Hungry and Searching

Losing track of time and finding myself hungry with no prepped food in the fridge at 6pm is a common occurrence for a student like me. In my fridge sat a lonely cauliflower, a stick of cucumber and some shredded parmesan cheese. I went on Google and searched “cauliflower and cucumber and cheese recipe” hoping to get some inspiration even though that combination itself sounds pretty disgusting. That didn’t go so well. Some recipes were way too complicated, some didn’t have pictures and some had mixed or no reviews. I was left uninspired… and decided to click on Google images instead to find pictures FIRST and THEN hopefully recipes. In the end, I settled on making some cauliflower curry fritters – which turned out to be okay.

A few days ago while browsing the net, I bumped into this site called GOJEE that could have solved my prior food headaches! This site sources food and drink recipes from all over the world. Users simply type in the ingredients they would like to work with and pictures of dishes would return. Now this type of recipe search engine is not new… but what I love about Gojee is that it is really visual. Instead of spitting out lists of potential recipes, the site returns amazing pictures of food that selected food lovers and bloggers around the world have taken the time to take and share. The internet is very good at providing overwhelming amount of information. When someone is already hungry, sifting through pages and pages of unpromising recipes does not make the experience very fun. Instead of overloading the user with text, Gojee simplifies everything through tantalizing, mouth-watering yet organized photos of food – usually in HD.

Although recipe searches online have been around for a very long time, I find Gojee to be really good at creating a unique user experience. It is able to filter recipes to come up with tailored recipes based on users’ “craves” and “dislikes.” In essence, Gojee does not produce any content but bridge users to users. This is definitely a trend that I have been noticing… websites or applications that link and streamline how users search or rely on other user-produced content. Something similar (but not exactly the same) would be the rising popularity of Pinterest. It seems to me that e-marketing and web content nowadays are starting to shift and rely heavily on community-produced content for not just credibility but also for engagement.