Classic Techniques in New Domains: An Alternative Recipe

Abstract

In this paper, we adapt the classic technique of depicting a process as a structured workflow to suit the standard recipe. Cooking can be thought of as a small data, big user task. A single recipe encompasses only a small amount of information, but is utilized across a large user base. Our goal was to understand and measure the benefits of tailoring the presentation of a recipe to suit a specific faction of users. As such, our more technical rendering was paired with a technically proficient user base, resulting in dramatic gains in both the speed and accuracy with which the information was interpreted. These benefits serve to motivate our continued work towards automatically translating recipes into a structured data format that can be easily reconfigured into this and other representations of the information to enable a more customized experience across a large and varied user base.