Samsung Food: Recipe AI

Outcome

After the willingness-to-pay tests we put recipe conversion first on the AI roadmap. It went live as one of Samsung Food’s headline AI features, in Beta at IFA in September 2023 and in Samsung Food+ on iOS and Android later that year. The new Personalize button opened the AI tweaks, and users mistook it for the free recipe editor. In December 2023 we fixed the button so it opened a choice between the free manual edit and the paid AI tweak.

Context

Ingredient substitutions answered strong demand only in part. Most swaps adapted a recipe to a diet, one ingredient at a time. We learned from user feedback 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 in Samsung Food, and the request fitted those experiments.

Testing which AI features users would pay for

We had explored AI concepts for creators, for users and for inspiration. We needed to know which ones users wanted enough to pay for, and what each would cost to build.

To inform the direction, we took two sets, AI inspiration and Cooking Ideas, to moderated concept tests of willingness to pay. We rated users’ appetite for each concept against its technical cost on a matrix, so we could pick the concept with the strongest demand for the effort it needed.

Prioritising recipe conversion

01Round one

Letting users review a conversion before saving it

A converted recipe could miss the user’s dietary requirements, so users had to check it before it became one of their own recipes. In the first concept, the converted recipe opened in the Recipe Builder with a prompt to review it. As with an ingredient swap, it was saved as the user’s own copy with a card linking to the original, and the original recipe stayed as it was. These screens predate the Samsung Food visual system and use Whisk’s green.

Choosing the label and placement for the tweaks

Users had to find the tweaks on a recipe and understand what they would do. In Q3 2023 we ran a usability test on balance at three strengths, named light tweaks, smart balance and full makeover. Users reached it 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. In the Samsung Food+ design we kept the three strengths, with light tweaks renamed light nudge. We also kept the Health Score entry, so users could reach the tweaks from a recipe’s Health Score as well as from its ingredients.

02Round two

Converting recipes to the user’s diet

In the Premium survey, a user on a low sodium diet had written that it was hard to figure out whether a recipe could be modified. For Samsung Food+ we designed Change diet, which went live on iOS and Android. When the user had set dietary preferences, the diet was preselected from them, so they did not have to choose it again. Before saving, a prompt asked them to check the result against their dietary requirements. A conversion could take up to 20 seconds, so we designed a waiting screen that told users how long it might take.

Releasing in Beta, then leading Basic users to Samsung Food+

Basic, Beta, Freemium and Premium users each needed their own version of the tweaks. For the IFA launch in September 2023, only Beta users on Android saw the four tweaks, under a Beta tag. The four were balance, make it vegan, simplify and create a fusion recipe.

At the Samsung Food+ launch, balance was open to Premium users. For Basic users, its sheet had a Plus tag and a Get Samsung Food+ button that led to the upgrade. We drew a three-shot trial for Basic users and parked it 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.

In December we made the button open a choice between editing the recipe manually, which stays free for every user, and personalising it with AI, tagged Plus or Beta. We had drawn the same choice as an option in the August design jam, where it was questioned as too complex to build.

What was parked, and what was released

We parked the AI inspiration concepts, which tested below recipe conversion.

Sources

• AI ideas ↗Figma, Q2 2023, the concepts and the willingness-to-pay sets
• Appetite against technical costMiro, 2023
• Recipe AI ↗Figma, from Beta to the December 2023 hot fix
• Balance usability test ↗Figma prototype, Q3 2023
• Change diet ↗Figma prototype, October and November 2023