Apron

A good recipe should be easy to follow and understand. Unfortunately, many recipes are anything but clear. They’re full of jargon and technical terms, and they often skip over important details. As a result, it can make it hard to know what people are supposed to do at any given point when they’re following a recipe, unfortunately contributing to mistakes.

One way to make recipes more comprehensible is to create a recipe template. The template gives structure to recipes and prevents people from pausing during cooking. After parsing through ~8,000 recipes and studying their contents, we were able to conclude that each step in a recipe should describe six key pieces of information. They were technique, quantity, ingredient, utensil, time, and heat.

Using this framework, we rebuilt recipes from the ground up to follow this structure. As a result, this lets you focus only on the important details.

The average American has access to more than ten connected devices in their household and the personal use of these devices include entertainment, online shopping and banking, home appliances, to name a few. The exponential growth in use of these technologies at home, proved the need to properly use, display, watch and store them. Consequently, there are thousands of designs for tablet/smartphone mounts. The market is vast, considering the different situations in which the devices are used, yet very few mounts designed specifically for the kitchen.

For a couple of years now, the days of paper recipes have started to slowly disappear. The internet is flooded with recipes of all kinds, lengths, difficulty levels and nutritional benefits. The use of the tablet, smartphone and even laptop is starting to be prevalent inside the kitchen. The modern chef is becoming more and more familiar to follow recipes that contain visual elements and sound. Thinking with google marketing strategists insist: “While nearly half of all adults watch food videos on YouTube, millennials (ages 18 to 34) view the most food content, watching 30% more food content on YouTube, on average, than other demographics.” This hunger for guidance in preparation correlates with inconvenient placing of electronic devices in close proximity of fresh ingredients.

In response to this specific situation, the Apron mount is designed precisely for cooking. It is adjustable to place in a variety of kitchen layouts and has strong compatibility with multiple devices. It rotates on its axis to provide views in different angles and contains a lever that helps with movement while maintaining hands off the interface.

Humans have donned aprons for millennia. We aimed to bring their utilitarian value into the modern era through the design and fabrication of a smart garment that serves three main functions: pace, mess and context. Through our user testing, we determined ideal ergonomic placement for our capacitive touch interaction. The main goal of this gesture is to control the pace of the audio and visual instructions provided to the chef. We wanted to ensure the Apron could still maintain its original function, so we made sure all vulnerable technological components are removable for easy washing. Overall, we believe that putting on an apron provides valuable context that prepares our chefs physically and mentally to succeed in the kitchen.

The Apron has embedded micro-electronics woven into the textiles to receive gestures and communicate back with digital activity. Seamlessly integrated, our technology gives cooking a new layer of interaction. Every preparation step is at the tip of your fingers, without intervening with your smart devices. With a small gesture, one can glide through a new recipe like a master. Access to every step, utensils, quantities and tips to cook properly without even reaching for your phone. For example, with a simple brush of your chest you can get your next direction and navigate through the cooking experience.