# Chai Cooking

By Munawar Khel / Day One Technologies / 2017–22 / 1 min read

Published at https://munawarkhel.com/work/day1-technologies/chai-cooking/

Pitch, not delivered.

Recipe apps usually sell on volume, a big library and a search box, and end up feeling like a utility.

- Company: Day One Technologies
- Timeline: November 2017 – April 2022
- Platform: Mobile (iOS)
- Category: Food and recipes, lifestyle
- Status: Pitch, not delivered

## The proposition

Recipe apps usually sell on volume, a big library and a search box, and end up feeling like a utility. The brief was to make a recipe app that sells on appetite instead, where the visual treatment does the persuading and the library is a starting point rather than the whole story.

## Design direction

A photography-led home where the food is the interface. Search runs across a library of more than a thousand recipes, but the browsing modes carry a point of view beyond volume, a curated corner, a waste-reduction mode, and recommendations, and a featured recipe card carries cook time, an audience label, a video entry point, and step pagination, because recipes are presented as guided video sessions rather than static instructions. The register is dark and appetising, closer to food editorial than a utility app: charcoal and slate grounds with moody overhead food photography shot on dark surfaces, a handwritten script wordmark paired with a simple smiley mark, and warm accent colour reserved for the active state. This was a pitch, so what shipped was the design direction, not a live product.

## What was designed

- Splash with the wordmark over styled food photography and a brand tagline
- **Sign-in** offering email and Facebook, with a route to create a new account
- **Recipe home** with search across the library, segmented browsing modes (a curated corner, a waste-reduction mode, and recommendations), and a featured recipe card carrying cook time, an audience label, a video entry point, and step pagination
- A Popular section anchored at the foot of the home screen

## What it demonstrates

Photography-led consumer app design where the visual treatment carries the proposition. A compact pitch, useful as an example of establishing an appetising brand register quickly rather than as a depth-of-product exercise.