THE CHALLENGE

Make a cooking app that makes it easy to discover, cook and keep track of recipes.

There are so many recipes available for free on the internet. When we started work on the Times Cooking app it was important to have a clear value prop for the product to differentiate it from all the others.

Our value prop was inline with most Times content  — high quality recipes created by trusted cooks. We also placed a big emphasis on creating a great discovery experience to help people figure out what to cook for dinner, a clear pain point we identified when speaking to users.

Key ideas

• Showcase high quality recipes from NYT cooks

• Create a balance between editorial content and personalization

• Make it easy to discover and browse recipes for all occasions, situations, tastes

• Teach foundational cooking techniques

I joined the team after the first version of the app launched. There were a few features we iterated on after the initial launch.

Editorial collections

Our team worked with the editors to frame the content in new and more engaging ways. We experimented with different layouts to bring visual variety to the pages.

Foundational cooking skills

The team filmed tutorial videos to teach people basic kitchen skills like “how to make steak” “how to use an instant pot” and more advanced skills like “how to make sourdough bread”. We put these together in media-rich pages that we used to add depth to the product.

Find everything for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a busy time for our team, working closely with the editors to pull together a collection that would take advantage of the high organic traffic we saw every year. This “super collection” included recipes, guides and collections to showcase our best Thanksgiving content.

THE RESULT

A new subscription product for The Times

The product was free for the first year to generate buzz, engagement and gather user feedback. It continues to be highly successful as a stand alone subscription service from The New York Times.