recipe app

Sous-Chef
Cook with your hands, not your screen.

Client

Awesomic

ROLE

Product Designer

YEAR

2026

Project description

Project description

Project description

The goal was to explore how a recipe app can work when your hands are busy: voice-guided cooking that adapts to what is in your pantry, without asking you to touch the screen.

Timeline

5 days from research to a clickable prototype.

Background

Awesomic briefed an exploration of a food recipes app, covering recipe search with advanced filters and an active cooking flow. The audience is young adults who cook at home and want something faster and more flexible than following a recipe step by step.

The core problem is friction during cooking: dirty hands, a screen that turns off, and a missing ingredient that forces you to stop and search. Sous-Chef Mode addresses this with hands-free voice navigation and ingredient substitution that keeps the recipe going without pauses.

Way of work 💡

The approach I used for this project

Research & USP

A review of existing recipe apps and a USP framed against the closest alternatives, not as an empty market.

UX Flows & Wireframes

Flows for onboarding, search with filters and active cooking, with wireframes that fixed the structure before visual work.

Onboarding & Pantry Setup

A first-run flow where users set up their pantry, so recommendations and substitutions reflect what they actually have.

To make outstanding UX work, it still needs polished visual design in which I excel as well.

Onboarding & Pantry Setup

A first-run flow where users set up their pantry, so recommendations and substitutions reflect what they actually have.

UI Design

High-fidelity screens for Home, Search Results, Filter Sheet, Recipe Detail and Cook Mode, in one consistent visual language.

Voice Interaction

The decision flow behind spoken substitution: what the app hears, what it swaps and recalculates, and how narration keeps going.

Design System

Colour, spacing and radius tokens as Figma variables, a Lexend type scale, and modular components with variants.

I conduct workshops to come up with new ideas and to promote cross-functional ideation.

Design System

Colour, spacing and radius tokens as Figma variables, a Lexend type scale, and modular components with variants.

Accessibility Audit

Contrast measured on real colour pairs. The primary action colour was corrected from 2.54:1 to 5.48:1 to pass WCAG AA.

I conduct workshops to come up with new ideas and to promote cross-functional ideation.

Accessibility Audit

Contrast measured on real colour pairs. The primary action colour was corrected from 2.54:1 to 5.48:1 to pass WCAG AA.

Functional Prototype

A working React and Tailwind web app built from the Figma tokens and components, with speech recognition for the voice flow.

I conduct workshops to come up with new ideas and to promote cross-functional ideation.

Functional Prototype

A working React and Tailwind web app built from the Figma tokens and components, with speech recognition for the voice flow.

Documentation

A research and USP page, user flows with wireframes, and a build spec that translates the Figma file into code.

I conduct workshops to come up with new ideas and to promote cross-functional ideation.

Documentation

A research and USP page, user flows with wireframes, and a build spec that translates the Figma file into code.

Solution

Solution

Solution

Sous-Chef is a mobile recipe app designed so you can cook from start to finish without touching the screen, and that adapts the recipe when your pantry does not match it.

Voice-Guided Cooking

Cook Mode reads each step aloud and responds to commands such as "next step", "repeat" and "how much salt". Step text is large and high-contrast, with a sticky timer and a clear mic-active indicator.

Live Substitution

Say "I don't have butter" and the app swaps the ingredient, recalculates quantities, cook time and nutrition, and keeps narrating. There is no confirmation step to interrupt the flow.

Pantry-Aware Search

Onboarding captures what is already in the pantry. Recipe cards show how much of each recipe you already have, and filters cover diet, intolerances and equipment.

Accessible by Design

Colour, spacing and type come from a single token system. Primary actions pass WCAG AA contrast at 5.48:1, and the tap targets follow Material Design's 48dp guideline.