but a single particular item.
But the question asked was would I use it and why or why not. I wouldn’t because search makes the app unnecessary.
I agree with the above posters that I personally wouldn’t care to use this app, as I would be more likely to use Epicurious or another site I know and trust to find recipes. Check out that site’s advanced search. It is very powerful and lets you search with multiple criteria, even letting you exclude specific ingredients from your search.
A shopping app I would love to have on my phone would be a bill calculator. Scan a bar code to look up the price of the item and add it to a total. For bonus points, have it calculate sales taxes too. Maybe it could even look up coupons. It might be tricky to deal with variably-priced items (like fruit sold by weight), but it could still give shoppers a rough idea of how much they’d spent so far.
The usefulness of the app is actually the main point of the project. It very likely won’t ever be marketed, but what we’re really being graded on is how we improve and alter our design based on feedback from people we interview or poll over each iteration of design.
I think the problem you will run into is that every ingredient will have thousands of recipes for it. No one wants to get 1000 salmon recipes on their phone.
The app should throw up just a small number of recipes which are tailored to my preference. So if I scan salmon, I get the recipes which are lighter and more basic (e.g grilled salmon). But someone else may get really fancy recipes (Cuban-style cerviche salmon with pineapple salsa).
But really, the most likely case is that I want to make one of the salmon recipes I made before but just can’t remember the ingredients. So rather than thinking “I wonder what I can make with salmon?”, the more common situation is “I see salmon is on sale. What do I need for that Cuban-style salmon?”
A possible way to do the app is to integrate it with my pinterest page I made for recipes. My page has all kinds of recipes, not just salmon. When I scan salmon, just show my pinterest entries which have salmon as an ingredient.
I think the sku location thing would be good. Do a crowd sourced thing, people scan as they shop filling your central database with item/gps location and optionally price (might be too cumbersome for people to get into system).
It wouldn’t be perfect but could be substantially useful as a one-off for finding items or to map your route through the store based on a list.
if you mapped upc to category of item it would be more flexible and get people close, like they say “cereal” and it shows a map (map is really just a set of all points previously recorded within 300 feet of current location and red dot showing target destination).
Unbelievable.
One of the first “programs” which would run on a microcomputer (IBM sold its microcomputers as “Personal Computers” later) was one in which the user could type in the ingredients she/he had on hand and it would produce names of dishes which could be made from the ingredients.
As demo of a GUI, it would be a good project.
As a commercially viable product? No.
It requires that I pick up the product. If I pick up a product, it is because I ALREADY know what I’m going to do with it.
I wouldn’t want to see the response time for “wheat flour”, “sugar”, or even “eggs”.
Scrolling would be a bitch.
Add me to the list of people who wouldn’t use it.
I’m an experienced enough cook that I know what I can do with any given ingredient. If I’m looking up a recipe, it’s for the specifics on cooking time, etc. Not for general inspiration or shopping lists.
Another problem is that there are a lot of crap recipes out there on the Internet. Lots of people’s idea of what’s good is very, very different than mine. Most of the recipes out there are unusable, and unless it’s from a very trusted source it’s rarely efficient to weed through the bad ones. And no, even if you curate the recipes it’s not likely to count as a trusted source.
Maybe it’s because I’ve worked retail for a good portion of my working life, but grocery stores are all laid out pretty much the same. The isle number may be different, but the groupings of items are the same, so having a “where are the nuts” app wouldn’t be any more useful to me than just remembering where they are in my home grocery store and going to the isle where the like-items are.
If making the app is a forgone conclusion (you have no better ideas, it’s too late to restart etc.) then I have an idea for a way the thing could actually make money. Approach companies who have cookbooks (and/or celebrity chefs) and have them pay you to put their recipe on the top of your list. When I scan the 50% off salmon I see a recipe from Wolfgang Puck first because he paid you a bunch to have him BE first.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this yet, but this would be super-irritating to other shoppers. I don’t want people standing around in the isles, staring at their smart phones and flipping through recipes. They would be in everyone’s way, creating a big traffic jam. You could argue that that isn’t really a problem for the app user, only everyone else, but it would be another reason I wouldn’t use the app (along with stuff previous posters have pointed out.) I don’t want to be the asshole making everyone else’s shopping trip hell. It’s rude.
What about an alternative app for dietary restrictions? If you’re doing a diet for something like dairy-free, gluten-free, kosher, etc, it’s not always clear what is and isn’t okay to eat. My wife does gluten free and I’m often trying to read tiny ingredient lists to see if it has wheat, wheat products, or other things with gluten. It would be much easier if I could scan the UPC and it would say yes or no for whatever restrictions I have setup.