Kitchenmate
A voice-activated recipe app for the Amazon Echo Show 15 that promotes mindful and sustainable cooking.
As part of a team project during my Master’s, I led user research and prototyping for a voice-first cooking experience.
Project Overview
Role
UX Researcher & Designer
Team
5 members (Master's group project)
Platform
Amazon Echo Show 15
Methods
Interviews, Diary Studies, Usability Testing
Duration
Academic semester project
As part of my Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction Design, I collaborated with four peers to design KitchenMate, a recipe app built specifically for the Amazon Echo Show 15.
Unlike traditional recipe apps, KitchenMate embraces voice-first interaction and sustainability-driven features to help people cook in ways that are intuitive, mindful, and environmentally conscious.
🥘 The Challenge
Designing for a smart display like the Echo Show 15 comes with unique constraints:
- 📱 Small screen → limited space for visuals and text.
- 🎙️ Voice-first interaction → hands-free but requires clarity and consistency
- 🧠 High-pressure context → users multitask in kitchens, so cognitive load must stay low.
The question: "How do you design a hands-free, voice-first cooking experience that reduces food waste without adding to the cognitive load of someone already juggling a hot pan?"
🔍 Understanding User Needs
“We combined qualitative interviews with diary studies to capture how people cook and think about food waste.”
🎙️Semi-structured interviews (n=10)
Explored cooking routines, recipe discovery methods, and awareness of food waste.
✏️ 5-day diary studies
Captured daily behaviors: meals cooked, shopping habits, and attempts at minimizing waste.
Key Insights
🍞 Food waste is common, especially for families balancing busy schedules.
🌍 Sustainability awareness varies, with some unsure of its daily impact.
💊 Health needs drive choices, especially for those with dietary restrictions.
📺 Video recipes are popular, particularly with younger audiences.
💰 Budgets matter - cost directly influences meal and shopping decisions.
Affinity mapping from our interview data.
👤Personas
We crafted three personas to represent distinct cooking motivations and pain points.
Helen – The Busy Mom
Family-focused home cook
⚠️ Struggles with meal planning, often overbuys, wants ways to reduce waste.
John – The Eco-Conscious Researcher
⚠️ Values sustainability but lacks time and culinary confidence.
Nora – The Health-Focused Professional
Health is wealth
⚠️ Manages PCOS through diet, needs visual, clear, and affordable recipe guidance.
💡 From Insights to Concepts
We moved from research into ideation through:
POV statements
Defined core user needs (e.g. “Helen needs an easy way to find recipes that use up her leftovers.”)
Brainstorming sessions
Used Fig Jam and Zoom to ideate on everything from food waste tools to price comparison widgets.
Storyboards & journeys
Outlined step-by-step flows for how users would interact with the app. Created visual stories of how KitchenMate could support different users in real-life cooking scenarios.
Sitemap
Built a rough architecture for the app’s key sections and interactions.
Bringing KitchenMate to Life
✏️ Collaborative Sketching
We sketched layout ideas for major features like:
Recipe browsing
Food waste tracker
Shopping assistant
Recycling guide
🖥️ Wireframing in Figma
Designed low-fidelity wireframes tailored to the Echo Show 15’s resolution and constraints.
🎨 Building a UI Kit
We created a custom UI kit with reusable components (buttons, fonts, icons) to ensure visual consistency.
Testing KitchenMate
We conducted 10 usability tests using the think-aloud method, where participants interacted with our prototype while verbalising their thoughts.
"I love that it tells me when my food is about to expire. I'd actually use this." - Usability test participant
✅ What Users Liked
Expiry Countdown helped reduce waste
Recipe Videos supported visual learners
Recycling Locator was seen as an innovative addition
"I wasn't sure what to say to the voice assistant at first, a short tutorial would help." - Usability test participant
💡 What We Learned
Users wanted calorie information on each recipe
Price comparison across multiple stores was requested
Users wanted a tutorial to ease into the app
Feature Highlights
Healthy Recipe Focus
Based on UK’s Eatwell Guide
Smart Search & Voice Control
Search by voice, image, or ingredient
Personalised Suggestions
Custom recipes based on user profiles
Recycling Wizard
Upload an image or ask via voice to check recyclability
Purchase Companion
Compare ingredient prices, check food miles, support local farms
Family-Friendly Profiles
Manage multiple user preferences in one home
Accessible UI
Adjustable fonts, color modes, voice prompts
My Role in KitchenMate
Designed interview guides, conducted 2 interviews, and supported diary study logistics.
Synthesised insights through affinity mapping and POV statements, then built user journeys to visualise opportunities.
Created low- and mid-fidelity wireframes, built the final UI kit, and crafted interaction flows tailored to the Echo Show 15.
Facilitated 2 usability tests, synthesised results, and presented actionable findings to the team.
Reflections
✔️ What worked
The voice-first constraint actually made us better designers. Every decision had to earn its place because screen space was so limited. The feature set we landed on felt genuinely considered rather than feature-stuffed.
What I'd do differently
I'd design and test an onboarding flow from the start rather than treating it as an afterthought. First-time users with a voice interface need more guidance than we anticipated, several testers hesitated before speaking their first command, which told us a lot.
What I took away
Designing for voice taught me that clarity isn't just visual, it lives in the words you choose, the prompts you write, and the silences you leave room for. That's a lesson I'll carry into every project.
Final Thoughts
KitchenMate challenged me to design beyond screens and embrace voice-first thinking.
It deepened my understanding of sustainable design and helped me grow as a collaborative, research-driven designer.
Designing beyond screens taught me to think with my ears.
