[PhillyG]

I wouldn't say your UI is bad - it's certainly a reasonable MVP at this point. You could probably stick ads on it or a newsletter sign up on it for people interested in it. If I wasn't looking for UI improvements to point out, first glance would be it's pretty good, and what I'd expect - I certainly wouldn't immediately bounce - though the input boxes do need to support splitting ingredients by typing a comma - typing enter is not instinctive and even once I'd figured that out, when going again I "messed up". I listed ingredients as I'd expect to for an input box, and when I moved to the next box my input was lost.

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.

[jka]

Thank you for the response!

> support splitting ingredients by typing a comma

That sounds sensible, yep; filed as https://github.com/openculinary/frontend/issues/210

> "Are there any ingredients that are not available?" ... I knew what you meant, the search will exclude recipes with those items, but it felt weird to read

That makes sense too. If I remember correctly, that prompt was most-recently rephrased during a pandemic-related lockdown (with subsequent unpredictable ingredient shortages), and so that context may have affected the choice of wording; either way, I agree that it's odd phrasing and should be updated.

Hopefully that'll be a relatively quick correction, although it will require internationalization (currently machine-translated without review by native language speakers, not ideal); it's filed as https://github.com/openculinary/internationalization/issues/...

> box around the search form has a huge gap to the right of the form inputs

> I'd probably expect to see filters for vegan/veggie/pescatarian / low gi etc but then maybe not

Two good points here, and possibly combinable. Perhaps those dietary recipe filters could be placed in the excess space available next to the search controls.

Today the search API does theoretically support filtering[1] on a few dietary properties -- but that functionality isn't yet visible and available to the user.

Feature tracker filed as https://github.com/openculinary/frontend/issues/211

- Shopping list feature ... 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

The frequently-added-items shortcut idea is smart. The shopping list feature and the meal planner are under-attended components of the app relative to the recipe search/explore components, in my opinion. Let me think about this for a while, there are a few considerations and I'd like to be concise when responding about this in more detail.

[1] - https://github.com/openculinary/api/blob/72075f66cd6fda5b809...

[jka]

Hey - if you re-read recent threads and see this reply, great; and no worries if not - thanks for your feedback, in either case.

All I'll say for now is that arguably the shopping list should become an important nexus within the app. Like an accounting entry-book with both order history and also yet-to-be-filled orders, it could be used to approximate the kitchen inventory at points-in-time. That should become powerful when changes in inventory are used to feed back into current and future meal planning.

Separately: advice noted about testing with friends and family. My partner and I use the app at home once or twice a week, and following recent improvements it's probably time to reach out for more feedback from others.

I find maintaining a balance between asking for (re)evaluation of the app and a hope for regular everyday conversations a little tricky; but to be honest I've always found the latter challenging, probably.