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Personal Projects / 2025-2026

Lena's Kitchen

Designed and built a private family recipe box in memory of my grandmother, made for cooking from in real time and together: live sessions any device can join, hands-free voice, family bake days and cook logs, and AI help with finding and adding recipes.

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The kitchen at a glance

Recipes in one private library
600+
Voice commands, spoken steps and answers
Hands-free
Joins a live cook with a code
Any device

01

Overview

Lena's Kitchen is a private recipe box I designed and built for my family and friends, in memory of my grandmother.

It holds family heritage dishes and everyday home cooking, and it's built around photographs. Recipes can be browsed, added, and cooked from on any device.

It started in 2025 as a quick prototype. In 2026 I moved it to a new backend and rebuilt the experience from the ground up, including the design, the cooking mode, and the AI features.

  • Personal Software
  • Voice UX
  • AI Features
  • Design Engineering

Challenge

Most recipe sites are built for reading at a desk, but cooking happens with messy hands, a phone propped on the counter, and several things going at once.

A family recipe box also has a different job from a public site: it should feel personal, stay private, and make it easy for people who aren't technical to add recipes.

The design challenge was to keep the warmth of a handwritten recipe box while making every recipe work as a live, step-by-step guide.

Approach

I treated cooking as the core of the product and worked outward from there.

Recipes became structured data, with ingredient groups, steps, timers, and temperatures, so the same recipe could power reading, scaling, voice, and shared sessions.

I then designed for the moments around the stove: the screen stays awake, instructions read from across the room, and the portion step asks how many people you're cooking for before you start. I used AI-assisted development to move between design and implementation, and checked each change in the running app.

04

Solution

Cooking is a live session that any device can join with a code or QR code, with steps and timers shared between them. Recipes scale by people or by batches. Hands-free mode takes voice commands, reads steps aloud, and answers questions mid-recipe. Because the microphone stays open in a busy kitchen, only speech aimed at the helper goes to AI; the rest is treated as the room talking.

Adding a recipe works however it arrives: type it in, paste it whole, scan a recipe card, or find one on the web with AI. Browsing covers chapters, occasions, cooks, search, and a WebGL photo wall that groups every recipe by kind, year, or season.

The latest round turned the library into something the family uses together. The home page opens on Lena's pick for today, what family members made on this day in past years, and what's new since your last visit. After cooking, anyone can log "We made it" with a photo, a note, and who cooked, and the recipe shows how often the family has made it. Recipes collect family memories and tips alongside Lena's own notes. A bake day sets a time to cook one recipe together from separate kitchens, with a countdown on the home page, a calendar invite, and planning emails. Before a holiday, the family signs up for who's making what. A Help fill in the recipes page lists recipes still missing a photo or a story, Lena's first, and a weekly email sums up new recipes and what people cooked.

Eleven themes follow the calendar, including moving dates like Easter and Thanksgiving, and each one restyles the whole site with its own art and a character who occasionally peeks in. Everything sits behind invite-only sign-in, and the server refuses recipe data to anyone else.

01 / 05

The opening

The home page opens on the library, with search across all 607 recipes and the next bake day pinned to the top.

02 / 05

Lena's pick for today

One of Lena's recipes each day, with what the family made on this date in earlier years.

03 / 05

New since you were here

Recipes added since your last visit are marked, so returning relatives see what changed.

04 / 05

A recipe page

One big picture, one clear action, and the family tools beside it: log a cook, add a photo, plan a bake day.

05 / 05

We made it

Every logged cook adds to the recipe: how often the family has made it, their photos and their notes.

11 more screens

Inside the kitchen

Family memories

Relatives add memories and tips, kept beside the recipe they belong to.

The stove

Large type reads from across the kitchen. The live code lets another device follow along, with shared steps and timers.

Bake days

A time to cook one recipe together from separate kitchens. The join button appears half an hour before.

Who's making what

Before a holiday the family signs up for dishes, and recipes that need a head start are flagged.

Help fill in the recipes

Small jobs anyone can pick up: recipes missing a photo or a story, with Lena's first.

The weekly email

A weekly summary of new recipes and who cooked what, for relatives who don't open the site often.

Adding a recipe

Type it in, paste it whole, scan a card or find one with AI, with a live preview alongside.

The photo wall

Every recipe on one wall you can drag and zoom, grouped by kind, year or season.

Seasonal themes: Christmas

Eleven themes follow the calendar, and each restyles the whole site with its own art and type.

Seasonal themes: Easter

Moving dates like Easter are worked out each year.

Seasonal themes: Valentine's

A character occasionally peeks in, and anyone can tap or click to catch it.

05

Impact

The result is a working product my family can use: a library of more than 600 recipes that can be browsed, cooked from together, and added to.

The cook log, memories, and bake days are designed to give relatives a reason to come back between holidays and add what only they remember. Moving recipes into structured data means one source now drives the page, the live session, the scaling, and the spoken instructions.

As a design project, it shows the same end-to-end ownership as my professional work, applied to something personal: product definition, interaction and visual design, AI features, access control, and production releases.

06

Key learnings

Designing for hands-free use changed the product more than any visual decision.

Once the screen can't be relied on, each step has to make sense when it's spoken aloud, and the system has to know when it's being spoken to.

AI also needed clear limits in a family archive. AI-drawn pictures are labelled as illustrations, the voice is identified as AI-generated, and the device's own voice takes over when it isn't available, so nobody mistakes a generated picture for a real photo of the dish.

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