Traditional cookbooks are great if you can decide what to make before you go to the grocery store, but are little help to hungry students with limited kitchen supplies. This project is not a cookbook, however, and is designed to address the question of "what I can make for dinner with what I currently have." This is a tricky question, and immediately drags in the problem of acquring a recipe database to search. This proposal is for a community-provided recipe database with feedback and moderation systems.
The emphasis here is to provide as simple an interface as possible for basic use by minimizing unnecessary visual elements and focusing on core functionality. The system is not meant to be a health monitor or calorie counter. The ideal design will provide a simple, quick and easy way to find delicious recipes based on a list of ingredients which are either available or unavailable.
The system is targetted to home users. As a result, any design needs to take into account the distance between the kitchen and the home office. Recipes must be easy to print out or transfer into some portable device (cell phone via SMS, PDA via hotlink, &c.) The target audience includes a wide range of culinary and technological expertise, and so there should be concessions made to simplicity, but also more advanced interfaces available ?under the hood.?
The system is not targetted to restaurants or other professionals, nor is it meant to provide dietary advice such as nutritional information, or financial advice such as food costs which vary greatly depending on time of year, and location and would tie the system to a particular region. The system is not intended to be multilingual. This would greatly increase the difficulty of adminstrating the database.