3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereUX Kudos: Cookthink.com

September 9, 2009 1

Why is it worth taking a look at Cook Think?

Cookthink.com is an example of excellent user experience and information architecture

Visitor’s mind-set guides the entire experience

User experience guides you through the site and helps you learn how to use the site

Search, tag cloud and relational exposure to content very well-thought out

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Cook Think Basics

Launched in late 2006

Created with the goal of “creat(ing) a cleaner, smarter recipe website, something with consistently good recipes, more efficient search, better resources and friendly advice.”

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Cook Think Basics

Cooking, most often, is “about satisfying a craving right now with the ingredients you’ve got on hand. It’s about using leftovers well and experimenting little by little. It’s about what you’re going to have for dinner tonight.”

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It’s the Pandora of cooking

Pandora utilizes the “Music Genome” to provide recommendations for music a user might like, based on their expressed preferences

Cookthink taps into the “Recipe Mapping Project” to break down the components of each recipe, analyzing dozens of characteristics about what goes into a dish — what it tastes like, smells like, feels like, and how it makes you feel to eat it. 5

Cook Think Basics

Users tap tap into this process when they use Cookthink's recipe search tool to look for recipes by ingredient (pork chop, zucchini), dish type (salad, burrito) cuisine (Italian, Thai) and mood (exuberant, summery).

When users “cookthink it,” the site takse what they’re craving and compare it to all of their recipes, returning recipes that best fits what you’re looking for. 6

3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereThe Visitor’s Mindset Guides the User Experience

July 28, 2009 7

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What do I want for dinner?

What are you craving?

Free-form search box combined with four sets of tag clouds Ingredients Dish Cuisine Mood

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What are you craving?

Lets you combine choices from the tag cloud (click on a word and it appears in the search box) or free-form typing

Once you click “search,” you are taken to ...

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Cookthink: Search results with rollover state

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Cookthink: Recipe page

Recipe results display: Number of people served Description Ingredients Instructions

But also: Prep time Cook time Tools needed Dishes it goes well with

Call to action to: Save to my meal builder Modify recipe by adding

ingredients, dishes, etc. 12

Meal Builder

Meal Builder allows you to: Create new meals Add dishes to meals you

create Print out meal recipes Send to a friend Edit meal Compare prep and cook

time for all dishes Search for other

ingredients, dishes, etc.

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Meal Builder: Meal Timer

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Meal Timer allows you to compare prep time for all dishes

3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereUX that helps you learn how to use the site

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What are you craving?

Tag cloud presents popular terms that prompt user for the type of queries they might enter into the search box “basily” “soothing” “exciting” “kosher” “hangover-friendly”

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Meal Builder

Most Popular call-out on home page:

Exposes content that other users have found valuable Recipes Reference Searches

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3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereSearch, tag cloud and relational exposure to content

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Search and tag cloug

Search and tag cloud work together. User can click on

terms in the tag cloud to add them to the search field

Tag cloud terms help prompt ideas for searching

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What do I want for dinner?

I wonder what a “brothy outdoorsy” dinner would taste like?

Let’s see …

Relational exposure to content

Search leads to results Results lead to recipe Recipe encourages

saving to meal builder Meal builder encourages

comparison of dishes, conducting new searches, etc.

Each step gets user more involved in the site

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3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereA few minor quibbles: Because no site is perfect

July 28, 2009 22

UX issues

Wayfinding This is the main

“reference” page, but there are no overt queues to tell you that.

Signing up for the “Root Source” e-mail newsletter is a pain if you’re already a member May be impossible. I

tried to sign up for a newsletter using an existing account and was unable to

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UX issues

Advertising The ad “Mom Loses”

41 lbs. After Discovery” cheapens the whole site experience

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3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi SphereWhat I really dig about this site …

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If you remember nothing else …

Love how the user experience matches up to the mind set of someone using the site

Search and tag cloud work together in a unique way that makes sense to the user

User experience helps you learn how to use the site and exposes you logically to more and more site features as you move through the site

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If you remember nothing else …

This site makes cooking seem so easy that you want to start cooking something

Bottom line -- it’s an enjoyable experience – something we should be striving for with every project we undertake

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3 C h o r e o g r a p h y c a n s m e e t D onlineThe Pepsi Sphere

Harley JebensSenior Information Architecthttp://www.linkedin.com/in/hjebensh.jebens@gmail.comPh. 469-235-4087

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