Would using a visual food recipe improve independence?

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hey everyone,

I am an older cousin of two younger boys that both have been diagnosed with autism. I've been recently working on a project that redesigns the classic food text recipe. The mother of the two boys reached out to me a few days ago after seeing my project and prompted me to turn to the Wrong Planet community for feedback and support. She mentioned that her boys were always taught with visual learning tools and tend to learn much better with visuals than without. She thought that our project would also be extremely helpful for older autistic adults and would help improve their independence in the kitchen allowing them a better opportunity to cook for themselves.

Simply put, the project redesigns the classic text recipe by using illustrations of ingredients, actions, and arrows to represent the steps needed to create the final dish. It's a reinvention of the text recipe to present the instructions in a graphical illustrated format.

I'm reaching out to the Wrong Planet community today for suggestions and comments about our project and to ask whether the community believes that this project would be something that could truly benefit the autistic community as a whole. I've provided an example of our illustrated, graphical recipe format - we are calling it the GULA recipe. TallyMan has generously added this picture as a reply to our post - A larger version can be seen here by replacing the [dot] with periods.

i[dot]imgur[dot]com/1eFLs[dot]jpg

So, do you think that this type of project would benefit the autistic community - helping younger children learn visually by cooking with their parents and older adults by promoting independence in the kitchen?
Any type of advice, suggestions, and comments are welcome! We've started a Kickstarter campaign that has raised $4,600 in ten days for this project - if you are interested in learning more - feel free to contact me!

Last edited by gularecipe on 25 Jul 2012, 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here is your link:



GULA Kickstarter Campaign Link

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/107 ... d-cookbook

hey everyone,

I was really hoping to get some feedback on this post and see that we didn't get any replies yesterday.

Guess I'll ask once more:
Do you think that this type of project would benefit the autistic community - helping younger children learn visually by cooking with their parents and older adults by promoting independence in the kitchen?

I am glad that you are creating visual recipes. A visual cookbook is something that I have always wanted.

I would say that the best learning format for me would be a picture story like this:

Text direction.
Picture of what the thing looks like.
Text direction.
Picture of what the thing looks like.
Text direction.
Picture of what the thing looks like.

The picture that you have is very attractive, and I like it a lot as a summary of the cooking process, but I would like to see the process step by step first, then have the summarizing picture at the end. There is a lot of information in the picture, and autistic kids and adults could have trouble processing that much unfamiliar material at once.

I would present it step-by-step with more pictures:

Cut - text and pictures
Dip - text and pictures
Coat - text and pictures
Cook - text and pictures
Cover -text and pictures
Summary - the picture that you have now

Once I understand the process, then I can just think about the summary picture when I need to use the recipe again, but when I am learning the recipe, I would prefer to have the step-by-step picture story.

I think it's a great idea... there are many visual aides that train workers in the food service industry, most notable fast-food chains show videos as part of the training and provide illustrated cards for making their products.

Is this more of a nonprofit type of thing? I'm a chef by trade, if you need any help with dishes or graphics, I'm looking for freelance or volunteer work.

Edited to add: I read your additional comments, it is a nonprofit. Do you have enough people to do the work? I have extensive knowledge of cooking procedures and 10 years in the industry ranging from fast food to fine dining.

Edited to add: I've misunderstood... you're looking for feedback? Mine would be that the graphics are too colorful and confusing. As a chef I can't readily see that one with the shrimp tacos and I know how to make that. It's hard to tell what you're doing with the lime other than adding lots of ingredients to it.

I think that separating the steps further would work better, take the shrimp taco:

Shrimp
Toppings
Shells

Do more of a flow chart that prepares the shrimp, the topping and heats up the tortillas in separate steps then have a card that combines the parts. This would be great for systemizing people.

Thanks for the replies - I'm glad we got the conversation started!

@btbnnyr - I'm glad that you are excited about visual cookbooks - so are we! I think what your suggesting is actually very interesting. I do agree there is a lot of information in the picture - but, what we think is awesome is that it is the same amount of information as a large text paragraph that explains the same thing. We have just used an illustrated graphic format. Do you think that the visual format is more overwhelming for autistic kids and adults than the chunk of text? This is what we are aiming to fix. I do agree that your step-by-step approach with more pictures might be really appropriate specifically as a teaching tool for these individuals. Maybe we make a separate tool just for this which looks as follows. In the beginning we start with a blank illustration and each step we "draw" in the step to be completed. Therefore, at each step we have a new image and at the end we have the overall recipe. This might limit the amount of information displayed and prevent one from being overwhelmed but still provide the visual format that promotes visual learning. What are your thoughts?

@kirayng - I'm excited that you connected the food service industry to our project. We think that this will be a huge advantage to our design. Additionally, some kitchen help around the country has english as a second language. The fact that our recipe format is relatively language independent is very important in this regard. We are excited about this.
This Kickstarter is absolutely a nonprofit type project. We are not taking any part of the pledged money as a "profit". We want this initial cookbook to be focused on making a difference and promoting people to live healthier, smarter lives by cooking at home by giving them a new and exciting way to learn to cook new dishes.
I'm more interested here in feedback specifically geared toward whether this could truly impact the autistic community - but I really appreciate the feedback about the graphic design. We agree that the shrimp tacos recipe is a bit too much and is complex - at 11 ingredients it is at the higher end of what we feel would be feasible to illustrate.
At this point we do have a very small team that is working to make this cookbook and this Kickstarter successful. I'm excited that you would be interested in helping in some form - if you would like to discuss how you could get involved feel free to send us a PM! We could absolutely use your knowledge of cooking and industry expertise!

I'd love to have a visual cookbook as some of the words in cookbooks I don't actually understand, and it's better to have an idea of what your food should look like in the process before you add more to it.

@MightyMorphin - Do you think that in the beginning of each recipe we start with a blank illustration and each step we "draw" in the step to be completed. Therefore, at each step we have a new image and at the end we have the overall recipe. This might limit the amount of information displayed and prevent one from being overwhelmed but still provide the visual format that promotes visual learning. Would this be better for people like you that want to have an idea of what the food should look like in the process? Do you think using this step by step "graphical recipe" would be better than just showing one overall illustration?

I think this sort of cookbook would be a huge help to me, especially if everything is precise (quantities, temperatures, time to cook, etc) and nothing is left to guessing. Typical recipes are extremely frustrating for me and I need them interpreted - either something I do before I try to cook, or something someone else does for me.

It would possibly help children on the spectrum.

This cookbook would be brill I think if people know what their food is meant to look like through every step and have illustrations of what bit goes in next (so images of the food as its being made, and the ingredients being added in certain steps).

@Verdandi and @JanuaryMan - We're excited that you both find our concept to be something that would have a huge benefit!

@everyone - this physical cookbook is the first step in our overall plans for a redesigned visual recipe. In today's world, mobile and computer applications dominate. Does anyone know if it is common to use the iPad/Android tablets as teaching tools for kids on the spectrum?

We have imagined an app for these type of tablets that would feature this type of visual recipe. The Kickstarter that we've started is a stepping stone in our overall vision. Securing funding proves that this project is something the world wants.

Do you think an iPad/Android app would be even cooler? Do you think it would it reach more people? Would it be even more beneficial to the autistic community than a physical cookbook?

How freaky! I was just telling my partner last week that there should be recipe books like that!! I HATE following recipes, and mainly because it is all in text and so difficult to follow for some reason for me (just really off putting!) and that I would MUCH prefer it to all be in pictures since I am more a visual thinker. So yes ,please do it!

I think it's a good idea - looking at that example, I like it. I'm a very visual person - it's easier to follow visual instructions like that, it would help me do things in the right order.

Video would be more useful in my opinion. Printed instructions, even those that include illustration , are often confusing.

@Oren - I mentioned in a post above our intentions to follow this physical cook book project with an iPad/Android application that would be very useful in the kitchen. We plan to include video instruction within this app. For example, it would show the differences in video form between dicing, slicing, cubing a tomato - if the recipe called for a cubed tomato, one could easily see in video format what this means. How does that sound?

Sounds very good. Sorry I didn't notice that part.