| I've been developing a recipe search engine and meal planner at https://www.reciperadar.com/ -- all the code is free and open source. I think the two largest challenges it has at the moment are: - Developer experience / infrastructure setup: the service is Kubernetes-based, composed primarily of Python+Flask microservices, and although the setup steps are documented[1], they're not yet automated. - User interface: my lack of user interface design skills are fairly apparent, I think. Having some clear UI goals to work towards would be helpful - there's likely some overlap with product design questions here (what should be the range of functionality that the the app offers?) To be transparent: although I hope to offer compensation in future, the project is zero-revenue currently, and I don't feel ready to provide any monetary returns yet. If that hasn't put you off: any feedback is welcome, from discussion comments to pull requests to business model questions/critiques! PS: Don't forget to mention one or two of your own side projects if there's anything you're looking for help with, too. [1] - https://github.com/openculinary/infrastructure/ |
It sounds like you need to spend time using it yourself, thinking over it's use, getting others to use it, watching them get stuck, listening to their questions. Get family or friends who have never used the app to use it while you are there and find out what they struggle with. For knowing what functionality it needs - find people who are interested in paying for that kind of product - family and friends are great for doing the app equivalent of proofreading, but unless they are in your market they may well have lots of ideas, but you'll have no idea if they're the right ideas to build.
Some confusing things about your UI (in order of me noticing them):
- "Are there any ingredients that are not available?" - this looks like it needs rewording to something like "avoid these ingredients" or "any common ingredients not available", I knew what you meant, the search will exclude recipes with those items, but it felt weird to read - there are probably 1000s of ingredients that I don't have in my kitchen, I'm not going list those. I might list things like milk if I where cooking for a lactose intolerant person in that box, or I might use that for if I where out of something common.
- on laptop screen, box around the search form has a huge gap to the right of the form inputs. I'd either make the inputs a % width of that box, or put them in two columns when wide enough
- the previously mentioned thing about inputs needing to treat , being entered as if the user had tapped space
- I'd probably expect to see filters for vegan/veggie/pescatarian / low gi etc but then maybe not - that's the kind of thing you could build if you run out of things from proper users - unfortunately I rarely cook proper meals so I'm not really in your target market I would assume.
- Shopping list feature is a feature I could use, if it where better, (though I currently use a shopping list app that I threw together myself by quickly modifying another thing I'd made previously, and it works reasonably well for me) - your icons seem too small and fiddly, and I'd want a few buttons on screen of common things - so I can tap those instead of typing them.