Who is the software for?
Recipe Organizer software is intended for those who cook often and already have some experience with cooking, but also for users who cook only occasionally. Both of these user groups will use the program in a specific way. Users who are proficient in cooking usually want to get an immediate overview of what they can cook today, if they know that they have some basic ingredients at home, such as ground beef and peppers. These users select these basic ingredients in the program, such as the ingredients they have at home, and the program suggests all the recipes where such ingredients occur. They then look at a recipe in the database and the program immediately informs them what they need. still arrange so that they can prepare a meal according to this recipe. This group of users can or. Estimate what can be replaced by missing raw materials.
The second way to use the program will be more often preferred by users less proficient in cooking. These users choose as many ingredients as they have available at home. The program will then suggest recipes according to which they can cook meals immediately. Because these users have really selected all (or almost all) of the ingredients they have available at home, they will probably be able to cook the food immediately according to the first recipe (or the first few recipes) in the program-generated list. If some raw materials are missing, again in the program they immediately see what still needs to be bought. So this is a more accurate way to use the program.
The difference between the above ways of working with the program is obvious. The first, experienced user wanted to know which dishes can be cooked from certain basic ingredients, while he can already get a picture of what other ingredients he will need and whether to go to the store. The second user, who did not have much experience with cooking, did not know which ingredients were crucial and which could be easily replaced by something. So he needed a more detailed and accurate proposal of possible recipes from the program. However, users usually combine both ways of working with the system. If they move in the area of familiar foods, they use the first method more, if they want to try one of the lesser known (eg exotic) dishes, they use the second, more accurate method. We can use the program in other ways. We may want to use it "only" as a very clear database of all our favorite recipes, because it is possible to add your own recipes to the system with photos of dishes. Of course, we can work with such recipes in the ways described above or, for example, just quickly and easily search for recipes by alphabet, etc. We do not have to waste time scrolling through various cookbooks, or go through your own recipes that we have noted somewhere.
The selection of ingredients available is greatly facilitated by intelligent search functions, allowing the user to enter the texts of ingredients with a certain degree of generality, ie we do not have to select them directly from the list of ingredients in the database, because we do not need to know their exact name. This option will make it very easy for the user to select a group of ingredients that we have purchased. E.g. if we have peppers available and we suspect that in some recipes this ingredient could be specified in more detail, eg red pepper, green pepper, etc. We will write only the text of paprika in the list of ingredients available to us. The program then proceeds in search of suitable recipes as if we had all the ingredients in which the word paprika appears. Similarly, if we want to express that we have a whole group of ingredients in which the word beef occurs, we insert only the text beef into the list of available ingredients. This is again useful, because in some recipes there may be, for example, ingredients called boiled beef or beef leg, etc. (The general name of the ingredient can be entered in more words - eg beef).
As an additional tool, the user also has a simple search function that searches only those recipes containing ingredients that the user selects. This is useful if you just want to view all the recipes containing eg beef. Ingredients can be entered more generally again, and intelligent search functions will be applied when searching for them.