The Problem

Opening any recipe on your phone while cooking means navigating a wall of content before you reach the actual instructions. Personal anecdotes stretch for paragraphs. Ads interrupt mid-scroll. Pop-ups demand your email. For someone standing at the stove with floury hands, this friction isn't just annoying — it's a genuine barrier to cooking at home.

More than 50% of a typical recipe page is taken up by content that has nothing to do with cooking. On many platforms this is compounded by auto-play videos and pop-up overlays, turning a simple ingredient lookup into a multi-minute detour.

WHY THIS MATTERS

• Users rely on mobile devices while cooking - distractions can be dangerous

• Friction discourages the benefits of home cooking - creativity, stress relief, connection

Research

I used three methods to understand the problem space: market research to map trends, a competitive analysis to understand where existing tools fall short, and a user survey to hear directly from home cooks.

Survey

Competitive Analysis

Market Research

Most users find recipes online rather than in cookbooks — yet they abandon those pages due to excessive scrolling, save recipes across multiple disconnected platforms, and frequently copy recipes into their Notes app just to have a clean version. Mobile phones are the primary device used while cooking.

Users

Based on my survey and market research, two distinct user types emerged with different but complementary needs.

Becca, 43. Knows what she's doing in the kitchen but needs a tool to streamline her process. She cooks large family meals and needs to scale recipes reliably. She loses saved recipes across platforms and is frustrated by the number of pop-ups she encounters.

Jay, 20 is a more casual cook who just needs quick access to a reliable recipe without the noise. Values speed and simplicity above all else. Likely to abandon a recipe site if it doesn't load fast or feels cluttered.

Opportunity

There is no simple way to instantly clean and own any online recipe.

WHERE OTHERS ARE FALLING SHORT

• Recipe blogs → rich content, but poor usability

• Recipe apps → cluttered interfaces, limited user control

• Notes apps → flexible, but entirely manual and inefficient

Solution

BiteSize turns reading into doing. It assists users of all cooking experience levels in building a personal recipe book with ease and control — pulling in online recipes, stripping the noise, and making them your own.

Save concise versions of your favorite recipes in one place, complete with photos, dietary tags, and serving size details. Easily adjust serving sizes for your family.

Paste any online recipe URL into the shortener tool. BiteSize extracts only the essential information (ingredients, steps, cook time) and strips everything else. No ads, no backstory, no popups.

Keep all your saved recipes in one place with personalized folder organization. Create collections by cuisine, occasion, or cooking time.

Add recipes from physical cookbooks by scanning, write your own from scratch, or tweak any online recipe to work for your family. The recipe becomes yours.

While cooking, keep your recipe on screen without it timing out. The screen stays active so you never have to unlock your phone with messy hands.

Hold your finger on any ingredient to view commonly swapped alternatives, useful when you're missing an item or cooking for dietary restrictions.

DEFINING SUCCESS

• Time to reach recipe steps (target: under 10 seconds from open)

• Recipe completion rate (did users cook the full recipe?)

• Saves per user (engagement with the library feature)

• Repeat weekly usage (retention)

• Self-reported frustration reduction vs. existing tools

Reflection & Next Steps

This project taught me how much friction exists in a space that feels 'solved' at first glance. Recipe apps exist, but none fully address the core tension between a blogger's need to monetize content and a cook's need to just make dinner. BiteSize sits in that gap.

WITH MORE TIME:

• Video: Convert recipe videos into scannable text + image format

• Shopping Lists: Auto-generate a shopping list from any saved recipe or weekly meal plan

• Recipe Folder Sharing: Share a folder with a partner, family member, or flatmate

• Collaborative Recipes: Co-edit recipes in real time with another user

I would also want to run longitudinal testing to validate the retention metrics — specifically whether users return to BiteSize week-over-week or revert to recipe blogs out of habit.