Design implications for a community-based social recipe system

Abstract

We introduced the concept of a community-based social recipe system which suggests recipes to groups of users based on available ingredients from these users (i.e. who can be from the same household or different households). In this paper we discuss the relevance and desirability of such a system and how it should be designed based on user studies. We identified the relevance of targeting ingredients and found positive expected experiences with the system such as to prevent habitual waste-related behavior, awareness of in-home food availability, creativity in cooking, moments for surprises and spontaneity, coordination among a group of friends, education and connectedness. Possible reasons of not using the system are trust and the inconvenience of distance among users in a group that are suggested with a social recipe. From our findings, we specify design implications for the system and optimization functions aiming at the prevention of food waste at a collective level.