Home Cooking App: Pick a Cook Segment, Solve Its Pain Points and Scope Version One

You are asked to design a new app for cooking. The prompt leaves everything else open: who the app serves, which problem it solves, which device it runs on and what success looks like are yours to define. Walk through which cooks you would build for, which of their problems you would tackle first, what the first version would include and how you would tell whether it is working. ```hint Cooking is several different jobs Someone making a quick dinner for one, a parent feeding a family every night, a beginner learning basic techniques and a host planning a dinner party get stuck at different moments: deciding what to make, getting the ingredients, following the steps or dealing with what is left over. Choose one group and the moment that hurts most before you list features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What is the app's main goal: attracting new users, repeat engagement, helping people eat more healthily, or revenue? - Which surface comes first: a phone app, the web, or a voice assistant or smart display that works hands-free on the kitchen counter? - Does "cooking" mean everyday home meals only, or does it also cover baking, special diets and professional kitchens? - Is Google building it, so it could connect to Search, Assistant or a Google account, or is it a standalone product? Which country launches first? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A segmentation of home cooks (household size, skill, how often and why they cook) and a reasoned choice of one segment - The chosen segment's cooking journey, from deciding what to make through shopping, cooking and leftovers, with its sharpest pain points ranked - Solutions tied to those pain points, prioritized into a lean first version, with a clear reason someone would use it instead of free recipe websites and videos - Success metrics built around meals actually cooked rather than downloads or recipe views, plus guardrails - Risks such as where the recipe content comes from, recipe accuracy, allergens and the cold start for personalization ### Follow-up Questions - Recipes are free and plentiful on the web. How would you test, before building much, that people would switch to your app? - How would the design change if the main surface were a smart display or voice assistant in the kitchen? - How would you know that a user actually cooked a recipe, rather than only opened it?