Learn to cook for yourself: Employing gamification in a recipe app design to promote a healthy living experience to young generation

Abstract

Nowadays, many young adults are relying on food delivery and unable to cook after they start to live alone. Different kinds of issues exist such as unhealthy diet behavior, environmental pollution, and loss of cooking culture. In this paper, we aim to design a recipe application that can influence young adults and encourage them to cook more and keep a healthier diet. Through a user-centered design approach, we first researched the young adults cooking behavior. After a questionnaire survey and two rounds of interview study, we drew insights from the raw data, which helped determine the design direction and method. In this design, the gamification strategy was selected as the primary feature of design to make the young adults more willing to cook. A recipe app-COOKIT was designed as a game, a repository, and a platform to motivate the cooking experience.