Imagine & design a digital recipe and food platform that is unique, shareable, fun to interact with. And can engage and build communities.

Context

Food in India is a religion, from sun-up to sundown. Every third person is a foodie – either already or a work in progress. Our waking lives are spent discovering India’s length and breadth in its culinary arts and crafts.

As a country the diversity in our cuisines, micro-cuisines, and influences across regions is mind boggling. And there are reasons for it. Neighbouring states influenced food. Colonists influenced food. Trading influenced food. Community practices and traditions influenced food. And the home chefs across billions of homes made and remade their food in their kitchens.

Dining in India has been around communities, terroirs, seasons, local ingredients, cultural factors. If there is one geography that presents the most complex and heterogenous dining across each and every one of its cities, districts and villages, it is India. Temple cuisine, Farm cuisine, Royal recipes, Aristocratic dining, Jungle meals, Satvik dining ….the list simply goes on. Much to the delight of generations of food lovers.

A play of ingredients, artful cooking, methods of cooking that vary across the subcontinent and khansamas, aachis, bawarchis, chefs and especially our own moms, aunts and neighbours who have stirred up magic – this world is first and foremost experiential and a hallmark of our culture.

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Challenges - But…times, they are changing

Time – The paucity of time, expectations of “instant gratification”, and a fast world of sometimes mindless consumption is at cross purposes to what actual cooking craft is.

Makers – The real makers / home chefs are today a very special tribe and this community needs to be preserved and sustained – else this craft and heritage will disappear.

Access and collection – How do we collect unique recipes and dishes from all over? How would you ascertain that they are recipes of actual dishes and food being cooked?

Inspired storytelling – How do we ensure that we keep inspiring successive generations with our food heritage and recipes?

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Trouble? What we want you to hack and solve.

How can you imagine, conceptualise and design a unique recipe platform that is inspiring, educative and equally productive for home chefs or families with great recipes?

How would you envision a platform that helps collect, present and share authentic cuisines, makers and recipes from each and every region and micro-region of India including homes? What would motivate your mom/aunt or cousins to bring their recipes here?

What features would your platform have? What would be your order of priority?

Your work / solutions should cover the following:

  1. What is your story and narrative about?
  2. Your Food & recipe platform needs to be presented visually and digitally with mocks. Ideally present a slide on the site map.
  3. Website mock is needed with 3 pages including one being the home/landing page design (this is a must). Should you want to have innovative pages, it is up to you.
  4. This should be properly branded and designed. This would help us understand your design and navigation logic.
  1. Brand design - Identity, logo, style, mnemonic if any.
  2. Your platform should highlight the key features (not more than 3-4)
  3. How would you present and market these features to get people to onboard and engage? Think how you will get your own homes interested. (How would you keep marketing investments lean and yet productive?)

Remember

  • A platform has multiple ACTORS (Remember TOSCA?)
  • Don’t lose sight of time with research that it compromises your design output. Choose the ideas that work and deliver on outcomes desired.
  • Aim for a seamless user-experience for viewers.
  • Think practical. For example - How would your platform battle language problems?
  • Think of your platform as being a productive platform that delivers on value to the OWNER/S (Think TOSCA).
  • Originality of ideas and design productivity will be marked higher. Please avoid copy/pasting and plagiarising existing platforms.
  • Final output can be PDF/XD/Figma.
  • Each team will present for not more than 15 minutes.
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