Samsung Food: Recipe AI

Context

Ingredient substitutions answered strong demand only in part. User feedback made it clear that adapting whole recipes to dietary requirements and restrictions would give users fully personalised alternatives as they browsed for recipes.

We had already started testing a proof of concept internally, which generated and converted recipes from presets or custom prompts with our food graph as context. In Q2 2023 Samsung asked for headline AI features, and the request played into those experiments.

Concept tests

I run user research to inform a direction or to validate a solution.

We explored AI concepts for creators, users and inspiration, took two sets, AI inspiration and Cooking Ideas, to moderated willingness-to-pay tests, and rated users’ appetite for each against its technical cost.

Prioritising recipe conversion

01Round one

Converting a recipe into a reviewed copy

As with a swap, the converted recipe was saved as a copy, after a prompt to review it. These screens predate the Samsung Food visual system and use Whisk’s green.

Testing the balance tweak and its entry

In Q3 2023 we tested balance at three strengths from a chip labelled Balance or Personalize, with and without the Braze message, and in a third variant from the Health Score tab too.

Personalize became the label on every later board, and the Samsung Food+ design kept the strengths and the Health Score entry.

02Round two

Changing a recipe’s diet

Change diet went live in Samsung Food+ on iOS and Android, with the diet preselected from the user’s preferences and a prompt to check the result against them before saving. A conversion could take up to 20 seconds, so the wait had its own screen.

Releasing the tweaks by audience

For the IFA launch in September 2023, only Beta users on Android saw the four tweaks, under a Beta tag. At the Samsung Food+ launch, balance was open to Premium users and led Basic users to the upgrade. A three-shot trial for Basic users was drawn and parked for a later release.

03After launch

Separating the free editor from the paid tweak

After the Samsung Food+ launch, users complained that they had lost the free recipe editor. They had most likely taken the new Personalize button for it.

The December fix made the button open a choice between editing the recipe manually, which stays free, and personalising it with AI, tagged Plus or Beta. An option in the August design jam had drawn the same choice, questioned then as too complex to build.

What was parked, and what was released

Outcome

Recipe AI went live in Beta at IFA in September 2023 and in Samsung Food+ on iOS and Android later that year. The tweaks performed very well with users in testing.