Cooking often seems harder than it really is. The literature doesn't seem to help us here either. A lot of modern cooking instruction seems to be written in an overly-narrative style, often emphasizing prose aesthetics as much as practical instruction. Obscure techniques and exotic ingredients can leave one to wonder, what is essential to a recipe? What must be replicated and what can be simplified?
These characteristics of modern cooking instruction make for attractive cookbooks that are enjoyable to read at leisure, but often make work in the kitchen cumbersome and error prone.
As an exercise in anti-narration for the simplification of instructions, this project, codenamed ICONIFY, will explore the possibilities and limits of de-narrating cookbook instruction toward the development of an instructional presentation that is easy to follow in the heat of the kitchen.
While previous lab projects have explored the emojification of social media language, ICONIFY aims at a level of specificity and pragmatism that will help to guide the exploration and implementation of the project. The hope is not merely to present iconified text that is interesting, but that is ultimately useful. ICONIFY aims to present cooking instruction in a way that makes cooking easier, more fluid, and ultimately more enjoyable.
To this end, the ICONIFY team will explore a number of elements related to linguistics and semiotics and their roles in instructional language and cooking. They will use state-state-of the art tools and techniques in the domains of user interface design and natural language processing to design and develop a system for the production of iconified cooking instruction. We’re seeking to build a diverse team, with members who can bring creative input, interest and experience in interface design, and technical knowledge of linguistics, NLP, or AI. Team members should have a passion for cooking and/or instructional design, and should be prepared to bring their own kitchen experiences or cooking-related explorations to bear on the project.
The team will develop a set of technologies proving out the ideas germane to the core concepts of ICONIFY, including: The development of a domain-specific (cooking) semiotic. The reduction, simplification, and iconification of cooking instructional language. This may be automated or semi-automated, and will utilized combined skills of NLP and of UX design. The design and presentation of simplified cooking instruction.