A Cooking Machine – Audience Participation & Feedback
This post is the eighth in a series detailing the processes behind the research, design, material selection, online audience building, fundraising, assembly, and programming of a cooking machine. See the column Stories of Food & Tech here.
In this post, I will discuss the process of engaging my audience through cooking. This process is divided into four steps: 1) pre-preparing and cooking a new demo dish, Sichuan spicy chicken, for my cooking machine, 2) cooking three different authentic Chinese dishes among friends, my first “official” guest critics 3) conducting interviews with my friends, and analyzing their feedback.
Section 1: Pre-preparing and testing a new demo dish – Sichuan spicy chicken
“Sichuan spicy chicken” is also known as “Sautéed Diced Chicken with Chili and Pepper, Sichuan Style.” Pre-preparing this demo dish initially seemed like a simple process, but it took much longer than expected. For starters, finding all the ingredients was challenging, as most ingredients for this dish are only available in markets in Chinatown, an area of Boston that is far from where I live. Secondly, apart from chicken, this pre-preparing process requires twenty-one additional ingredients and sauces to complete the dish.
Jia Ho Chinese Supermarket in Chinatown, Boston [i]
Sichuan Spicy Chicken: Pre-preparation Stage (not including sauce)
In order to fully grasp the dish in its full complexity, I tested this demo dish by myself first, following all the steps required for its preparation. The steps are plentiful; you need to deep-fry the sautéed chicken twice during a very short time to ensure its crispy texture, cook three different kinds of chilies in large quantities, andcook most ingredients separately with carefully controlled temperatures before combining them.
Through this process, I realized many of these tasks would be hard to complete using the current design of the cooking machine. For example, there is no deep-fry feature or temperature control feature, and the use of chili is so large it might actually seep into my cooking machine for future recipes if I’m not careful!
Sichuan Spicy Chicken: Final Product
Section 2: Cooking traditional Chinese dishes with my first audience – my friends
Cooking with my friends was a fun and enjoyable process. I pre-prepared ingredients for only one dish, and let my friends pre-prepare all ingredients for the two other dishes.
Dish 1: Bamboo shoots with braised pork ribs
Before inviting my friends over to cook this dish, I pre-prepared all the ingredients. Although my friends enjoyed the cooking process of this dish, they told me that the cooking steps remain complicated and arduous. (They even went as far as to say they probably wouldn’t choose to cook this dish at home, with or without an automatic cooking machine.) This finding was quite surprising to me, particularly since this process cannot be simplified any further.
Bamboo Shoots with Braised Pork Ribs: Braising in Progress
Bamboo Shoots with Braised Pork Ribs: Final Product
Dish 2 & 3: Ma Po tofu and Sichuan spicy chicken
For my second set of dishes, I didn’t pre-prepare any ingredients ahead of time. Instead, I asked my friends to prepare and cook Ma Po tofu and Sichuan spicy chicken, using pre-prepared recipes (see post 7). One of my friends, a vegetarian, decided to give cooking traditional Ma Po tofu a try. The other chose to make Sichuan spicy chicken under my supervision instead.
Aside from being a great time, both cooking evenings proved to be quite insightful. When making Ma Po tofu, my friend Aaron (pseudonym) faced the challenges of pre-preparing the right amount of spices and chilies. Since the pre-preparing step wasn’t intuitive, it took him a pretty long time to finish cooking it.
Despite following the recipe strictly, my two other friends making Sichuan spicy chicken got confused in theircooking. They forgot several ingredients during the pre-preparing stage and got lost in many of the other steps. To help speed up the cooking process, I stepped in and completed some procedures alongside them. Although it took us a long time, the dish eventually came out nicely.
The cooking experience with my second group of friends gave me two insights. First, cooking authentic Chinese dishes on this machine is probably not ideal, but cooking the simplified ones might be. Since pre-preparing a dish took such a long time, it’s best to simplify some pre-preparing steps or discard some non-essential ingredients. Second, even with a dish’s preset procedures put in place on an automatic cooking machine, the cooking steps are not intuitive and need personalization to fit my audience’s taste. As a result, I need to rethink how to make this smart cooking machine and what kind of demo dishes may be best.
Section 3: Conducting interviews & feedback analysis
After cooking sessions were done, I conducted interviews with my friends, asking them various questions about their personal experience cooking these demo dishes and seeking their advice for improving my cooking machine.
Audience’s Favorite Dishes to Make
Sitting behind my desk, I could feel butterflies gathering in my stomach. The clock seemed to be stuck at 1 minute before the scheduled interview time with my Chinese friend Iris (pseudonym) on Zoom. Iris has always been a busy student, and she never really enjoyed cooking. So, to satisfy her taste buds and need for a balanced meal, she orders student discounted lunch/dinner boxes most days.
“Hello,” Iris’s voice quietly entered into my headphone, and her lovely face appeared on my computer screen.
“Hi, Iris,” my anxiety finally settled when I heard her calm voice, “How are you doing?” I still remember the chaos that gave her a sense of unease a few days ago during our Chinese food cooking session. Both of us were starving, but still tried to finish cooking a delicious yet complicated dish. I wondered if Iris felt that it was worth her time.
“I am doing fine. I have some assignments due later today, ” said Iris, “I’m still here to support your project, so shower me with your questions.”
“I’ll try to be quick with our interview. How did you like our cooking session a few days ago?” I suddenly realized that I should speed up the interview, so I continued to ask, “How do you think of my cooking machine project on the Out Of Frame website along with the corresponding questionnaire I sent you?”
“The cooking was fun, but only because I can hang out with you.”, said Iris, “I think there is room for improvement regarding demo dishes for your cooking project. The dish should be easy to prepare and allow users’ adaptation based on their taste.” I took in Iris’s answers, only to be given more feedback on how my demo dishes and the cooking machine can improve in various ways.
As I continued my interviews with five other friends, I learned about their favorite demo dishes and the rationale behind their choices. In order of ranking, the favorite dishes were 1) Indian masala, 2) stir-fried dishes, and 3) tofu dishes (popular among my vegetarian audience). The reasons they chose these dishes are threefold: 1) easy to make, 2) flavors are strong and tasty, and 3) meet their levels of satiety.
My interviewees are from different countries: America, Korea, Japan, India, Spain, and China. As a result, I received comprehensive feedback from them on how to improve these dishes, divided in two broad categories. The first deals with the types of dishes provided: my Spanish friend feels that the demo dishes could also consist of more western ingredients, such as pasta, cheese, and more diversified sources of meat-based protein. My Asian friends want me to include some more Japanese cold dishes, traditional Indian dishes to match their tastes since that’s what they grew up eating. My vegetarian friends also recommend more sources of veggie protein and carbohydrates, such as sweet potatoes/paneer and noodles, to diversify the scope of demo dishes.
Secondly, I also received great ideas for my cooking machine itself. For example, to account for personal preferences, my friends recommended using personalization features for my cooking machine and my demo dishes’ recipes, which could help match specific taste palettes.
During one interview, my engineering friend Aaron (pseudonym) said to me, “Why not try testing various pot sizes and stirrer materials so that you can design a customizable machine?”
“I have thought of your suggestion before,” I replied, “ I’m thinking of making it customizable only after I finish building the first cooking machine, but now I realize that I probably should consider customization features beforehand.”
“Well, I would love to help test your machine and give advice once you start making it.”, said Aaron in a delightful high voice. Aaron was not wrong. I should at least start testing more pot & stirrer choices to see which would work best for various dishes. Because one thing that I learned throughout these interviews is that: although my friends all prefer easy-to-cook and tasty food, they want to cook very different dishes that require customization. However, I should also be careful not to add too many features that complicate the user experience.
As I wrapped up my last interview, I laid back on my chair and finally felt a sense of relief. I could hear the sound of the heat dissipating from my computer. For a moment, I felt so proud of myself that I was willing to put my project out there and learn about my audience’s minds. Even though I thought my cooking machine design was “perfect,” my audience thought otherwise. “Time to get to work.”, I said to myself as I stood up and stretched my arms. I knew, at that moment, that I was ready to tackle the next challenge of developing this cooking machine and making it even better.
Ending Thoughts:
This whole process of engaging my friends and obtaining their feedback was very educational and fun at the same time. Now I have a much clearer view of what my audience wants and the variety of opinions that came out of this cooking week! After this cooking experience, I think I will continue to host monthly cooking & interview sessions, learning and improving my cooking machine as I go along
For the next post, I’ll share my journey of learning swift, the official coding language for an iPhone app, and the cooking machine’s app development process. Stay tuned J