master thesis designing and evaluating a digital tool to support …1118958/fulltext01.pdf ·...

Author: Linnea STRÅGEFORS

Supervisor: Nuno OTERO

Examiner: Jenny LUNDBERG

Exam date: May 30, 2017Subject: Social Media and Web TechnologiesLevel: MasterCourse code: 5ME11E

Institution for Media Technology

Master Thesis

Designing and evaluating a digitaltool to support online search ofSwedish food recipes- facilitating the search process for the users

Abstract

Searching for food recipes online is a common task for many people in an increasinglydigitalised society. Sweden has, as many countries, local recipes, seasonal products,cultural dinners and measurement and weight standards that can differ from other coun-tries. However general searches for Swedish recipes at common search engines can poseseveral difficulties. For example that users can’t filter the search results by recipes andthat there can be difficulties with ambiguous semantic evaluations of the users’ searchqueries. Aspects considered in this thesis are also how the user search process could befacilitated by using recipe labels and graphical visualisations of the information. Theambition of this thesis is investigate how online recipe search can be made more effi-cient for people looking for Swedish recipes in Swedish.

An initial user survey with a questionnaire was conducted to understand the po-tential requirements for the development of a tool to support online search of Swedishrecipes. More specifically, the survey inquired about users’ current search experienceand tried to identify useful search criteria. The results showed that 82.4% of the par-ticipants prefer to search for recipes online via a search engine, compared with otheralternatives such as searching at specific recipe sites. The main difficulty the partici-pants experienced with that search approach was that many of the search results werenot recipes but other types of search results. Most participants preferred to see more in-formative recipe items in the search results list. However at the same time, some recipelabels that were present were not actually noticed by most participants. The survey alsoinvestigated further what information that could be more appropriate to show about therecipes. Based on the outcomes from the survey study, a prototype application was thendeveloped that targets for Swedish recipe search. The purpose of the prototype is to im-plement the search criteria identified from the survey and to provide enhancements. Bydeveloping this prototype, the search criteria could be tested by users on the prototype.A second user survey with a questionnaire was then conducted, evaluating the usabil-ity of the prototype. The prototype shows to offer improvements in filtering the searchresults to only show Swedish recipes, presenting more relevant recipe information andalso improvements in visualising the information in the recipes in the search result list.

Keywords: online recipe search, information retrieval, information visualisation, usergoal

Acknowledgements

Even though I find this thesis topic relevant and in need for further investigation, I’vehad many moments of doubts in how to carry through with this research. My supervisorNuno Otero has given me valuable support and guidance throughout the whole process.Thanks also to Jenny Lundberg, Ilir Jusufi and Koraljka Golub for their constructivefeedback on how to proceed. Members of the Media Department for support and sharingknowledge through this journey of master program studies.

I would like to give thanks to all participants in my user studies, for taken the timeto answer all questions. I would also like to thank my near and dear family and friendsfor your engagement, encouragement and friendship.

Contents

1 Introduction 11.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Problem Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2.1 Recipe Search Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.2 Graphical Presentation of Online Recipe Search Results . . . . 31.2.3 User Search Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.2.4 Recipes with Swedish Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.3 Research Questions and Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.4 Thesis Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Background and Related Work 62.1 Recipe Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.1.1 Site-specific Search Engine Versus Dedicated Search Engine . . 72.1.2 Categorising the Search Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.1.3 Labeling Recipes When Providing the Search Results . . . . . . 8

2.2 Visualisation of the Recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.2.1 Distinguishing Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3 Recipes on the Semantic Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102.3.1 Google Custom Search API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.3.2 The Search Result List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3 Methodology 133.1 Methodology Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133.2 Data Collection with Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2.1 Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.2.2 UX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.2.3 Pilot Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.2.4 User Group Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.2.5 Design of the First User Survey of Current Recipe Search . . . 163.2.6 Design of the Questionnaire of the Prototype . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.3 Developing a Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173.4 Scientific Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.5 Analytical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4 Development of the Prototype 19

Contents Contents

4.1 Website Functionalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194.2 Technical Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.2.1 Event-Driven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.2.2 Asynchronous Execution Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.2.3 Concurrent Handling of External API Calls . . . . . . . . . . . 214.2.4 Handling of CPU Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.2.5 One Language, JavaScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.3 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.4 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254.5 Recipe Search Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 Results and Analysis 265.1 Initial User Survey Concerning the Use of Common Search Engines for

Recipe Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.1.1 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.1.2 User Recipe Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275.1.3 Searching at a Specific Recipe Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285.1.4 Searching via a Search Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295.1.5 Design of Recipe Properties and Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5.2 Search Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325.3 Prototype v.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335.4 User Survey of Prototype v.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

5.4.1 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365.4.2 Search Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.4.3 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.4.4 Properties and labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.4.5 Summary Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.5 Prototype v.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

6 Discussion 436.1 Current Recipe Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

6.1.1 Selection of Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446.1.2 Visualisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

6.2 Proposed Search Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

7 Summary 477.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477.2 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477.3 Further Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

A Questionnaire About Current Recipe Search 54A.1 In English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54A.2 In Swedish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

B Questionnaire About the Prototype 64B.1 In English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Contents Contents

B.2 In Swedish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

C Pilot Study Questions 73

List of Figures

1.1 A recipe search result item presented in a recipe rich card format at theGoogle search engine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 A wine product presented in a recipe rich card although it’s not a recipe. 2

3.1 Overview of the methodological process and how the research questionswere investigated using user studies and implementing a recipe searchprototype. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 The process steps of conducting the user surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.1 Front of the prototype search page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.2 Overview of the architecture of the prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234.3 Sequence diagram of the search event in the prototype . . . . . . . . . . 24

5.1 The startpage of the prototype v.1, searching for ’apple pie cinnamon’ . 355.2 The startpage of the prototype v.1 with questionnaire button . . . . . . . 36

List of Tables

5.1 Frequency of the age distribution of the participants . . . . . . . . . . . 275.2 Frequency distribution of the results from question 6 . . . . . . . . . . 285.3 Frequency distribution of the results from question 11 . . . . . . . . . . 305.4 Frequency distribution of the results from question 16 . . . . . . . . . . 315.5 Frequency of the age distribution of the participants in the second survey 365.6 Frequency distribution of the results from question 6 . . . . . . . . . . 385.7 Frequency distribution of the results from question 9 . . . . . . . . . . 395.8 Frequency distribution of the results from question 10 . . . . . . . . . . 40

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Motivation

Deciding and planning on what to eat for dinner is a daily activity for many of us.Searching for food (or drink) recipes online has become common, especially with thecurrent increase of online digital media advancements. New search techniques emergeand software is being constantly updated with new features to support such activities, inline with the growing request for these services.

However, searching online for recipes is not as easy as one might think, especiallywhen considering cultural specificities. For example, in Sweden there are measurementstandards that are different from many English speaking countries, where most of therecipes are published. Ingredients in Swedish recipes are specified using metric volumesystem, for example liter and dl [1]. As other countries, Sweden also have special mealsthat are not as common in other countries. The meals can also vary from other countriesdepending on seasonal foods, local ingredients and holidays. What and how Swedes eatcould also be related to eating habits due to the Swedish culture and the Swedes wayof living [2]. When searching on the world wide web for recipes, the search resultsreturned can be a long list of various search results. The search results could come fromother countries but that could also be other types of websites than recipes. Such factsindeed pose difficulties to recipes’ search. As such, this suggests that there could be aneed for easing the task of online recipe search for people in Sweden.

Furthermore what recipe publisher it is that created the recipes might also have an im-pact when deciding what recipe to choose and where to search for recipes. For examplewhether the user chooses to search at a search engine or whether to search for recipesat a specific recipe site. Search engines can list search results from various recipe pub-lishers so users can choose from a broader search scope. Although filtering options aregenerally more precise at specific Swedish recipe sites. This thesis is considering bothsearch approaches but is mainly exploring the search engine alternative. This alternativeis chosen because of an assumed commonality of using a search engine for accessingonline resources [3]. It is also investigated the possibilities of using a dedicated customsearch engine for food recipes.

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Chapter 1. Introduction 1.2. Problem Domain

1.2 Problem Domain

1.2.1 Recipe Search Results

As pointed out in the previous section, searching for common Swedish recipes does notseem to be an easy task. Issues concerning the way recipes results are presented couldmake it difficult in some cases to find the right recipes. It could for example be difficultto determine from a long search result list which search results that are actual recipesand which results that are not. The most commonly used search engine Google [4] atwww.google.com can display recipe search results in a specific food recipe format, socalled recipe rich cards [5] [6]. Figure 1.1 below presents an example of one searchresult item in this format.

Figure 1.1: A recipe search result item presented in a recipe rich card format at the Googlesearch engine.

With this search result format it can be easier for users to identify which items thatare recipes. The recipes can be displayed with a thumbnail image, a rating score usingstars, short description, calories and cooking time. In order for the search engine torecognise this recipe information, each recipe publisher needs to embed metadata withthis information in the website scripts. This metadata markup is described in more detailin the next chapter in section 2.3 (Google Recipes on the Semantic Web). Unfortunatelymany websites publishers can misuse the recipe rich card format and use it for articlesand products that are not recipes. Figure 1.2 below shows an example of a wine productthat is specified as a recipe and presented in a recipe rich card at the Google searchengine.

Figure 1.2: A wine product presented in a recipe rich card although it’s not a recipe.

So when a user first recognises an article in the recipe rich card in the search list, it doesnot necessarily mean that the article is an actual food recipe. The user might be linkedto a specific food product and not to a recipe. When overviewing the search result list

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Chapter 1. Introduction 1.2. Problem Domain

this makes it more difficult to evaluate which of the results are indeed recipes and whichare not. In turn, the user might need to visit irrelevant websites before finding the rightrecipe, which could make the search process more tiresome and less pleasurable.

There can be different types of recipes though that could be valid as recipes, such asdrinks and play doughs. There is no regulation of what is a valid recipe or not sothis is up to the recipe publishers to decide. However the suggested recipe propertiesat schema.org (e.g. cookTime, nutrition, recipeCuisine) could indicate what types ofrecipes that are typically in mind.

1.2.2 Graphical Presentation of Online Recipe Search Results

Another issue that hinders online search of recipes is that it can be difficult to determinewhat type of recipe one finds by just seeing the recipe abstract in the search result list.The Google recipe rich card does have a set of predefined recipe attributes that can bemarked out specifically in the search result list. This is for example the recipe ratingstars and number of voters, the preparation time and the amount of calories, visible infigure 1.1 above. However if a recipe page does not have this information marked outin the recipe web script, it can’t be visualised in a recipe rich card. When overviewingand comparing recipes in the search result list, the user might be misguided by thisinformation (or lack of information). If certain recipes clearly have specific attributesvisible in the search result list, it does not mean that other recipes does not have suchattributes as well just because it’s not visible. The user would then need to visit eachsearch result item to be sure. All recipe attributes in the specific Google recipe richcard are optional and up to the recipe publishers to specify. So there can be a widespread of what information that is visible in the search result list between differentrecipe publishers.

There are also many other optional additional recipe attributes that can be specified inmetadata in the recipe web page script [7]. For example recipe cuisine type (Italian,French), category type (entree, appetiser) and cooking method (grill, steaming). How-ever only the limited predefined set of attributes are valid to be visible in the recipe richcard and no other attributes. So the recipe pages may include metadata about manyother recipe attributes than what is visible for the user in the search result recipe richcards. It is considered in this thesis if this some of this ’extra’ information could beappreciated for the users to see in the search result items, as alternative attributes oradditional attributes to the predefined set.

1.2.3 User Search Goal

Problematics when searching for recipes at search engines can be in misconceptionsof the semantic meaning of the search queries. For example if a user is searching for“pizza”, common search engines can’t generally determine what goal the user has withthat search query. That is in the meaning of why the user entered “pizza” [8]. Thesearch engine can’t tell for sure what kind of search results the user actually wants

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Chapter 1. Introduction 1.3. Research Questions and Hypothesis

to find. Some semantic evaluations of “pizza” could be that the user is searching fordefinitions of what a pizza is, or for pizza restaurants, for magazine articles about pizzasor for Swedish pizza recipes. So the user might need to refine the search query againdepending on what search results are presented. This is mainly a problem with recipesearches with common search engines and usually not a problem when searching forrecipes at specific recipes sites. At recipes sites, all search results are generally recipesor there can be a dedicated search for recipes.

1.2.4 Recipes with Swedish Terms

The users of a search engine can’t either know for sure if the search results will bein only Swedish language. For example the search word “pizza” again, it is spelledthe same in many languages such Swedish and English. The search results returnedfrom common search engines can be websites in any language containing the wordpizza. The user might then get many search results listed that are not relevant. Googlesearch engine has options for filtering the results by various categories, for example byImages, Maps and News. Although recipes is not listed as a category option. Googlesearch engine also have advanced options such as for specifying the search query, forselecting Swedish language and for showing sites in the Sweden region. However thisrequires extra steps for the user to enter the advanced options panel and to specify thoseparameters. The settings also would need to be changed back again if the user wants tosearch for other general searches.

Even though Swedish recipe ingredients are typically specified in the metric volumesystem (e.g. liter and dl) [1], these measurement units could be converted online. Forexample with the converter integrated in the Google Web Search (e.g. with the searchquery ’converter cups dl’) or at Omvandla.nu [9]. But that would be extra steps whenpreparing the recipe and it might presumably be easier for the users to find a similarrecipe that is in Swedish.

1.3 Research Questions and Hypothesis

Given the motivation and problem domain described previously, this research recog-nises the following research questions (RQ) that seems interesting to investigate fur-ther:

RQ1 What are the difficulties people have when searching for Swedish recipes?

RQ1a Are the search outcomes satisfactory? What specifically is satisfactory?

RQ1b If the search outcomes are not satisfactory, what are the problems?

RQ2 What criteria seem more useful to use in order to organise the information avail-able and formatted according to the Google recipe rich card?

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Chapter 1. Introduction 1.4. Thesis Disposition

RQ3 What kind of visualisation seems more appropriate to show the correspondingsearch results?

I believe that users can more effectively find relevant information if the search resultsare filtered using appropriate criteria. For example, search results could only show hitsthat are recipes and in the Swedish language. Furthermore, presenting the recipe searchresult items with graphical features can further facilitate overviewing which recipe theuser is actually searching for.

Summarising, my research will focus on: (a) understanding which search criteria seemuseful to people searching for Swedish recipes, (b) provide a solution that will enablean enhancement of current search outcomes and (c) convey these search outcomes in anefficient visual form.

1.4 Thesis Disposition

The thesis is structured by first presenting background knowledge and related work tothis research area, section 2. Section 3, Methodology, describes the scientific approachfollowed and how the results were evaluated. Section 4, Technical development ofthe prototype, describes the technical background required for the prototype and thefunctionalities of the prototype search site. In section 5 the results and the analysis ofthe surveys are presented. Informed by the information gathered, the final prototype forthe Swedish recipe site is presented in section 6. In this section the search criteria thatwas found for the prototype are also discussed. The final section Summary concludesthe outcomes of this thesis.

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Chapter 2

Background and Related Work

This section presents background information and conceptual frameworks that are in-vestigated in order to understand user recipe retrieval patterns and to understand howthe information can be represented in such way that facilitates the search process. Thelast sub-section presents the choice of using Google Custom Search API for accessingcommonly used recipes at popular recipe sites.

2.1 Recipe Retrieval

Rose and Levinson [8] suggests a framework for categorising users’ search goals whenretrieving information using common search engines. The authors clarify that with auser ’search goal’ they mean the reasons for why the user enters a particular keyword(or set of keywords) in relation to the type of search results the user expects to find. Inother words, the framework correlates the users’ search goals with the search queriesand the retrieved results. Rose and Levinson suggest that with such framework searchqueries can be better understood and in turn generate more appropriate search results.Their framework proposes a search goal category, that seems particularly relevant forthis present research effort, which they called "resource-seeking" and that, according tothe authors, did not draw sufficient research work. As the term indicates, the purposeof this type of user goal is to find a resource (such as a recipe, downloading a file orusing a measure converter). In three tests they found that this type of user goal is about14.7%, 11.7% respectively 13.5 % of all user search queries, a significant amount of allcommon different types of search goals. However, searching for recipes is presumablya smaller subset of this "resource-seeking" category and searching for Swedish recipesmost probably be an even smaller subset.

The search results that users retrieve can also be very diverse and consequently be clas-sified in various categories. Research suggests that the variety of search results canexpand the users’ perspectives on the search topics [10]. However, at the same time itcould perhaps also be frustrating and time consuming for the users not distinctively findwhat they actually search for. One possible cause for the wide range of various search

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Chapter 2. Background and Related Work 2.1. Recipe Retrieval

results can be if the search query is not specified enough. Another possibility could bethat the search engine ambiguously evaluates the semantic meaning of the search query.As Golub explains [11] some reasons for why search engines does not retrieve wantedinformation is that a particular topic could have many different names (synonyms), aparticular word could have different meanings (polysems) or a particular word couldbe used for completely unrelated topics (homonyms). For example the Swedish wordfor ’pie’ (Swedish: ’paj’) could in Swedish mean the noun pie like an apple pie, or itcould also mean a verb for that something is broken. Another example (similar for otherlanguages as well) is if a user is just searching for ’fish’ (Swedish: ’fisk’), the searchengine can’t know if the user means recipes with fish, restaurants with fish in the menu,companies selling fishes, suggestions on where to go fishing, fishing equipment, peoplewith fish (Fisk) as a surname etc.

So searching for Swedish recipes could imply several difficulties, in many cases due tothat general purpose search engines are rather designed and optimised for handling otherrequests about more common types of search goals [3]. It seems reasonable to considerif a dedicated search engine that filters recipe search results could be more useful forSwedish recipes. So that search for recipes becomes a more efficient and pleasurableexperience for the users. When using the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) forretrieving recipes, the semantic evaluation of the user search queries are also processedby the Google CSE. So evaluating and processing natural language in search queriesis not handled further in the prototype. There can still be linguistic misinterpretationsof the user queries, although with the CSE the search results can be limited within thescope of Swedish food or drink recipes.

2.1.1 Site-specific Search Engine Versus Dedicated Search Engine

In contrast to a general purpose search engine, a site-specific purpose search engine isusually hosted on a certain website and it is the website publisher that provides the localsearch feature [12] [13]. The search scope is then usually within the website domain inwhere the search resides. For example www.ica.se has a search option where users cansearch for content available within ICA’s own site. The Google CSE can for examplealso be used to create a site-specific search functionality. The developer then specifiesto only retrieve search content from a specific site domain. Another example of a site-specific search engine is mail clients where the mail users can search for their owncontent within their private mail boxes. Here the search is limited to each users ownmail domain.

The term dedicated search engine is meant in this thesis a vertical search engine thatcan search through the entire World Wide Web (WWW) but is specialised in a specificcategory [3] [14]. A site-specific search engine could also be considered as a typeof vertical search engine but is then specialised in a specific website or enterprise. Adedicated search engine can also be called specialised search engine [15] [3] or domain-specific search engine [16] [17]. In the later name, ’domain’ is referred to as the areaof knowlege. That is, the search engine can retrieve content from various site domains

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Chapter 2. Background and Related Work 2.1. Recipe Retrieval

but only content in a certain topic field. In this thesis, the topic field is Swedish recipesand the content is retrieved using the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). Similarapproaches, using the Google CSE, in other research projects are for example a projectcalled FindZebra, where the Google CSE is used to develop a dedicated search enginefor finding rare diseases [3]. Another example is a research project using the GoogleCSE to provide health information in foreign languages [18].

2.1.2 Categorising the Search Results

Heast [19] suggests that dividing recipe search results in groups by category, helps theuser to overview and structure the search results. The recipes are then labeled withcategories. For example recipes with only vegetables can be grouped in the category’Vego’. Golub [11] explains that such methods and for example hierarchical indexingof the search results, could also provide orientation for the user in the terms of howthe search item can be defined. This is effectively adopted in Knowledge OrganisationStructures (KOS) systems. This could address the concern about ambiguously evaluatedsearch queries, by showing the user the categorical context of the search results. Anexample could be when searching for ’pie’. The user could see that a pie can be usedboth as a dinner meal and as a desert. The user can then select a category of choice andfilter out irrelevant categories.

A problem when reading results from Google Custom Search API is that each recipepublisher declare their own recipe attributes, if any, and in a custom way. So there canbe different names for the same type of category that makes it difficult to group therecipes automatically. The recipes can also be updated and changed at any time by therecipe publishers. New recipes are added and some might be deleted, in a dynamic pro-cess. The number of recipe search results return from the API is also only 10 (whichis motivated in the section Google Custom Search API below). So grouping the recipesin categories with such methods might not be as useful in this case. Although commonrecipe sites usually have options for such groupings and hierarchical trees of the cate-gories in their own recipe banks. Whereas searching for recipes at search engines, this isgenerally not an option for Swedish recipes. Further user surveys in this theses intend toinvestigate this further, where and how most users generally prefer to search for recipes.For example if it is at specific recipe sites or if it is by using a search engine. Alsowhere the users are more satisfied in finding the right recipe. Offering advanced filter-ing mechanisms and accurate hierarchical structures might be an advantage for a recipesite but it maybe not necessary fulfil other user search criteria that are as important forthe users. For example being able to compare recipes from different recipes sites withdifferent type of recipe categorisations.

2.1.3 Labeling Recipes When Providing the Search Results

Labelling each individual recipe with attributes could be valuable feature to consider inorder to give a better overview of the characteristics of each recipe. Hearst also provides

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Chapter 2. Background and Related Work 2.2. Visualisation of the Recipes

perspectives in her research on possible risks in determining contradictory categoriesto recipes. For example the category labels ’salad’ and ’grilled’ to the same recipecan be seen as confusing, even if it might be true for recipes such as a chicken salad.Furthermore it leads to questions whether if the recipe should be placed in the groupsalad or grilled or in both. If it is placed in both for example, then the meaning ofthe groups does not seems as relevant. If only one label is chosen out of perhaps evenmore other labels, then there could be difficulties in evaluating which label that is themost descriptive of the recipe. If not the recipes are correctly placed in the groups, thenthe groups would probably not either give an accurate overview of the recipe results.The research refers to usability tests that shows that users do not like such disorderlygroupings of categories [20] [21].

In could be important to consider how many categories to attach to the same recipe,which categories to choose and how to choose the most appropriate labels. That is, inorder to not give inconsistent and contradictory labels to the recipes that might ratherbe confusing than clarifying. In the case of finding labels for recipe categories in theGoogle Custom Search API, there are several possible types of categories to choosefrom. For recipes marked up with structural metadata using the schema.org vocabu-lary, there are for example the three attributes recipe category, cuisine type and cookingmethod. Although the recipe cuisine type and cooking methods are very rarely declaredproperly in most common recipes. Furthermore, in some cases the cooking methodand the recipe category are also mixed up and same terms can be used in all groups.It could be considered to only suggest the label recipe category in this case because itis most commonly specified. The user surveys in this thesis intend to explore this fur-ther, if there is a request for more information about the recipes and which attributes tochoose.

2.2 Visualisation of the Recipes

The impact of the graphic presentation of information is widely researched in the areaof information and visualisation (InfoVis). Even though not as much about specificallyonline recipe search results. Aspects that this thesis investigates is how the visualisationof the recipes can facilitate the search process for the user. InfoVis methods can utilisethe capacity of the human visual information processing when presenting the informa-tion [22] [23] [24]. So that users intuitively can perceive some information graphically.For example the eyes have the ability to quickly overview a data set and find patternsand recognise graphical differences in features [22].

Shiffrin and Schneider [24] further distinguishe two levels of information processing,automatic detection and controlled search. Automatic detection takes place in our firstimpression of a target and it can be easy learned in our long-term memory. This is forexample visual properties such as colours and positions. Automatic detection is alsoconsidered to be parallel in nature. In other words we can focus on other informationat the same time, while we automatically process this information without consciouslyputting our minds to it. Controlled search on the other hand is usually serial in nature

9

Chapter 2. Background and Related Work 2.3. Recipes on the Semantic Web

and we process this information more consciously and in sequence. This is for examplerelated to how textual information is visualised. Controlled search is learned in ourshort-term memory and is more dependent on load. So we have more limited processingcapacity for this information compared with automatic detection [23].

2.2.1 Distinguishing Labels

Rodden et al [21] shows in user tests that when searching through images that aregrouped by similarity, it could be more difficult to distinguish differences between im-ages in the same group. They declare that different groups could be easier to find butthe images within the same group could be more difficult to search through. Then morerandomly placed images were a better choice for distinguishing differences between ad-jacent images in juxtaposition. In the case of recipe design, having different graphicdesign for different labels within the same recipe could presumingly also make the dif-ferent labels stand out more so that they are easier to distinguish when overviewing eachrecipe. Likewise when comparing different recipes based on a specific attribute, suchgraphics could presumingly help the user in easier finding other recipes with the samecharacteristic type of label.

This could be applied by for example highlighting certain attributes using backgroundcolours. So that the eye catches that a certain background colour represents a certainattribute [25] [26]. This could also be an example of information that is processed withthe before mentioned automatic detection. The label preparation time could for examplebe displayed with a certain background colour and the recipe meal type category withanother background colour.

2.3 Recipes on the Semantic Web

The specific Google recipe rich cards that can be visible in the search result list, can bedisplayed as individual cards as in figure 1.1 (Introduction section) and multiple recipesfrom the same recipe publisher can also be displayed in a host carousel. The recipe richcards can be created by the Google search engine if the recipe developers have markedup the recipes with structured data [5]. The structured data can be embedded in therecipe implementations with for example RDFa or JSON-LD encodings and by usingname and type conventions from the schema.org vocabulary [27]. With additional struc-tured data in AMP, the Rich Cards can also be rendered efficiently on mobile devices[28]. The Google search engine can then find this metadata markup in the semanticweb [29] and generate the specific recipe rich cards. Certain markup items are requiredfor proper rendering of a recipe rich card but the names of the attributes and how themarkup is implement, can also vary between different recipe publishers.

10


2.3.1 Google Custom Search API

The Google Custom Search API [30] can be used for retrieving Google search resultsfor custom purposes. In this case for gathering Swedish recipe search results. With thisAPI, a user search query can be included in the API call and the search results returnedare gathered using a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). The developer initiates theCSE and can then specify to only retrieve search results that have been marked up asrecipes and in Swedish language [5]. The procedures for setting up this environment forthis thesis are described further in the Prototype Development section.

Recipe search information available in Google Custom Search API:s is free for devel-opers to apply in new software solutions. Using these API results, developers does notneed to write own recipes or need to have access to a proprietary recipe bank in orderto build a recipe search site. A new site can be built reusing already existing popularrecipe resources. Thus the development process becomes more effective, focusing onrefining a recipe search for more specific purposes.

The full recipes can be read at the recipe publishers own sites, but there is much infor-mation about the recipes that is accessible via the API and that can be presented in acustomised search result list. All the information that is presented in the search resultslist at google.com, is also included in the response from the Google Custom Search API.There can also be more additional information included in the response from the APIthan what is shown in the search results list at google.com. Most information about therecipes from the API are gathered from the recipe metadata on the semantic web. Sohow much information about the recipe that is included in the API response dependson how much information the recipe publishers declares in the recipe script metadata.However not all information about the recipes needs to be presented to the user in thesearch result list. Presenting more information is not always better [31] [32]. The prob-lem is rather in understanding what information that is most relevant for the users inthe context of searching for recipes. Furthermore facilitating for the users in finding theinformation they want to know. The users surveys in this thesis are intended to continueinvestigating this, what attributes that seems most useful and if alternative visualisationsof the attributes could be more appropriate.

2.3.2 The Search Result List

The results listed from the Custom Search API can vary from search results at theGoogle Web Search at google.com. This is due to how the CSE is specified by thedeveloper but even if the CSE is set for the entire web, the content could vary betweenthe searches [33]. This is due to the conditions for how the Google Web Search is run-ning compared with the CSE. For example the CSE results does not include universalsearch, social features, or personalised results, as the Google Web Search does. Thiscan effect which of the search results are more prioritised to send back in the CustomSearch compared with the Google Web Search.

11


The number of search results returned from the Custom Search API is also limited tomaximum 10 per request [34] but could be extended by multiple calls. Donald O. Casewrites in his book Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seek-ing, Needs and Behaviour [31] about the decision making process when we evaluatesearch alternatives. He writes that if the number of alternatives and their attributes ex-ceeds above 10, we can experience overload. We then tend to choose simpler and lessreliable rules when making our choices, so our search time can be shortened. An ex-amples of such ’rule’ can be to only examine one of the attributes. That is the attributethat we decide to be the most important. This is a type of lexicographic rule, where allother attributes does not matter in comparison to the one chosen attribute. In the case ofrecipe search, one attribute to choose to compare with could be the recipe preparationtime. The user then focus on finding only this time attribute in all the recipe informa-tion. So the user does not takes the time to process other attributes or information aboutthe recipes. To instead facilitate for the users in processing and evaluation multiple at-tributes about the recipes, reasonable amount of attributes and search results could bepreferred to be presented. As work by Donald O. Cases suggests, showing maximum10 recipe results listed could be appropriate. This could presumingly increase the likeli-hood in more effectively finding the right recipe. That is if more attributes can be takeninto consideration more easily at the same time. So that the recipes can be compared bymore factors, before making a decision to choose a specific recipe.

12

Chapter 3

Methodology

3.1 Methodology Overview

To investigate the research questions in this thesis (section 1.3), two user surveys wereconducted and a recipe search prototype was developed. Figure 3.1 below illustratesan overview of the methodology process. The first user survey attempts to exploreresearch question 1 and 2. The purpose of this survey is to understand the users’ currentexperiences when searching online for food recipes. For example conveying problemsand possible improvements in user experience and design.

Based on the outcomes from the first user study, a set of useful search criteria wereidentified. The search criteria describes potential requirement when developing the siteto support search of Swedish recipes. The search criteria were then implemented in afirst version of the recipe search prototype (prototype v.1). The purpose of prototype v.1is to provide an enhanced search solution to the current user search experience.

Research question 3 is explored by a second user survey. In this survey, the user experi-ence of prototype v.1 is inquired. The results from this study is used for evaluating if thedeveloped design features are efficient for the user in finding Swedish recipes. Poten-tial points of improvements could then be refined in a second version of the prototype(prototype v.2).

13

Chapter 3. Methodology 3.2. Data Collection with Questionnaires

Figure 3.1: Overview of the methodological process and how the research questions were in-vestigated using user studies and implementing a recipe search prototype.

3.2 Data Collection with Questionnaires

3.2.1 Questionnaires

Questionnaires is one of the most popular research methods for gathering user data[35][36]. Some of the reasons for why questionnaires have been chosen as a data col-lection method in this theses, is that they can give an overview relatively fast of whatgeneral opinions a large number of users have and of what problems users may havewith a certain technology [35]. Compared with for example verbal interviews, ques-tionnaires can be performed at low costs, relatively time effective and with less effortfor both the participant and the person issues the test. The questionnaires can be sent tomany users at the same time and the users can perform the test at times that they prefer.There can also be less interviewer bias, since the answers otherwise could depend onhow the questions are asked [36]. The answers to closed questions can also be codedand analysed relatively quickly.

14


There are also aspects with user surveys with questionnaires that needs to be consideredin order to improve the validity and generalisability of the survey. Such as consideringthe sample size and selecting a random sample. Furthermore asking relevant questionsand not take the participants time with many questions that does not provide the re-search with any relevant information. The process steps are illustrated in figure 3.2below.

Figure 3.2: The process steps of conducting the user surveys

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3.2.2 UX

Evaluating the User Experience (UX) of recipe search sites is a broad field involvingmany aspects. Hassenzahl describes UX that it shifts the attention away from technicalaspect of a product (or website) to the users and feelings, taking into account moresubjective sides when using the product [37]. That is focusing on the drivers for asatisfying experience, meeting both pragmatic and hedonic user goals [38]. UXnet.orgdefines UX as "the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specificdesign" [39]. These perspectives on UX are considered when designing the questionsabout of the recipe sites in the questionnaires.

3.2.3 Pilot Tests

Pilot tests were be conducted in the design phase of the questionnaires [36]. The pilottests were used for pre-testing and evaluating the questionnaires, before the real ac-tual user study was conducted. The pilot testers filled in a preliminary questionnaireand tried out the online tool in which the questionnaires were written. Afterwards, thetesters were asked verbally a set of questions about the questionnaire. Those questionsare listed in Appendix C. The questionnaires were then amended and refined in consid-eration to the feedback.

3.2.4 User Group Selection

The questionnaires were conducted in the city of Helsingborg in Sweden. This city waschosen for practical and monetary reasons since this thesis is written in this city. Thequestionnaires were given to people at the city library, the central station, the Universitycampus, at busses, shared on social media and some questionnaires were sent to personsby mail. The questionnaires were delivered in this way to select a random and diversegroup of users in various ages and genders.

3.2.5 Design of the First User Survey of Current Recipe Search

The purpose of this user survey was to understand users’ current experience of searchingfor Swedish recipes online. The questions were designed to bring information from theusers regarding the research questions 1 and 2. The pre-test of the questionnaire gavefeedback on several aspects. One pilot tester had questions about the options to the firstquestion of the gender. The tester thought that the options ’trans*’ and ’Other’ couldbe discarded because the tester found no reason for having those options. The testersuggested to only offer the options ’male’ or ’female’. That suggestion of removing’trans*’ was discarded because if a user is trans* then that user would not have anyright option to choose from. So then the answers to that question would not representa correct response from all participants. Contrariwise the option ’Other’ was removedas the user suggested because this option seems unnecessary and covered by the other

16

Chapter 3. Methodology 3.3. Developing a Prototype

options. One pilot tester suggested to change the order of question 10, to its currentposition from order number 11. This suggestion seemed reasonable since then the nextquestion 11 could be refined to be a follow up question to that question. Two otherquestions were also suggested to be clarified further. None of the pilot testers thoughtthat there were to many questions, they thought it took reasonable time to answer. Thefinal questionnaire can be seen in Appendix A. The questionnaire translated to Englishcan be seen in the section A.1. The original questionnaire in Swedish is in sectionA.2.

3.2.6 Design of the Questionnaire of the Prototype

The questions in the second questionnaire are designed to bring information about ifthe users find the visualisations in the prototype to be more appropriate for showing theresulting search results. That is if the search criteria implemented in the prototype arefound to provide improvements on the problems found in the first user survey.

The pre-test of this questionnaire was carried out with the same procedures as the firstquestionnaire. Three testers participated in this test also. The questions asked to theparticipants after the test were also the same, listed in Appendix C. One pilot testerthought that the Swedish word ’etikett’, that is ’label’ in English, was a bit confusing.So these questions containing ’label’ were clarified. Otherwise all pilot-testers thoughtthat the questions were easy to understand, they had no other specific suggestions forimprovements and they thought that there was a reasonable number of questions in thequestionnaire.

The final questionnaire of this second 2 is presented in Appendix B. The questionnairetranslated to English can be seen in section B.1. The original questionnaire in Swedishcan be seen in section B.2.

3.3 Developing a Prototype

The results from the studies were used to inform the development of the prototype.The prototype is a website application targeting the search of Swedish recipes. It wasdeveloped in an iterative and cyclic process approach. A basic structure of an initialprototype was first created in an early phase, to explore the technical settings and toget practical knowledge to some of the background material that was investigated. Theprototype was then developed further in accordance with the theoretical base of thisthesis and with the outcomes from the surveys. The prototype is applying the searchcriteria found and the criteria could be tried out by the users on the prototype. The userexperiences of searching for recipes at the prototype site were evaluated in the secondsurvey with a questionnaire.

17

Chapter 3. Methodology 3.4. Scientific Approach

3.4 Scientific Approach

The scientific approach of this thesis is mainly inductive. The research idea has emergedfrom own experiences and from observations of other how people are search for Swedishfood recipes online. From these observations, the research questions were formulated.The research questions were further investigated with literature review and by usinguser studies with questionnaires. With the questionnaires both qualitative and quantita-tive information could be gathered from the users. The questions in both surveys wereformulated with emphasis in exploring the user experience of the search sites. That is tofind preferred search patterns and possible points of improvements in order to supportcommon online Swedish recipe search.

3.5 Analytical Methods

The collected data from the user surveys were analysed using descriptive statistics. Withthis type of statistical tools, the information from the surveys could be organised andsummarised to describe the main features of the information [40]. For example fordetermining which types of recipe labels that seemed most appreciated for an averageuser. Descriptive statistics can also be useful when comparing data across domains,where domain specific details are not as significant [36]. For example when evaluatingand comparing the results from the first and the second user study in this thesis. Ex-amples of statistical tools that were used when assessing the responses are measuresof central tendency, spread and frequency distribution. The analysis of the results arefurther described in more detail in the section 5, Results and Analysis.

18

Chapter 4

Development of the Prototype

A prototype is developed to apply the search criteria found in the user studies. Thefinal result of the prototype recipe search application can be seen in section 7 ProposedSwedish recipe search. This section describes the underlying development process andthe technical background of building the prototype.

4.1 Website Functionalities

The prototype website is to be used for searching for Swedish recipes. The search resultsare refined to only show recipes and only Swedish recipes. Some recipes may be writtenin English but then the measurements are usually translated in Swedish, for example that1 cup = 2,4 dl. The search queries can be a recipe name, ingredients or other optionalsearch words. The search results are listed with maximum 10 search results, dependingon how many matching search results that are found. What information that is shownabout the recipes in the search result list, is based on the user responses that are gatheredfrom the user surveys. At the start page of the application, there is also a top menu tablabeled ’About’, where the user can read more about the background of the project.Figure 4.1 below shows an image of the top of the prototype start page.

19

Chapter 4. Development of the Prototype 4.2. Technical Environment

Figure 4.1: Front of the prototype search page

4.2 Technical Environment

The prototype website is implemented in the server side framework and runtime envi-ronment Node.js [41]. This environment is chosen mainly for its effective event-drivenexecution flow and for being able to handling multiple concurrent I/O operations [42],for example to external API:s. Also for using the JavaScript language from the serverside to the client side. This subsection further describes the motivations and backgroundknowledge for the choice of using the Node.js runtime environment.

4.2.1 Event-Driven

The Node.js framework is event-driven, starting from the server level when setting upthe application [43]. So it is events that triggers the execution flow of the process tasksin the application. An event can be triggered for example when a user enters a URLrequest to see the prototype site in the browser, or when the user clicks on the searchbutton on the site. The events are handled in a single threaded event loop. The eventloop handles the events in order by which event that has highest priority importance[43]. So if there are many events, they are piled in a queue while waiting for the eventloop to accept the next event.

20

Chapter 4. Development of the Prototype 4.2. Technical Environment

4.2.2 Asynchronous Execution Flow

The execution flow of the process tasks in Node.js is asynchronous [42] [44]. So theexecution of the source code is not run from the top lines of the code to the bottom linesas in synchronous environments. In Node.js, one event could trigger the application tomake an I/O request to an external API. The event loop thread is then free to continueexecuting the next event, even if the API has no responded yet [44]. When the APIhas responded, a new event is triggered. The event thread can then ’go back’ or rathercontinue with executing a callback function that handles the API response data. Theasynchronous behaviour makes the single threaded event loop in NodeJS non blocking,continuously executing code and available to receive new events.

4.2.3 Concurrent Handling of External API Calls

The non-blocking behaviour of the asynchronous event loop, makes Node.js effectivefor I/O intensive operations [43] [44] [45]. Such as in this theses, the operation of con-necting to the Google Custom Search API. The single threaded event loop can continueexecuting other events while waiting for the API resource to respond [44]. Events thatcan be executed faster, can be executed in the meantime. So the whole process threaddoesn’t have to be idle and wait for the I/O response from the external API, as in syn-chronous environments. This means that the event driven system of Node.js can handleseveral concurrent connections to external API:s [42] and make use of the CPU timemore efficiently.

4.2.4 Handling of CPU Resources

The single threaded event loop is not as efficient when occupying the thread with CPUintensive operations [45]. The single thread would then be busy computing that process-ing intensive task so it would be prevented to execute other events. The thread wouldstill be busy executing the CPU intensive task, so it wouldn’t be blocked in that sensebut all other events would have to wait until the CPU intensive task is performed. Ifthere is a need for processing more CPU intensive tasks or when scaling the usage ofthe prototype further, other solutions for concurrent execution and load balancing couldbe preferred. For example distributing clusters of Node processes in different processorcores [43]. So that all cores in multiple-core processors can be utilised.

The single threaded event loop in Node.js has also offers possibilities in using the CPUresources more efficiently. As in the example of receiving many I/O requests from manyusers [45] [43]. Then the application does not need to allocate a new CPU runtime scopeor memory for each new thread process, as in multithreaded solutions. In the case ofI/O related requests there is no need for allocating unnecessary extra CPU or memoryresources to each new request to an external API. The overall I/O waiting time wouldstill be the same as in a multithreaded approach but the system CPU resources could beused more efficiently.

21

Chapter 4. Development of the Prototype 4.3. Architecture

4.2.5 One Language, JavaScript

In the Node.js framework all code can be written in JavaScript. Together with additionalweb frameworks such as Express.js, the JavaScript language can be used for setting upa web application environment on the server side as well as for creating the client sidefrontend. The runtime execution of the JavaScripts is performed by the fastest JavaScriptcompiler [43], the open source Google Chrome V8 engine [46].

4.3 Architecture

The frontend of the prototype website page is created using the Express.js templateengine EJS [47] together with HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS and Bootstrap. Thedesign of the website is described further in the section 4.5 below. An overview of thearchitectural design of the implementation is presented in figure 4.2 below.

The prototype application has a router that first receives all HTTP requests to the site.The routing mechanisms are implemented with the Router tool that is built in with theExpress.js framework [48]. The router can for example receive URL requests from theuser’s browser URL address bar to see the start page. Or there can be requests to serverservices that are triggered from the application. The router then directs the requeststo the controller through a RESTful interface. This interface is chosen to provide anadditional abstraction for separation of concerns for easier maintenance and scalabil-ity. Different types of functionalities also share the same interface in a more coherentand structured way. The server side functionalities are not either exposed directly forexternal users.

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Figure 4.2: Overview of the architecture of the prototype

The controller deals with logics related to the requests and delegates tasks to serverside modules of the application that executes the tasks. The server modules handlesinformation from the external service Google Custom Search API and processes thesearch results.

Figure 4.3 below pictures a sequence diagram that illustrates in more detail the eventflow after a user presses the search button and searches for a recipe key word in theprototype site. The website then makes a jQuery call to request information from aserver side module. A HTTP GET request is then sent to the router which redirects therequest to the controller. The controller passes on the request to the server side modulethat makes the connection call to the external Google Custom Search API. The responsedata is in JSON format and returned to the controller. The controller delegates the searchresults to a second server side module that processes the response data further.

23


Figure 4.3: Sequence diagram of the search event in the prototype

When the search results are processed, the selected data is sent back to the controller.The controller passes on the data to the router which returns it to the jQuery functionthat initiated the request. When the website frontend has received the search resultsfrom the website backend, the recipes can be presented for the client user.

24

Chapter 4. Development of the Prototype 4.4. Design

4.4 Design

The layout of the prototype is created using Bootstrap framework at the frontend side.CSS is also used for additional custom styling of the prototype webpage. For examplewhen creating the recipe labels. Different types of recipe properties are considered tobe designed with different label background colours. For example the recipe propertypreparation time has a certain background colour and another recipe property has an-other background colour. So that the labels with certain type of property is easier todistinguish. What labels to include, if any, is decided later or after analysing the resultsform the first user study.

4.5 Recipe Search Results

The search results are retrieved through the Google Custom Search API [30] by usinga Custom Search Engine [30]. In the CSE the developer can specify what sites on theweb that are included in the search scope. In this case all domains with .se and .nuare included. Sites can also be included explicitly, such as the common Swedish recipesite at www.tasteline.com. In the same way certain sites can also be excluded. In theCSE it can also be declared to only retrieve search results from sites that are hostedin Swedish, in Swedish. Furthermore it can also be specified to only search for webpages that are marked up with structured metadata as recipes. Although as mentionedbefore the recipe specifications can be misused for types of websites that are not actuallyrecipes. There can also be some sites retrieved that may still be written in English.So additional filtering and processing of the search results are needed to implementprogrammatically. The results are also checked manually while developing, to includeat least all the most common Swedish recipe sites, blogs and recipe publishers. Therecipe site can be accessed at https://swedish-recipe-search.herokuapp.com/.

25

Chapter 5

Results and Analysis

5.1 Initial User Survey Concerning the Use of CommonSearch Engines for Recipe Search

The first survey is considered as the initial attempt to understand the requirements userscould have when searching online for Swedish recipes. The survey results are presentedand analysed in this section in order to grasp user search patterns and common difficul-ties with current search solutions. The requirements that are found are formulated in aset of search criteria that are suggested to be useful when developing a tool to supportSwedish recipe search online.

5.1.1 Demographics

The first survey was conducted in Helsingborg city in Sweden, at public places such asat the library, at the central station, at busses and some also sent by email. 41 personsparticipated, whereof 60.0% females and 40.0% males. Their ages were quite evenlydistributed as shown in frequency table 5.1 below. Most participants, 24.4 %, were inthe age group 25-35 (median 35-45, standard deviation 1.82).

26

Chapter 5. Results and Analysis5.1. Initial User Survey Concerning the Use of Common Search Engines for

Recipe Search

Table 5.1: Frequency of the age distribution of the participants

Age group Frequency Percentage

under 18 1 2.4

18-25 9 22.0

25-35 10 24.4

35-45 6 14.6

45-55 4 9.8

55-65 5 12.2

65+ 6 14.6

5.1.2 User Recipe Search

In the third question the participants were asked how often they search for Swedishrecipes online. This question was asked to find out if there is any request for searchingonline for recipes and how common it is. The results show that most participants, 37.5%,search for recipes online a couple of times a month, 30.0% search for recipes a coupleof times a week and 25.0% less than once every 6 months. These results show thatmost of the participants search for Swedish recipes online quite often, on a monthlyor weekly basis. The participants ages does not correlate to how often they search forrecipes online. Their experiences of their recipe searches are investigated further withthe results of the following questions.

The main reason for why 60.0% of the participants search for recipes online is to finda recipe to cook. 17.5% answered that they search for recipes mainly for inspiration,not primarily for cooking the recipe. 17.5% for finding information and advices, noteither primarily for cooking the recipes. The participants that did answer that theysearch for recipes for inspiration and information, it may indicate that it is not only therecipe instruction that is important for those participants but presumingly also how therecipes are presented. The results from this question show that a clear majority of theparticipants seems to search for recipes that they can cook and are not as interested inother types of related information about the recipes. When searching at search engines itthen might be considered negative if many of the search results returned are in a varietyof different types of websites. Following questions later on will examine this further,when inquiring the users about searching for recipes at a search engine.

27


Recipe Search

The next question regarded how the participants usually search for recipes. If it is byusing a search engine first or if it is by going directly to a specific recipe site and searchfor recipes there. The results shows that the most common way for the participants tosearch for recipes is by searching via a search engine first. A clear majority of 82.5%of the participants had selected this alternative. Only 12.5% of the participants preferto go directly to a specific recipe site when searching for recipes. Two participants hadwritten a free text in the option ’Others’. One participant specified that he/she used ICArecipe site and one participant had answered that it is his wife that chooses where tosearch. No participant had mentioned about searching for recipes at other alternativessuch as at recipe apps, Social Media or at YouTube. There could have been specificoptions for these alternatives in the questionnaire which unfortunately was thought of tolate in the survey process.

5.1.3 Searching at a Specific Recipe Site

When the participants do search for recipes at a specific recipe site, it’s quite commonto also search for the same recipe again at other recipes sites. 45.9% answered that theydo so sometimes and 16.2% ’yes, often’. They then start the search process again atanother site as well. Only 13.5% answered ’No, I usually find the recipe I’m searchingfor at the first recipe site I go to’. These results show that the participants does notseem so satisfied with the search results when only searching at one specific recipe sitedirectly. Table 5.2 below shows all the results (standard deviation 1.30, mode alternative1, spread: 4). The next question investigates this further, the reasons for searching againat other recipe sites and if it is something that they are not satisfied with.

Table 5.2: Frequency distribution of the results from question 6

6. Do you usually search for the same recipe at other sites also?

Alternative Frequency Percentage

yes, sometimes 17 45.9

yes, often 6 16.2

no, I usually don’t bothersearching again at anothersite, even if there might bebetter recipes. I’d ratherchoose a recipe from the firstrecipe site i visit

7 18.9

No, I usually find the recipeI’m searching for at the firstrecipe site I go to

5 13.5

Other 2 5.4

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Recipe Search

If the participants had answered yes to that question, they were asked a follow-up ques-tion what the reason for that was. The main reason for why 35.7% of the participantssearched for the same recipe again at other recipe sites, was to compare the recipe withother recipes at other sites. This indicates that it doesn’t seem to be only one specificrecipe site that most participants go to regardless of all other alternative recipe sites. Theparticipants rather look for other alternatives at other recipe sites as well. 28.6% of theparticipants answered that their main reason was to find alternative solutions and com-plete the recipe. 21.4% answered that it was because they didn’t find the right recipe atthe recipe site. 10.7% answered that it was because the recipes they found didn’t seemappealing.

5.1.4 Searching via a Search Engine

When searching for recipes via a search engine, Google is by far the most commonlyused. 94.9% of the participants use the Google search engine. Searching by recipe nameand by ingredients are the most common type of search queries that the participants usewhen searching for recipes. 43.3% of the participants answered that search by recipename and 30.0% that they search by ingredients. 10.0% search by recipe category, 5.0%search by fast cooked recipes and 5.0% search by recipe site publisher name (mode:ingredients, standard deviation 1.67, spread 6).

In question 10 the participants were asked how well they consider that their search re-sults match their search requests. They answered in a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 is’never matches well’ and 5 is ’always matches well’. In average the participants gavethe score 3.70 (mode 4, median 4, spread 4, standard deviation 0.72). This result seemsto indicate that the participants are quite satisfied with the search results they get butit could be better. The following question investigated this further and the participantswere asked if there is something that they are not satisfied with about the search resultsthey get. If so, what it is. The main issue that 37.5% of the participants had selected isthat they think that many of the search results are not recipes but links to other types ofwebsites. 25.0% think that it is difficult to see just in the search results list what type ofrecipe it is. 12.5% think that there are too few relevant search results. Table 5.3 belowshows all the results (standard deviation 2.00, mode is alternative 1, spread 6).

29


Recipe Search


11. Is there something that you are not satisfied with aboutthe search results you get? If so, what are the main issues?

Alternative Frequency ValidPercent

Many of the search results are notrecipes but links to other articles

15 37.5

it’s difficult to see just in the searchresult list what type of recipe it is

10 25.0

many of the recipes are not inSwedish although I search inSwedish search words

3 7.5

it’s generally difficult to search forrecipes at search engines. I preferto directly visit recipe sites that Ilike instead

2 5.0

there are too few relevantalternatives

5 12.5

Other (’satisfied’) 2 5.0

Other 3 7.5

5.1.5 Design of Recipe Properties and Labels

On the question about how satisfied the participants are with the design of how thesearch results are listed in the search result list, most of the participants were quitesatisfied. The average rating score is 3.5 out of 5, where 1 is not satisfied and 5 issatisfied (mode 3, median 3, spread 3, standard deviation 0.78).

In question 13, the participants were asked to choose which design they prefer of therecipes presented in the search result list. The alternatives can be seen in Appendix A.All recipes have by default a name (title), URL and short description. A majority 43.9%of the participants choose the last alternative where all additional recipe attributes wereincluded. That is thumbnail image, rating stars and number of reviewers, preparationtime and amount of calories. In contrast, the second most common alternative with26.8% of the participants is the first alternative where there is only the recipe name,

30


Recipe Search

URL address and the short description presented. The third most selected recipe formatwith 12.2% was alternative 3, with the additional attribute preparation time. The spreadresults of this question could be helped clarified by the next question asking the partic-ipants specifically if there is any of the attributes that they consider could be removed.The attribute that 43.2% of the participants thought could be removed was the amount ofcalories. 16.2% thought that the number of ratings and reviewers could be removed and13.5% of the participants would remove the preparation time. Since most participantschoose the alternative 5 with all the recipe attributes listed, it could still be consideredthat most users agree that those attributes are useful. If one attribute is to be removed itcould be considered to be the amount of calories. In question 14 the participants wereasked if they had noticed the grey parameters before, that is the number of reviewers, theamount of calories and the preparation time. 42.5% of the participants had not noticedthese parameters before. This seems like quite a large proportion of the participants,considering that these parameters are available in the Google search engine which aclear majority of the participants use quite regularly. One reasons could presumingly bethat not all recipes have these parameters specified. Perhaps also that the labels are notmarked out clearly enough. 35.0% agreed that the parameters were sometimes usefuland 15.0% had seen the parameters but usually don’t read them.

The last question was concerning if the participants would choose any additional pa-rameter. Table 5.4 below shows the results from these answers. Most commonly cho-sen parameter was the main ingredients and recipe category (Standard deviation: 1.18.Mode and median: "main ingredients". Spread: 5).


16. Had you preferred any of these parameters listed below?Either as extra parameters to the existing ones or replacingsome of them


category. For example if therecipe is a dessert or brunch

14 31.1

main ingredients 25 55.6

by who the recipe wascreated

2 4.4

the date when the recipe waspublished

1 2.2

Other (’nothing’) 1 2.2

Other 2 4.4

31

Chapter 5. Results and Analysis 5.2. Search Criteria

5.2 Search Criteria

The results from the survey are analysed in order to understand the participants experi-ences with their current recipe search. It is for example investigated what their currentdifficulties are, what they find satisfactory and not (RQ1a and b). The outcomes formsthe bases when identifying preliminary criteria that seem more useful to use in order toorganise the information. Here are four criteria proposed and motivated by the resultsfrom the survey.

Using a search engine functionalityA clear majority of the participants (82.4%) prefer searching for recipes via a searchengine. This is far more common compared with visiting a specific recipe site andsearch for recipes there. This motivates that a search site functionality seems like themost preferable approach when searching for recipes online. When the participants dosearch at a specific recipe site, it’s very common to search again at other recipe sitesas well. The main reason is to compare the recipe with other recipes from anotherpublishers. Using a search engine functionality has is a benefit of being able to comparerecipes from various recipe publishers in the same recipe search.

Filtering only Swedish recipesMost participants search for Swedish recipes on a weekly or monthly basis. This moti-vates that there is a request for Swedish recipes online. The primary reason for why amajority of the participants (60.0%) search for recipes online is to find recipes to cook.That is not mainly for other reasons such as finding other types of related information.Most participants also find it negative that many of the search results they receive arelinks to other types of web pages than recipes and that there are too few relevant alter-natives. This points to that it could be useful to be able to filter the search results to onlyshow Swedish recipes.

ParametersThe recipe format that most participants preferred, included all the available parametersthan can be visualised in the Google recipe rich card in the search result list. That is therecipe name, URL address, short description, thumbnail image, rating stars and num-ber of reviewers, amount of calories and preparation time. However the results did notclearly show that more information is better in all cases. One parameter that most partic-ipants agreed on could be removed is the amount of calories. One parameter that is notvisible in the current Google recipe search, that a majority of the participants (55.6%)would like to include, is the recipe main ingredients. Searching by ingredients are alsothe second most common search query type, after searching by recipe name. So main in-gredients seems like an important factor when searching for recipes. Another additionalparameter that many participants (31.1%) also could consider to include is the recipecategory. This parameter is also included in the prototype v.1. The user experience ofthese parameters are then evaluated further in the user survey of the prototype.

DesignSince searching for recipes at the Google search engine is the most preferred approach,also the design choice of the prototype has the same layout as that search engine. As Ja-

32

Chapter 5. Results and Analysis 5.3. Prototype v.1

cobson writes in his book Information design [49], it is difficult to predict scientificallywhat design will work and what will not. Successful design is context-dependent andit can be difficult to replicate one design in one context to the same design in anothercontext. The general rating of the design of the search results from the Google searchengine was quite moderate (score 3,5 out of 5). So even if this search engine design ischosen in the prototype, there are possible points of improvement in the design of theprototype. An aspect that many participants were not so satisfied with about the searchresults is that it is difficult to see from the search result list what type of recipe it is.Many of the participants (42.5%) had not noticed before some of the recipe attributesin the Google recipe rich card. So one improvement could be to mark out some labelsmore clearly using background colours or write in text what some properties are.

5.3 Prototype v.1

The features of the prototype are informed by the issues uncovered in the related workin this thesis and by the results from the first survey. The survey results clearly show thatwhen searching for recipes online, using the Google search engine is the most preferredapproach (82.5%). This approach is chosen in spite of issues concerning filtering, thatmany of the search results items may be non-recipes and links to other types of web-sites. The general purpose search engine Google currently has no options for filteringrecipes for Swedish users but it is never the less the primary choice for the participantswhen searching for recipes. Furthermore Google search engine does not either offerthe same search mechanisms that specific recipe search sites generally have, for exam-ple more advanced options for precise categorisations and filtering. These features atrecipe sites does not seem as important to the participants since relatively very few ofthe participants actually found the right recipe by just searching at one recipe site. Con-sidering this information it seems reasonable to choose a search engine approach in theprototype, because this is how most users prefer to search for recipes online. The searchresults can be gathered from the Google search engine using the Google Custom SearchAPI. Issues regarding non-recipe search items are improved by dedicating the customsearch engine for Swedish recipes. So the prototype is taking advantage of the searchengine approach and is also offering filtered results. The technical background of theprototype is presented in the previous chapter 4.

When developing the prototype it has also been important to evaluate what informationabout the recipes to show in the search result list. So that the information presentedreally is relevant and so that the search process is made easier for the users to find theright information. Many additional recipe attributes are accessible via the Google Cus-tom Search API if the recipe scripts have these metadata marked up. Although there isalso a great variety of which attributes that are made available by each recipe publisher.However too much information might become overwhelming and less comprehensiveto evaluate for the user. Too little information might lead to that the users need to clickat each recipe item in order to find out this information. The questions in the surveyattempted to investigate what information in the current search results that seems mostuseful to know for the users, what information that could be removed and what infor-

33


mation that could be added. The results showed that the recipe attribute calories couldbe removed whereas the two additional attributes recipe category and main ingredientswere added instead. The other parameters that were selected to represent the recipesare the same as in the current Google search engine. That is the recipe name, the URLaddress, the extract description, the thumbnail image and the rating stars and numberof voters. Even though not all recipes have these properties specified in the recipe typeimplementation so these properties are not visible in all the recipes.

Furthermore it has also shown to be important how the information about the recipesis presented and visualised. The results from the survey showed that some of the in-formation about the recipes where not actually noticed by the participants. This wasregarding a special type of marked labels of a selected set of properties, that could bevisible in the first line in the recipes rich cards. As mentioned before, previous researchsuggest that the visualisation of the information could facilitate processing the informa-tion graphically and make it easier to overview the information. In the prototype, this isexemplified by marking two of the recipe attributes with different background colours.This is the attributes recipe category and the cooking time. This is to more clearly visu-alise these attributes and make these attributes easier to distinguish. The attribute mainingredients is also marked with the pretext ’main ingredients’ to clarify what attribute itis. Figure 5.1 below shows an example of searching for ’apple pie cinnamon’ at the firstversion of the prototype.

34


Figure 5.1: The startpage of the prototype v.1, searching for ’apple pie cinnamon’

35

Chapter 5. Results and Analysis 5.4. User Survey of Prototype v.1

5.4 User Survey of Prototype v.1

The participants in this survey were first asked in the questionnaire to visit the prototypesite and try out the recipe search. They were then asked to return to the questionnaire andanswer the questions. To facilitate for the participants in switching between the site andthe questionnaire, a button was added in the search site as in figure 5.2 below. The buttonis labeled ’Go to the questionnaire’ and links directly back to the questionnaire.

Figure 5.2: The startpage of the prototype v.1 with questionnaire button

5.4.1 Demographics

This second survey was also conducted in Helsingborg city in Sweden, at public placessuch as at the library, the central station, the University campus and shared on socialmedia. 31 persons participated, whereof 19 females and 13 males. The frequency of theage distribution among the participants is presented in table 5.5 below. In this surveymost participants were in the age group 55-65.

Table 5.5: Frequency of the age distribution of the participants in the second survey

Age group Percentage

under 18 0

18-25 15.6

25-35 21.9

35-45 3.1

45-55 15.6

55-65 31.3

65+ 12.5

36


5.4.2 Search Results

In question 3 the participants were asked how satisfied they are in general with thesearch results they receive when searching for recipes at the prototype search site. Theresult is that most participants are satisfied with the recipe search results. The averagerate score is high, 4.37 out of 5 (median and mode 5, standard deviation 0.85 and spread3). The next question is concerning if there is something that the participants are notsatisfied with. If so, what it is. 80.6 % of the participants had selected the alternative’no, I’m satisfied with the results’ (this alternative was also the mode, standard devia-tion 0.88, spread 5). So the majority of the participants had no specific suggestion ofwhat could be improved. None of the participants had selected the alternatives ’someof the search results are not recipes but links to other types of articles’ or ’many of therecipes are not in Swedish although I search with Swedish search words’. 1 participanthad selected that ’it?s difficult to see by just looking at the search result list what typeof recipe it is’. 3 participants had selected the alternative ’others’. One of these othercomments was ’not at all satisfied’ but the participant had not selected or written anyreason. Another comment was that the preparation times were not comparable. Unfor-tunately this property is not so easy to modify since this is up to each recipe publisherto declare in their own custom ways. Some recipe publisher specifies the preparationtime only in minutes while others in minutes and hours. The preparation times can alsobe in any various formats. Some time formats have been converted programmaticallyin the prototype. For example when the recipe preparation time is specified in durationformat, such as in ’PT45M’. The time is then converted in the prototype to be visualisedas ’45 min’ instead.

In general the search site functionality with the search engine approach seems appro-priate. The participants are satisfied with the search results and the filtering of Swedishrecipes seems to be adequate.

5.4.3 Design

The 5th question regarded what the participants generally think about how the recipesare visualised in the search result list. The average rating score was 4.10 (median andmode: 4, range 3, standard deviation 0.84). The next question was more specificallyabout what the participants thought about the two labels with background colours, therecipe category and the preparation time. Most participants, 54.3%, had selected the al-ternative ’the labels are clearly visible which is good’ (standard deviation 1.88, spread:6). Table 5.6 below show the frequency distribution of the selections. One of the com-ments in the ’Other’ alternative was that calories and nutrition information could havebeen nice.

37



6. What do you think about the design of the two labelswith background colours in the attached image?


the labels are clearly visible whichis good

19 54.3

it looks a bit awkward 3 8.6

they are marked out too clearly 0 0

it’s good that the labels havedifferent background colours

8 22.9

it’s not necessary to have differentbackground colours

3 8.6

the labels could have had otherbackground colours, or markeddifferently

0 0

Other 2 5.7

In the next question the participants were asked if they had preferred another size of thethumbnail image. 68.8% answered ’no it’s alright’ and 31.3% answered that the imagescould have been a bit larger. So if any change the images might could be slightly largerbut the sizes seems to be more preferred as they are.

5.4.4 Properties and labels

In the 8th question the participants were asked if they thought that there was too littleor too much information visible about the recipes. The participants gave average scoreis 3.17 (mode and median: 3, spread: 3, standard deviation: 0.59). This result seemsto show that the amount of information is moderate. So there doesn’t seems to be anyreason for adding or removing any recipe attributes. The next question was concerningwhich of the attributes that the participants found to be most relevant when searchingfor recipes. The attribute that most participants, 30.4%, had chosen was the main in-gredients (standard deviation 1.61, spread 6). Table 5.7 below presents the frequencydistribution of all results. The attribute main ingredients is not present in current searchengines but this attribute seems valuable to include in the recipe representation.

38



9. What information is most relevantfor you when searching for recipes?


the web address 1 2.2

the preparation time 6 13

the recipe category 5 10.9

the main ingredients 14 30.4

the thumbnail image 6 13.0

the short description text ofthe recipe

9 19.6

the average rating score andthe number of reviewers

5 10.9

In question 10 the participants were asked if there is any of the recipe attributes thatthey consider could be removed. If so, which. The most selected alternative by 60.0%was ’no, all information should remain as it is now’ (standard deviation 2.42, range 7).Table 5.8 below presents the frequency distribution of all selections. As in the results ofquestion 8, the amount of information about the recipes seems to be appropriate.

39



10. Is it any of the information about the recipesthat you think could be removed? If so, which?


no, all information shouldremain as it is now

21 60.0

the web address 4 11.4

the preparation time 1 2.9

the recipe category 4 11.4

the main ingredients 0 0

the thumbnail image 0 0

the short description text ofthe recipe

1 2.9

the average rating score andthe number of reviewers

4 11.4

5.4.5 Summary Comments

In the last question in the second survey the participants could write if they had anyadditional comments or feedback about the prototype recipe site. Their answers arelisted here:

“In many of the recipes there was only one (the first?) of the ingredients listed in thesection ‘main ingredients’. ”

“It seems like there were few search results of what I searched for.”

“I had preferred to be met with a background image, for example with fruits/vegetablesor similar, at the search box. It feels so empty when there is only a white emptypage.”

“It’s easy to search out recipes.”

“Good!”

40


“More info about the search results”

“Nope”

Regarding the first comment, the prototype is presenting all information that is availablein this parameter ’main ingredients’. However, unfortunately in many cases the recipepublisher wants to declare only one main ingredient. Other recipes may have none,others only a few and some recipes might have all ingredients declared. The customimplementations vary from publisher to publisher and so the information in this attributecan also varies from recipe to recipe.

The number of search results listed is set to be maximum 10 (motivated in the section2.3.1). However some of the search results may be filtered out because they might beother types of websites than recipes. Generally that is more often occurring when notother more relevant recipes could be found. In other cases there might not be any morerecipes that can be found with that search query. It’s not clear if the participant think10 search results are to few or if there were even less search results to participant’ssearch queries. In the question about if there was something that the participants werenot satisfied with, only the same participant had selected that he/she thought that therewere few relevant search results. So presumingly this does not generally seems to beany significant limitation for most of the participants.

As one of the participants had commented, the site could have a background picture. Ormaybe just a background colour. A white background was initially chosen to be morediscrete and not take to much focus from the various search results. Many of the searchresults also includes thumbnail images. A background colour or background imageon the site might not match some the recipes or the recipe thumbnails. Backgroundimages might also be a question of personal preferences and any selected backgroundcould presumingly suit some users and not others. So it is decided to keep the morediscrete and unpretentious white background. However this could also have been askedthe participants in the survey.

5.5 Prototype v.2

The user opinions of the first version of the prototype were more positive than expected.There were very few points of improvements that could be suggested based on the re-sults from the survey. Comparing the results from the first and the second surveys, thereare several questions that are similar in both questionnaires. One question that is similaris how well the participants considered that the search results they got matched theirsearch queries. The prototype got the average score of 4.37 out of 5 and the currentGoogle search engine got the score 3.70 out of 5. Even though there were less personsthat participated in the second study (31) than in the first study (41), the results couldindicate that the search results seemed to be better matched in the prototype. As thesearch results in both cases are retrieved from the same search engine, the main differ-ence regarding the search results is that the search results in the prototype are filteredto only show recipes. Comparing the results from the two surveys, there were also a

41


significant difference in how many of the participants that had selected that they agreewith a set of issues related to how the search results were filtered. For example in thesurvey of the prototype, none of the participants had selected the alternative ’some ofthe search results are not recipes but links to other types of articles’. In the first surveyabout the currently used search engine, this alternative was selected by 37.5% of theparticipants and was the most commonly selected issue.

In the fist survey most users had selected that they preferred a recipe format where themost information was present. So the users seemed to prefer the recipes with the full setof attributes visible that currently is available for recipes in the Google search engine.This is preferred even though most participants (42.4%) had not noticed some of the at-tributes before that were marked out in a special syntax. Furthermore many participantsin the first survey experienced that it was difficult to see just in the search results listwhat type of recipe it is. So even though informative recipe descriptions were generallypreferred, it seemed like much of the information was not taken to consideration. Pointsof improvements in the prototype regarded both in understanding what information thatwas most useful and what was not. Furthermore visualising the attributes more clearly,to facilitate for the users in finding the information.

Two of the attribute labels in the prototype were marked with different backgroundcolours. The attribute ’main ingredients’ was also clarified by writing out the nameof the attribute. Compared with the information available at the Google search enginerecipe rich cards, one recipe attribute was suggested to be removed and two new addi-tional attributes were chosen to be added in the prototype. In the second survey of theprototype, the participants seemed very satisfied with the amount of information pre-sented about the recipes. There was neither too much or too little information visibleabout the recipes. Neither were any of the attributes in the prototype voted to be re-moved. The labels with background colours were also considered clearly visible. In thefirst survey, on the question about if there were any difficulties with the search resultsreturned, the second most commonly selected alternative was that ’it’s difficult to seejust in the search result list what type of recipe it is’. 25% of the participants had se-lected that alternative in the first survey. Whereas in the second survey of the prototype,only 3.2% of the participant had selected that alternative. Regarding the informationpresented in the prototype, there does not seem to be enough material for making anymajor changes in a new version of the prototype. Relating to research question 3, theproposed search criteria is evaluated to be more satisfactory and the visualisation of therecipe search results seems appropriate.

42

Chapter 6

Discussion

This section discusses the outcomes found in the thesis in relation to the research ques-tions. It is also describes how the results from the surveys and the prototype developedare related to the issues mentioned in the related work. In other words, the conceptualissues identified are integrated with the empirical work of this thesis.

6.1 Current Recipe Search

The participants in the first study clearly preferred searching for recipes online using asearch engine, most commonly the Google search engine. Although as stated in previ-ous literature by Rose and Levinson [8], finding recipes is only a small fraction of alltypes of search goals user generally have when searching at search engines. Generalpurpose search engines are more commonly used for other topics. So consequently, thesearch results returned from search engines could also be in a wide variety of differenttypes of websites. The search engines typically can’t know for sure if it really is recipesthe user is searching for or if it is, more probably, for finding other types of more com-mon topics. The semantic evaluation of the search queries could also be a reason for thediverse search results returned [11]. Same words can have many different meanings anddifferent words can have the same meaning. The different types of websites returnedis also confirmed in the first user study to be considered as the most common issue forthe participants when searching for recipes at search engines. Even so, search enginesis clearly the preferred choice over directly visiting a specific recipe site and search forrecipes there.

So the approach of using a search engine is maintained when considering guidelinesfor creating a tool to support online recipe search for Swedish recipes. Using a searchengine approach is considered as one of the search criteria suggested. Because using asearch engine seems like the preferred user search pattern. In the prototype, the GoogleCustom Search API is used to retrieve the search results using the Google search engine.Filtering the search results are also a suggested search criteria, addressing the issuethan many of the search results are other types of websites. This was practiced in the

43

Chapter 6. Discussion 6.1. Current Recipe Search

prototype by using a dedicated search engine for Swedish recipes.

Below are listed further opinions from the first user study, about what the participantsfound to be satisfactory with current recipe search. This list is followed by a list of themain aspects that the participants wound to be difficult with current recipe search. Allthese aspects listed are also a response to the fist research question, regarding how theusers currently are experiencing searching for recipes online.

• using a search engine to find the recipes online (82.5%). Google is most preferred(94.9%).

• it’s quite common to search for recipes online, on a weekly or monthly basis• current satisfaction with the search results from search engines is generally con-

sidered moderate to quite good, although it can be improved• current design of recipes at search engines is generally considered quite moderate,

although it also can be improved• the preferred recipe format in the search result list, are recipes that have all cur-

rently available information included

Some of the main difficulties participants experienced with current recipe search:

∗ many of the search results are not recipes but links to other types of websites∗ it’s difficult to see just in the search result list what type of recipe it is∗ when searching for recipes at a specific recipe site, it’s common to also search

again at other sites. Mainly for comparing recipes from different recipe publishers∗ some attributes that are marked out in the recipes at the search engine had not

been noticed before (42.5%)∗ the amount of calories are considered the least useful recipe attribute

From these issues and satisfying aspects with current recipe search, two more searchcriteria are identified. One criteria is selecting useful attributes and the other is thevalue of the visualisation of the recipe information.

6.1.1 Selection of Parameters

The participants in the first user study showed a preference for more informative recipedescriptions. However, as Donald O. Case remarks [31], more information is not alwaysthe better when it comes to our abilities of processing and evaluating the information.This is also exemplified in the first survey where most participants had answered thatthey had not noticed some of the attributes before that were marked out in a specific typeof style in the currently used search engine. This indicates a contradiction between theneed for more information and at the same time the unnoticed information that actuallywas present. This dilemma is approached by both investigating what information thatis really most useful for the participants and also by improving the visualisation of theinformation, to facilitate for the users in finding the information.

The response from both survey studies where evaluated when deciding which recipeattributes to select, which to remove and which to add. The chosen parameters are the

44

Chapter 6. Discussion 6.1. Current Recipe Search

recipe name, the URL address, the short description, the thumbnail image, the ratingscore and the number of voters, the preparation time, the main ingredients and the recipecategory. Compared with the current recipe information in the Google recipe rich cards,the amount of calories was not included and the two attributes were added, the recipecategory and the main ingredients.

The other alternative parameters that the users could choose from in the first survey werethe recipe author and the date of when the recipe was published. But these alternativeswere not as selected by the participants so they were not added in the prototype. Furthermore parameters could be accessible in the Google Custom Search API but most ofthose are currently very rarely marked out in most Swedish recipes. So these were notsuggested as alternatives in the survey because these would no be reasonable to testin the prototype. There are also some possible additional recipe attributes that werenot suggested as alternatives for the users in the survey although those attributes aremore commonly accessible via the Google Custom Search API. This is for example theparameters recipe category, cuisine type and cooking method. The problem with theseattributes are that they often seemed to be confused and interchanged with one anotherby different recipe publishers. As previous research proclaims [19][20][21] that thereis a risk that improper categorisations can also cause confusion for the users. So in thecase of the three parameters to describe the type of the recipe, only the parameter recipecategory was suggested as one of the possible additional attributes to include.

The second user study of the prototype showed that the participants seemed satisfiedwith the amount of information available about the recipes. There was neither too muchor too little information visible. No attribute was suggested to be removed. The mainingredients was the most appreciated attribute in the prototype. This attribute was alsothe most requested attribute to add according to the participants of the first user study.Furthermore the first user study also showed that after searching by recipe name, search-ing by ingredients was the most commonly used type of search query when searchingfor recipes. So this attribute main ingredients, seems very relevant for the users whensearching for recipes. A possible explanation to why this attribute is not currently vis-ible in search engines might be that it is so diversely implemented by different recipepublishers. Some publishers only specify one main ingredient, others specify a few in-gredients, others list all ingredients (could be a very long list in some recipes) and somedo not specify this parameter at all. This parameter is also difficult to find programati-cally since it can be named differently and be placed in different types of sub-arrays bydifferent publishers.

6.1.2 Visualisation

The visualisation of the recipes is not only a matter of design preference or whether thesearch site looks pleasant. There is wide research, some of which mentioned earlier,about the impact InfoVis have on how we perceive and process information [22] [23][24]. In the first survey study most users seemed quite satisfied with the current visuali-sation of recipes in Google search engine, although some issues relating to InfoVis were

45

Chapter 6. Discussion 6.2. Proposed Search Criteria

found. Two issues that many participants experienced were that some type of informa-tion was not noticed and that it was difficult to see just in the search result list what typeof recipe it is. To further improve on these issues in the prototype, the recipe attributeswere visualised more clearly. Two of the attribute labels were displayed with differentbackground colours. One other attribute was also declared with the name of the attribute(’main ingredients’) in bold text. So that the search process can be facilitated and makeit easier for the users to distinguish the different attributes. The results of the seconduser study of the prototype showed improved results on the current difficulties found inthe first user study. The attributes with background colours were generally found to beclearly visible and useful. The issue that it was difficult to see in the search result listwhat type of recipe it is, was improved from 25% in the first user study to 3.2% in thesecond user study.

6.2 Proposed Search Criteria

The second research question is regarding what search criteria that seems more usefulwhen creating a tool to support online search of Swedish recipes. The motivations forthe search criteria suggested are described above in this section. A brief summary of thesearch criteria found to be useful:

− Search engine approach: using a search engine functionality when designing atool to support online recipe search

− filtering: filter the search results to only show Swedish recipes

− selection of recipe attributes: present information that is most useful for the usersin the context of recipe search

− visualisation: facilitate for the users in finding the information by graphical rep-resentations

The third research question is regarding what visualisation that seems more appropriateto show the recipe search results. The last search criteria, visualisation, is also a responseto this question, describing suggestions for how to improve the visualisations of therecipe information.

46

Chapter 7

Summary

7.1 Conclusion

Searching at worldwide accessible search engines for Swedish food recipes has limi-tations in filtering options for such a relatively small market as Swedish recipes. Stillsearching via a search engine for recipes seems to be very common. This thesis has ex-plored how the recipe search process can be more efficient for finding Swedish recipes.This is not only by filtering the search results from a search engine but also by under-standing user search processes, identifying difficulties with current recipe search andpossible points of improvements.

Even if recipe search results are marked out with attributes such as preparationtime and calories in the most commonly used search engine, the user survey showedthat these attributes may not necessary be noticed by the users. The importance of visu-alising the information more appropriate could facilitate how users perceive and processthe information. Using background colours to some attribute labels is one suggested ap-proach for quicker recognition of features of interest.

The amount of information presented about the recipes and what information toshow in the search result list could also impact how the user evaluates the information.Furthermore the recipe ingredients is found to be the most requested and the most ap-preciated additional recipe attribute to include. Searching by ingredients was also thesecond most common search query after recipe name. The main ingredients are cur-rently not visible in the most common search engines but this attribute is found to be animportant factor for users when searching for recipes.

7.2 Limitations

A shortcoming in this thesis is that there would have been needed for more user testingand comparison studies. More participants would also be needed in order to make moregeneralisable conclusions of the results. The questions in the surveys have focused onusability aspect of recipe search but further surveys could also be needed to gather more

47

Chapter 7. Summary 7.3. Further Work

qualitative information for evaluating cognitive aspects. For example how different vi-sualisations of the information could effect how the users perceives and evaluates theinformation.

A limitation when filtering the recipes is that it is difficult to programmaticallydetermine which web pages that are recipes and which are not. Even if only web pagesthat are marked up as recipes are retrieved from the Google CSE, the same typical recipestructural metadata could be used for other websites as well. So it is possible that web-sites other than recipes could unintentionally pass through the filters and be shown inthe search result list. However no such web pages has been found while testing the pro-totype. At the same time there might be recipes that are actual recipes but not markedup with such structural metadata. In that case those web pages can unfortunately not befound by the Google CSE. Although such recipe pages are less common.

The available information about the recipes in the Google Custom Search APIis based on what structural metadata is embedded in the recipe web scripts. How thismetadata is encoded in the recipe web scripts could vary quite much from recipe torecipe. This made it difficult to iterate through the search results from the API system-atically. Even though manual checks have been made carefully, there might be somecases were parameters could not be found in the prototype although those parameterswere included. Furthermore the filters in the prototype would also be need to con-tinuously checked manually and be kept up to date with new updates and new recipeimplementation styles.

7.3 Further Work

A KOS system applied for food recipes could possibly create a more controlled recipebank that a recipe search site could be built upon. The search results could then beiterated through more effectively programatically by using precise naming conventions[11]. Such regulated system could also facilitate more accurate filtering and categoricalalternatives for the users. One example could be hierarchical categorisations. This hasnot been investigated in this thesis because of the chosen search engine approach of ac-cessing the recipes. However a more controlled recipe resource would be suggested forfurther work on more accurate categorical browsing. Alternatively researching furtheron frameworks to use in order to semantically evaluate and categorise the search resultsfrom search engines more appropriately and accurately.

The idea of social navigation of recipes as for example researched by Svenssonet al. [50], could also be interesting to be further developed in the context of recipesearches. Seeing what other people with same preferences as oneself, also have chosen,could influence our choices on how to proceed next. Research by Cosely et all [51]states that one aspect of a recommender system is the rating scores. This is currentlyavailable in the prototype. Another aspect that Cosley et al. also investigated was thedisplay of predictions of other items based on previous recommendations. This couldbe a next step from the work of this thesis, to research the feasibility of offering suchsocial navigation and recommendations to the recipes.

48

Chapter 7. Summary 7.3. Further Work

This thesis is niched in the field of Swedish recipes but similar approaches couldpresumingly be applied for other countries and languages as well. The settings in theCSE would then be set accordingly and the filtering implementation would also need tobe specified for other linguistic terms.

49

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Appendix A

Questionnaire About Current RecipeSearch

A.1 In English

Hi!

We would appreciate if you have the opportunity to answer these 15 questionsabout online search for Swedish food recipes? It is questions to you who have searchedfor Swedish recipes online via a search engine. This enquiry is part of a master thesisproject att Linnaeus University at the department of Media Technology. We explore howSwedish recipe search can be improved and made more efficient. Your contribution isimporatant!

Thank you in advance for your participation!

Kind Regards

Linnea

PS if you want to contact me, send an email to [email protected]

1. Select your gender (one alternative can be selected)o Femaleo Maleo Trans*o Prefere not to disclose

54

Appendix A. Questionnaire About Current Recipe Search A.1. In English

2. What is your age? (Dropdown list)- under 18- 18-25- 25-35- 35-45- 45-55- 55-65- 65+

3. How often do you usually search for Swedish recipes online? (via a searchengine or directly at a recipe such as ICA.se) (one alternative can be selected)

o less than once every 6 montho a couple of times a montho a couple of times a weeko dailyo Other (free text)

4. What is your main reason with searching on Swedish recipes online? (onealternative can be selected)

o to find a recipe to cooko mainly for inspiration, but I don’t usually cook the recipeo mainly to find information and advices. Not necessarily for cooking the recipe.o I search via a search engine to see suggestions of nice recipe siteso Other (free text)

5. How do you usually search for recipes? (one alternative can be selected)o via a search engine firsto I go directly to a recipe site (for example Tasteline.com or any other recipe site/blogg

Searching for recipes at recipe sitesThis section is regarding recipe search at a specific recipe site. That is when you godirectly to for example coop.se/recept, without first searching via a search engine. Ifyou never search directly at recipe sites, you can discard this section and continue withthe next section

6. Do you usually search for the same recipe at other sites also? (one alternativecan be selected)

o Yes, sometimeso Yes, ofteno No, it’s too tiresome to search again at another site, even if there might be better

recipes there. I’d rather select one of the recipes at the first site I visito No, I usually find the recipe I’m searching for at the first recipe site I go too Other (free text)

55


7. If you answered yes to the previous question, what was your main reason? (onealternative can be selected)

o if I don’t find the recipe a searched foro to compare a recipe with other recipes at other siteso to supplement another recipe and find alternative solutionso Other (free text)

Recipe search at a search engine8. Which search engine do you usually use? (one alternative can be selected)

o Googleo Bingo Yahooo AOLo DuckDuckGoo Other (free text)

9. What do you usually use for type of search words? (Choose max 3 alternatives)(Checkboxes)

� I search by recipe name� ingredients� recipe site. E.g. ’chicken recipe from Allt Om Mat’� recipe category. E.g. ’christmas food’ or ’snacks’� by the person who wrote the recipe. E.g. ’Leila’s recipes’ or ’Leif Mannerström

glazier herring’� by fast preparation. E.g. ’fast cooked stew’� Other (free text)

10. How well does the search results in general match your search query? (Scalefrom 1 to 5)

never match well 1 2 3 4 5 always matches great

11. Is there something that you are not satisfied with? If so, what are the main issues?(Checkboxes)

� Many of the search results are not recipes but links to other types of articles� it’s difficult to see just in the search result list what type of recipe it is� many of the recipes are not in Swedish although I search in Swedish search words� it’s generally difficult to search for recipes at search engines. I prefer to directly

visit recipe sites that I like instead� there are too few relevant alternatives� Other (free text)

12. How satisfied are you in general with the design of the recipes in the searchresult list? (Scale from 1 to 5)

not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 completely satisfied

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13. Please see picture 1 below and choose the recipe format that you prefer (one alter-native can be selected)

o Alternative 1o Alternative 2o Alternative 3o Alternative 4o Alternative 5

Figure 1. Recipe results from google.com:

57


14. Had you noticed the categories calories, cooking time and number of reviewsbefore? (the categories in alternative 3-5) (one alternative can be selected)

o No, I had not. (Maybe it’s not possible in the search engine you use)

o Yeah I had, but I usually don’t read it

o Yes it is useful sometimes

o Yes, but the categories could have been made clearer to see, they are easy to notnotice

o Yes it’s very useful. It helps me to decide which search result to choose

o Other (free text)

15. If you would remove one of the categories in alternative 3-5 in figure 1 above,which would it be? (one alternative can be selected)

o the thumbnail image

o the web address

o the preparation time

o the amount of calories

o the average rating and the number of voters

o Other (free text)

16. Had you preferred any of these parameters listed below? Either as extra pa-rameters to the existing ones or replacing some of them. (Choose maximum 2) (Check-boxes)

� category. For example if the recipe is a dessert or brunch

� main ingredients

� by who the recipe was created

� the date when the recipe was published

� Other (free text)

Many thanks for your participation!SUBMIT-button

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Appendix A. Questionnaire About Current Recipe Search A.2. In Swedish

A.2 In Swedish

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61


62


63

Appendix B

Questionnaire About the Prototype

B.1 In English

Hi!

We would appreciate if you have the opportunity to answer these questions aboutsearching for Swedish food recipes at our website? The site is a demo version, devel-oped to test search functionalities. This enquiry is part of a master thesis project attLinnaeus University at the department of Media Technology. We explore how Swedishrecipe search can be improved and made more efficient. Your contribution is impo-ratant!

Thank you in advance for your participation!

Kind Regards

Linnea

PS if you want to contact me, send an email to [email protected]

Try out the search site* go to the website: https://swedish-recipe-search.herokuapp.com/* search for one or a couple of recipes at the site (it’s enough to just search and see

what search results are returned)* return to this questionnaire and answer the questions below

What do you think about the search site? Please answer the questions be-low

1. Select your gender (one alternative can be selected)o Femaleo Maleo Trans*o Prefere not to disclose

64

Appendix B. Questionnaire About the Prototype B.1. In English

65


2. What is your age? (Dropdown list)- under 18- 18-25- 25-35- 35-45- 45-55- 55-65- 65+

The list of search results3. How well did the search results match what you were searching for?

not well 1 2 3 4 5 very well

4. Is there something that you are not satisfied with about the search results?What is it? (Chose one or more alternatives) (Checkboxes)

� some of the search results are not recipes but links to other types of articles� it’s difficult to see by just looking at the search result list what type of recipe it is� many of the recipes are not in Swedish although I search with Swedish search

words� there are too few relevant alternatives� it’s quite few good recipes suggestions. Not so many recipes that I like� no, I’m satisfied with the results� Other (free text)

Design and Layout

5. What do you think about the visualisation of the recipes in the search resultlist?

awful 1 2 3 4 5 great

66


6. What do you think about the design of the two labels with background coloursin the figure above? That is the category ’Huvudrätt’ and the preparation time. (Choseone or more alternatives) (Checkboxes)

� the labels are clearly visible which is good� it looks a bit awkward� they are marked out too clearly� it’s good that the labels have different background colours� it’s not necessary to have different background colours� the labels could have had other background colours, or marked differently� Other (free text)

7. Would you have preferred another size of the thumbnail images?)o yes a bit larger imageso yes much largero no, it’s fine as it iso the images could be smallero the images could be much smaller

The labels and the representation of the recipes8. Is it too much information about the recipes or too little information?

too little information 1 2 3 4 5 too much

9. What information is most relevant for you when searching for recipes? (Chosemaximum two alternatives) (Checkboxes)

� the web address� the preparation time� the recipe category� the main ingredients� the thumbnail image� the short description text of the recipe� the average rating score and the number of reviewers

10. Is it any of the information about the recipes that you think could be removed?If so, which? (Chose maximum two) (Checkboxes)

� no, all information should remain as it is now� the web address� the preparation time� the recipe category� the main ingredients� the thumbnail image� the short description text of the recipe� the average rating score and the number of reviewers

67


Summary11. Do you have any more opinions about the recipe search site that you would like toshare?

68

Appendix B. Questionnaire About the Prototype B.2. In Swedish

B.2 In Swedish

69


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71


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Appendix C

Pilot Study Questions

1. What do you think about how the questions were formulated?- Were the questions easy to understand?- Was there something that was unclear in any of the questions? If so, what was the

issue?2. Were the number of questions too few or too many?

3. Took the questions long time to answer, could it have taken longer time or took itreasonable time?

4. Do you have any suggestions of how the questions can be improved further?

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