Use Artificial Intelligence Wisely

I really like it, when I find a service which is not based on an entirely new concept, but its execution is so thoughtful that it stands out of the crowd.

Supercook is your personal cooking assistant. It is capable of recommending a variety of recipes based on provided ingredients. Supercook is a meta-service, actually. It aggregates content from several specialized recipe web sites. It is focused on providing top quality recommendations and leaves recipe databases to other specialized services in the field, which is another important lesson to learn from Supercook. You will notice also that the service does not force you to sign up to use it. This alone greatly improves the exposure of the service to new potential users.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and a very intuitive user interface is present throughout the whole browsing experience. In my opinion this is the most important strength of this service. You can start using Supercook right from the front page. You type in your cooking ingredients. As you type, auto-complete function kicks in, providing you a really fast text entry. After you enter your first ingredient, a tag cloud appears below the ingredient list with most useful extensions of the existing list. On the right hand side, there is a list of dishes which you can make, based on the ingredients that you have. The list even contains dishes which require one or two ingredients, which you do not currently have. This enables you to discover more dishes and gives you an idea what else you could cook, if you had those ingredients. And when you think you have seen it all, check out My Account section. You will find a shopping list there. This shopping list is a list of items which will greatly broaden a variety of dishes that you can make in your kitchen.

In conclusion let me summarize the most important lessons to be learned from this nifty service. A service provider should only provide those benefits for the user where he is distinctively better than the competition. He should seek for partners, to provide other benefits for the user, where he does not have a distinctive competitive edge. The service should be open in a sense that it allows a relatively easy trial. If you have a practical use for AI, use it, but pay special attention when implementing it. Think about the user. Think about how does this AI feature bring added value to your users, who are the most important evaluators of your work at the end.