4 ms·
Initial thoughts having not paid for the app but review screen shots and the website. Advanced warning - these comments aren't particularly positive. If you're
by Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Initial thoughts having not paid for the app but review screen shots and the website.
Advanced warning - these comments aren't particularly positive. If you're looking for a pep talk, look away now.
Let's start with first impressions before I dig into functionality and actual results:
1) It needs to look nicer. People who like to cook tend to like things to look appealing, particularly as a $1.99 app.
2) Garlic isn't a great example to have as your screen shot - it's not inspiring and it's the sort of thing you have in a draw anyway, not something you pick to make a meal out of. Try something more substantial and interesting - Aubergine / Eggplant say (though the main point below relates to the result for Egg plant).
3) Speaking personally, you need a vegetarian flag which culls all meat and fish (or ideally options to remove meat, fish, poultry individually.)
All of that is simple to fix and you could possibly do in a day or so (most of which would be tagging things as vegetarian or not).
Getting on to the actual results, your main problem is that your data sucks big time, as in unusable, pointless big time in it's current form.
Look at the screen shot which shows matches for garlic and includes cornstarch.
Huh?
Cornstarch is a thickener, it goes with things you want to be thicker, it doesn't go with things you don't want to be thicker. I have no idea why it would or wouldn't go with garlic specifically (especially as garlic is solid and therefore needs no thickening).
I'm guessing that you've automatically mined this data but however you've got it you need a human to review it as I suspect that there are things in there you have to cull because they make no sense and undermine the credibility of the rest of the data.
Do a search on egg plant and you'll get among the results cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, black and white pepper (too common), salt (ditto), flour, butter and vegetable oil. These are not things you match with an ingredient, they're things you season, prepare or use to cook an ingredient. In terms of what you're doing they're meaningless and should be hidden.
Again, that's all easily fixable, you just need to skim the data and pull together an exclude list and edit these out of the results set.
But it then lists semi-sweet chocolate chips, banana, raisins and vanilla extract. Now these may go with egg plant and there may be recipes that use both but they're not natural matches (in the way that say tomatoes - not including on the list incidentally - are). The average user is going to look at them and go "seriously? what am I meant to cook with Egg Plant and Banana".
Fortunately you have a link for that. Sort of. Click on banana in the egg plant results and you get a list of things that go with egg plant and banana (same issues as above) but also a link to recipe puppy for those ingredients. This is good in theory but have you looked at it?
Try it. The link is for egg (rather than egg plant) and banana. Not sure if the issue is yours or recipe puppy's (though I think the later - plant is in the URL). Even if it didn't drop the plant, recipe puppy thinks eggplant is one word, you think it's two so they'd never match.
But worst of all, recipe puppy seems to do an "or" search rather than an "and" one. In any case it certainly can't find me these supposed aubergine and banana recipes which means I'm none the wiser as to what I'm meant to be cooking and makes me ask again where the data is from.
Sorry to be harsh but I wouldn't be selling this in it's current form, I think you're going to damage your brand if you don't work out some of these issues before it gets out there and if that happens you're in the sort of trouble you can't undo easily.
- ismarc 16y agoYou should look at the results for properly entering 'eggplant' instead of the incorrect 'egg plant'. It shows the issue is that it looked for egg when you meant eggplant, which is a different problem to solve entirely.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoIf egg plant is wrong (and I'm happy to accept that it is - I'm English, I was translating aubergine to North American and failing...) then it shouldn't show me results for it and it certainly it shouldn't show the results for egg without saying "did you mean..." at the very least. As you say that's a relatively easy fix (and one that should be made) but I think there is still a deeper underlying issue with the data. I agree that the eggplant list is lots better (though still includes kosher salt, water, vegetable oil and a load of other meaningless things) but my issues about the data returned for egg is still valid - I don't care about half of the list whether it's for egg, eggplant or something else altogether. It all comes back to the same overall point - the data is mined and needs some serious work to make it useful. The occasional oddity is one thing but there are too many here. I'm not saying I don't like the idea, I do, and I don't think the work needed is major, it's just that I don't think it's something that should be released in it's current form.
- halostatue 16y agoWhich suggests that aubergine should be added as a common alias for eggplant and that courgette should be added for zucchini ;)
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoSpring onions for scallions - the list goes on...
- kbrower 16y agoThanks for your feedback. I already added the exclusion list and definitely will be working on my design and screenshots. I did have plans to add vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free flags(I am also a vegetarian) The problem with the "egg plant" search is that it is guessing the ingredient incorrectly. Unfortunately, the data is not perfect and this does happen sometimes. I fixed this instance, and continue to fix errors as I find them/ am told of them. Recipe Pupppy does an "OR" search but the most relevant recipes do show up first. Now that I fixed the error with "egg plant" being interpreted as "egg", it will find the right recipes: http://www.recipepuppy.com/?i=egg+plant%2C+banana&q=eggplant http://www.recipepuppy.com/?i=egg+plant%2C+banana&q=eggp...