How can you increase the number of

recipes in the cooking platform as well

as improve the company social impact?
 Digital Platform and Gamification for Social Innovation
UX/UI and Engagement Strategy for Wongnai Cooking

GS282 Digital Economy and Social Innovation

17th December 2018

Team members
Alongkorn Fu
Chanikarn Inthongpan
Chanikarn Kaewwilai
Monnut Tanasugarn Instructor
Pimlapas Narongrit Massimo Ingegno
 Executive Summary

This project is for digital economy and social innovation class at global studies Thammasat university, in consultant track for Wongnai cooking to
develop the platform for both the producers and users. The challenge is how to increase the number of recipe posted in the cooking platform as
well as improve the company social impact. The process starting with interviewing online and offline potential users and Wongnai cooking users,
including survey and user go through each face of the platform to see what can be developed by users’ own experience of using the platform.
Also defining users as personas with different ages by dividing them into two groups based on the age since different ages have different
behaviors and routines. To develop the platform to motivate the users and what attracts them.

There are pain points that found during the process for example user incentives, Wongnai cooking does not have a lot of incentives for the user
that might make them not coming back to the platform. There is no social impact which social impact is a band image to attract other people for
band looking not only the platform itself. Design and layout are complicated, it is difficult for users to understand.
Solutions to tackle these issues are based on gamification technique by focusing on human core drives motivation or what motivates users. Some
examples of the solution are the feature of coin collecting where the user can exchange the coin for discount or promotion with Wongnai but
there has to be time limit to encourage the user to come and use the platform more often. Next is Tamagotchi, the avatar for each user, this helps
users keep active because if they do not come in, their tamagotchi could die from hunger since they do not feed them enough. Moreover, there
will be Wongnai cooking influencer, this is a goal for users since there is no challenge in the platform. This will motivate the user to keep using
because it creates the priority of users for instance the recipe of Wongnai cooking influencer get to publish in Wongnai cooked book, he or she
will have a chance to create new recipe with famous chef.

Moreover, social impact for Wongnai cooking which is called ‘healthiness for all’ by using the recipes from the users’ posts that are qualified and
guaranteed by nutritionist and expert that these recipe cover all of five food groups. Those recipes will be provided for orphanage and school so
that children will have healthy and delicious food. This social impact also addresses Sdg3 which is good health and well-being to improve health
quality of children in Thailand. Furthermore, there are more of developing the platform from developing design and layout, the tour guide for the
user to have better understanding, following button to follow the user that is interesting, and have a feature to send the recipe to friends in the
platform to create the interaction between the user of Wongnai cooking which will be discussed in the following pages.
 Table of contents

Design problem/opportunity 1-3

SDGs addressed 1
Primary and secondary research 2-3
Problem analysis 2
Case study 2
Summary of experts and users interviews 3

Platform Design 4-6

Value Proposition(s) 4
Platform Architecture 4
Data-informed Design 5
Openness and rules 5
Partners and stakeholders 5
Monetisation strategy 5
UX/UI analysis 6

UX/UI and engagement strategy 7-20

UX research 8-13
UI design and Gamification/engagement strategy 14-22

Conclusion 23-24

References 25
 Design problem/opportunity

SDGs addressed Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
1. Essential to sustainable development by promoting the well-being at all ages and ensuring healthy lives.
2. Increasing life expectancy and reducing death of incommunicable diseases by ⅓ by 2030
3. Achieving toward working on 100,000 per live birth must be only 70 death by 2030.
4. Emerging health issues and address persistency of diseases with a wide range are require many effort.

According to the data from Chaiyaphum Hospital, Thailand it shows that at the number of 497 children that came to the hospital, 5.8 percent of
them are underweight, 13.5 percent overweight and obesity and 8.7 percent stunting. Moreover, the report of Thai Health Promotion Foundation
states that the amount of obesity in Thai children has rapidly increased since 2012. The obesity on preschool children has increased by 36 percent
and 15.5 percent in 6-13 years old children. These problems started from the same factor which is food. Nowadays, there are many projects that
work on supporting the nutritions in food for children. For example, the projects that provide food for children’s ghetto, such a situation is so risky
that they will not get clean nutrients and enough to grow well in their prime because the family without money cannot get enough food for the
whole family. That is the reason the project is created, it provides food with nutrients children need for example 5 meals 5 food groups each day,
this campaign is sponsored by a supermarket that gives all the ingredient for cooking. As Wongnai Cooking’s image is about food and
consumption, therefore, Wongnai cooking could be part of this type of campaign by providing the recipe that contains the 5 food group for
children so that there will be more choices of food and it also gives back to society.

1
Primary and Secondary research
Problem analysis
The track challenge is “How can Wongnai increase the number of recipe posted in the cooking platform as well as improve the company
social impact?”
Wongnai Cooking platform is a platform where Wongnai users can post the cooking recipe, comments on the recipe post and discover
new recipe on Wongnai cooking platform and also engaging with the community who is passionate about cooking through post. Now there
comes a problem shows that why the posting of recipe posted could decrease the numbers of the recipe posted in Cooking platform. The first
factor that has been analyzed is when users are signed in through Wongnai Cooking platform. It is in confusion that user could not find
information or instruction on how to put up the cooking recipe or engage with the famous user. Which Wongnai cooking platform. The second
one is about the engagement in the Wongnai cooking community platform there are user who seperated into 2 categories such as readers and
writer. These two of the following has to do with the dynamics of engagement in this platform. Ofcourse, readers are allowed to like or reply the
comment of the post but there is no engagement such as like or share the post or the comment, this may cause the factors why reader cannot
contribute much.
The third problem that the consultant analyze is the gamification technique that could make this platform look attractive to the users. The
consultant feel that in each time that the user make the engagement with effort to post, comment or any kind of action that shows the user
engagement there could be incentives given to the user to feel enjoyable and addicted to the platform. The last problem analysis is through the
social impact that could make the company image look good and also that Wongnai in the way of healthy recipe. We as a consultant would like to
suggested a fundraising program or suggest for the companies should developed the platform to not just only compete in the market but also
attract many sponsor to raise a campaign and make many money through donations to give the profit back to society and make social impact.
Furthermore, the consultant will provide useful case study and suggested the tool that could raise the posting of the number of recipe while
creating social impact.

Case Study: Cookpad

From the idea of Akimitsu Sano who want to increases number of people to cook when he facing making recipes by himself and most of
people not usually cook. After that he came up with Cookpad which is one of the cooking platform from Japan for people share recipes and
feedback from audience. Now a day it’s spread around the world who use Cookpad as write recipes and share into application. Behind of success
of Cookpad which they want to make cooking fun for new cooker and help them to realize how important of food to your health and build
connection around you. The next part is they want people discover new recipes around the world which not just your own local food, but they
able to find other recipes when Cookpad spread business around the world use a same platform. The Cookpad also move to mobile adept to
modern world when people start to use more on phone. The last one is fighting a different tide to push into other market such as delivery and
they believe that if more people use Cookpad, they will able to influence the world.
2
Summary of experts and users interviews
Here is the summary of the experts and users interview. The research purpose of collecting all of the datas is to come up with personas
that significantly show the demographic of the Wongnai user. Consultant will analyze 3 parts which are demographic background,
psychographic, and needs. The first thing that consultant notice from the user and expert is the similarities of conditions of the occupation of
users Student and working men/women which is hard for them to keep interact with Social media. And also there is similarities in Psychographic
that makes user feels attached to the platform which are Liking and Reciprocity. Experts and users do think that what keeps them discoveries new
recipe which is a Liking due creativities that circulate in this platform and Reciprocity which keep doing their work in this platform. By people
usually responses to incentives and prize given by Wongnai.
Linking to their Psychographic attraction that keep them using the platform the first attraction psychology rules that attracts them which is
Liking users like to discover new recipe and committing to find more people in the cooking community makes them feel that the platform is
engaging and interactive at the same time. Reciprocity is involved in the event in Wongnai where people are reciprocate to earned rewards and
get more connections when people are engaging with them. Another factors that we noticed is user and expert felt that the need to connected
with the communities is essential. They needs is to access to application that linked to daily social media and online platform such as Facebook
and Twitter where the main engagement in Wongnai platform can creates a community where they felt that sharing their recipes & food, earn
cooking skills, generating new ideas of cooking, and find people with same interests is enjoyable and helpful to their daily life.
The common pain point is that user and expert think is they don’t feel privileged as the incentives in Wongnai cooking platform did not
satisfy user enough. From the interview it shows that they needed space for user to share thoughts on recipe and sending their homeworks.
Overall sense of ownership and Social Impact can also be improved and improvised in the way that it would benefit the Wongnai.

3
 Platform Design
Value proposition(s)
Reader - Easy to search for the recipe they look for and other recipes that relate to the topic. Also, it provides all the information needed for the
cooking such as time and ingredient.
Writer - For whom want to share their ideas of cooking with simple steps to post the recipe including pictures.

Platform architecture
The exchange of value that attracts most users to the platform in the first place.
Core interaction: a community for people who love cooking to come and share their knowledge and acknowledge from others.
Filters: Newsfeed algorithm based on previous interactions

Wongnai
Producer Consumer
cooking
(writer) (Reader)
Owner

Participants figure1.1

Posting
Views
recipes

Value units figure1.2

4
Data-informed design

Information

Personal information Using in term of statistics to

understand Wongnai cooking’s
target group/user

Openness and rules

People who like to cook and post their recipes. Focus on women who like to use social media.

Has interest Using

Thai people
in cooking Social media

figure1.3

Partners and stakeholders

For now Wongnai cooking does not have any collaboration with other partners. However, Wongnai cooking has a open section for advertisement
and sponsorship for Wongnai cooking events in online platform and offline events for users. e.g. Knor

Monetisation strategy
Advertisement from sponsorship

figure1.4 figure1.5 figure1.6 figure1.7 5

UX/UI analysis
figure1.8
Wongnai cooking platform is
inside the wongnai platform
figure1.9
Leaderboard should provide
the rank that 5 above and
down us. By showing the top
3. Users will lose their
motivation for achieve their
goal.
figure1.10 figure1.11
Recipes structure is unclear. In account profile. Noe
Also using mixed words with enough of senes of
English and Thai. ownership.
6
 UX/UI and Engagement Strategy

Business Metrics
Tier1 To increase the number of recipe posted.
Tier2 To improve a social impact

7
UX Research 

Defining players or users. 

There are two type of users in Wongnai Cooking platform: recipe writer and reader. The data of users shows the age range from 20 to 40 years
old. However, in order to create a deep analysis on user’s motivation, the age has been divided into two groups, which are 20-30 and 30-40 years
old, because different age scale represents lifestyle and motivation differently. 


Figure2.1

The first type of user is a recipe writer at 20-30 age range. She is a 20-year-old university student who lives in dormitory and always uses
Wongnai Cooking to search for food ideas. Moreover, she is very into an organic or healthy food and she believes that one day she will become a
good chef that creates a quality dish to all consumers. The result of interview is categorized into different core drives in figure 2.1. However, there
is the anti-core drive that can potentially discourages her from using the platform, which takes place in core drive 3, 5, and 8. She does not have
cooking equipment as same as the menus required and fear of being criticized because the food does not look good so these make she feel
discouraged while using the platform.

8
 Figure2.2

Next is a recipe writer at 30-40 age range. She is a 32-year-old office worker who lives with her parents. On weekday, she always bring her
own lunch box to office and she cooks for her parents every day. Her favorite chef is Pol. Moreover, she loves to do charity and volunteer activities
such as cooking for orphanages or retirement homes. In her working life, she encourages herself to keep tack on work by setting a goal step-by-
step and she feels accomplished every time one of the steps has been achieved. In the figure 2.2, it shows her lifestyle and motivation in each
core drives. For the anti-core drive, it takes place in core drive 5, where she does not easily trust on others’ recipes, based on her experience, she
always found a recipe that provides an incorrect proportion of ingredients.

The main similarities of the two recipe writers are accomplishment, empowerment, and unpredictability. They see a development as
mission or challenge to be accomplished and they like to express their creativity by designing a menu. Lucky draw and mystery box are
unpredictable reward that keep them excited and active in activities they are doing. For the main difference of them is scarcity, which the 32-year-
old user interested in limited product that available or special in specific occasion while another user is not attracted by those products.

9
 Figure2.3

The second type of user is a reader at 20-30 age range. She is a 21-year-old university student who likes to use social media, 

discover new recipe, and commit to find more people in the cooking community. She had once participated in the event created by Wongnai
Cooking and she enjoyed making new friends while getting to improveher skills. Besides, she loves reading an online blog and fiction. At the first
stage of her journey, she did not know how to cook but she always got tips or suggestions from online blog or web board and kept practicing
until her cooking skill has improved. And her preferences are placed in each core drives as figure 2.3 shows. However, the anti-core drives that
she feels are social influence and ownership because she thinks that there is only the same faces of user who always engaged with Wongnai and
it would be better if there is diversity in user. And she does not feel much of sense of ownership to make she belongs to the platform.






10
 Figure2.4

Next is a reader at 30-40 age range. He is 35-year-old lawyer and father who always cooks for his family on weekend. He started using
Wongnai Cooking because his friends posted recipes on the platform and invited him to use. Since he does not have much time, he wants
everything to be simple and easy to use. He concerns about nutrition of food that he and family consumed. Besides, the information that showed
in the figure 2.4, the anti-core drives of him are accomplishment and unpredictability. As he mentioned about time limitation he has, so it would
be difficult to send homework or accomplished the challenge on the platform. And he personally does not prefer to have any unpredictable
reward or event; everything should appears at the first use.

The main similarity of the two reader is social influence, which they feel a sense of community in Wongnai that everyone shares knowledge
to each other. On the other hands, the differences are accomplishment and unpredictability because of their lifestyles and positions. The
university student user tends to have more time to send homework and pay attention to small details such as easter eggs or mystery box, while
the lawyer user prefers just only to learn about recipes with a simplicity due to the time limited he has.
Pain points

11
 Figure2.5

The pie chart in figure 2.5 shows the pain points that 60 respondents found while using Wongnai Cooking via mobile phone. The biggest
pain point that users met is the incentives, which is a crucial tool to keep users being active in the platform. However, the current experience only
provides incentives in a short term behavior, such as posting recipes for a reward in exchange, it is a great way to attract users but some users are
there just for a reward and they will leave after they received it. In order to extend the time spending of users in the platform, users must be
attracted by some functions that require them to appear more frequent in the platform. Another thoughtful point is social impact that the
respondents see that it would be impressive if Wongnai Cooking has it as a brand’s reputation. It creates a feeling to users that the platform they
are using is unique from others; it is not only a space for sharing menus, but also contributing 

something good to the society.

12
Desired Actions

1. Sign up
1. To click on the Facebook post/
2. Read the loading screens
advertisement
Discovery On boarding 3. Learn the basic app features
2. To install Wongnai Application
4. Write your first recipe
(figure 2.6)
5. Post first recipe
6. Share first recipe on Facebook /
Instagram

1. Come back every day

Figure2.6
2. Write the second recipe
3. Build a habit to write at least one or two
recipes a week
4. Share them on Facebook or Instagram
1. Keep status (check in every 3 5. Write the first homework
months) 6. Build a habit to write at least
2. Become a mentor and onboard 3 homework a week
Endgame Scaffolding
other users 7. Learn how write attractive recipes (and this
3. Try a foreign recipe attract good ratings)
4. Specialize in a foreign recipe 8. Contribute to the community by
commenting and rating other recipes
9. Follow your first user
10. Explore other people you might want to
follow.
11. Participate in social event
12. Become an influencer

13
UI Design
Discovery

Figure2.7

Facebook advertisement is where user will first hear about Wongnai Cooking. 

The contents include core drive1, 6, 7, and 8.


Core drive 1: Meaning
- Figure 2.8 - Creating a social campaign to improve health of children at schools and orphanages. 

As Wongnai Cooking is all about food, therefore, in order to create a social impact, it should starts from what
they already have and it will improve the platform’s reputation as well. ‘Happiness for all’ is an event that allows
all users to post menu that contains the 5 food groups (protein, carbohydrate, fats, fruit vegetable, and dairy
product). The menus will be selected by nutritionists and chefs and passed to schools and orphanages in
Thailand.
- This type of advertisement will attract users who interested in doing charity or giving something to society.

Figure2.8
14
Core drive 6: Scarcity

- This type of advertisement (figure2.9)will grab attention of users who feel attracted by a limited products or discounts


Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity

- Starting an advertisement (figure2.10) with a question can make the readers curios about the topic 
 Figure2.9
and click on the link to find out the answer.

Core drive 8: Avoidance

- The content (figure2.11)can be specific to a group of people in cooking community, which they know many famous chefs. And it will creates a
feeling that they do not want to miss the opportunity to participate the event with their role model chefs.

Figure2.10 Figure2.11

15
On boarding

Figure2.12

- After registration = provides a quick feature tutorial and rule of point collecting

Core Drive 2: Accomplishment

- High-Five (Game Technique #17): once users complete the desire-action, there will be a pop-up message to interact with them (figure2.13)
- Progress Bar on the tutorial stage (figure2.14): to show users how many tutorial steps left in order to complete.

Figure2.13 Figure2.14
16
- After posting the first recipe Introduces Wongnai Influencer and steps to achieve it


Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity

- In figure2.15 Learn how to become a ‘Wongnai Cooking Influencer’ 

raises a curiosity on users to click on and check a requirement 

in order to achieve this position.

3. Scaffolding

Figure2.15

17
Scaffolding
- After users scrolling down to the end of recipe, the ‘Rate this recipe’ box will pop up on the surface (figure2.16).
Core Drive 3: Empowerment
- This is a new way that users will get feedback from others, besides comment.

Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness

- Rating more likely to indicate the quality of the recipes, when a user sees other’s

recipes with a higher rate, it can drives the user to improve and reach the same

rate as those users

Figure2.16

- ‘Send on Wongnai Cooking’ (figure2.17) function at the bottom part of a recipe site, 

which it allows users to send a recipe to their friends on Wongnai Cooking. 

This action creates an interaction between users in the platform.

18
Figure2.17
- Introducing a coin collecting feature, which users will earn after completing the required activities (figure2.18). 

The coin works as a currency that the users exchange for a discount from supermarket (figure2.19)
Core Drive 3: Ownership
Exchangeable Points (Game Technique #75):

Users will have a sense of ownership when the coins are theirs to collect as their property.


Core Drive 6: Scarcity

Countdown Timers (Game Technique #65):
Time duration for exchanging discount coupons (figure2.20) is limited. 

This will stimulate users to collect the coins as many as they can within the time limitation

and it will prevent a procrastination of collecting coins.



Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance Figure2.18
The Sunk Cost Prison (Game Technique #50):

When users earn certain amount of coins which they putted a lot of efforts to get it, 

therefore, they tend to be unwilling to give up everything by leaving the platform.

Figure2.19 Figure2.20

19
- Introducing a ‘Tamagotchi’ feature, which contains 

four stages of evolution: egg, baby, teenage, and master (figure2.22).
- Tamagotchi will give the user one coin daily and it will increase 

to three, five, and ten when it grows up to the respective stages. 

Tamagotchi requires the user to come back four times a week to 

feed them, or else it is going to starve and die, which the user 

must start again from the first stage
- The figure2.23 shows the total of XP that Tamagotchi must have 

in order to evolve to the next stage.
- Figure2.24 shows activities for Tamagotchi to earn XP Figure2.21

Core Drive 4: Ownership

Status Points (Game Technique #1): in this case refers to XP of Tamagotchi which
users have to collect and it shows an improvement of users through the level of Tamagotchi.

Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance

The Sunk Cost Prison (Game Technique #50)
Since users have one Tamagotchi to take care of and it requires user
 Figure2.22
to comeback four times a week for feeding. If the users do not feed them,

they will die and the amount of daily coins (based on Tamagotchi’s level) will be reset.

20
Figure2.23 Figure2.24
- Introducing ‘Wongnai Cooking Influencer’.
Figure2.24 Figure2.23
This is an opportunity for users to become a Wongnai Cooking Influencer 

whose recipes get to publish in Wongnai book. Also, he or she will has 
 Wongnai Cooking
a chance to create new recipe with famous chef (e.g. Chef Pol) 

and receive a special gift from sponsors (e.g.Knor).
The steps to become a Wongnai Influence is shown in figure2.25.
Infl

Figure2.26

Figure2.25

- The progress bar to become a Wongnai Cooking Influencer (figure2.27) 


will be shown in the user’s profile page and the data will be checked every 3 months


Core Drive 2: Accomplishment

Progress Bar (Game Technique #4) shows the status on how the users are doing in the process of 

becoming Wongnai Cooking Influencer. It works as a goal for users to achieve.
Core Drive 5: Social Influence
This progress bar is appeared publicly which creates a feeling of social acceptance

and competition that motivate users to keep pushing themselves on the progress bar.

Figure2.27
21
Endgame
- The home page will show a list of recipes (figure2.28) 

based on the user’s history and recommend different recipes to the user.


Core Drive 4: Ownership and Possession

The Alfred Effect (Game Technique #83)
The homepage is personalized to the users’ interests.
- Encouraging users to specialize in a foreign recipe. 

Providing badges to indicate menus of country the users have tried (figure2.29)


- Core Drive 2: Accomplishment

Achievement Symbols (Game Technique #2)
 Figure2.28

Core Drive 3: Empowerment and Creativity


By allowing users to try a foreign menu, it encourages them to apply their creativities on the new experiences

22
Figure2.29
 Conclusion
Project Implementation Road Map

Figure3.1

23
 In conclusion, the challenges of Wongnai Cooking platform are to increase the number of recipe posted and improve a social impact. The
project began with launching surveys and interviews to the existing and potential users with different age ranges and lifestyle in order to
effectively cover a various type of users. The result of researches shows the users’ experience in the platform, pain points, user personas, and
other additional suggestion for improvements. Moreover, the analysis of the current platform is crucial in the researching process as well. In order
to understand more about the function of the current platform works, it started with identifying value propositions of the platform, core
interaction, data-informed design, openness and rules of Wongnai Cooking. Learning the information of partnerships, stakeholders, and
monetisation strategy help to define a way for improvement by looking for a potential partnership and future benefits that Wongnai Cooking can
earn. And one of the essential part is UX/UI analysis, which it shows the current experience of users such as the design, function, and activity within
the platform and it provides a space for the project to develop on the current one. After gathering all required information, the solutions came up
from the combination of one part from pain points, user personas, and the current experiences and another part is the use of gamification
techniques that attract to the users’ motivations to the platform. The solutions include a new design and layout, features, advertisement, and
events. Each solutions are designed to respond the human core drives of different type of users in order to expand the area of target to reach
more people.
For the further suggestion, Wongnai Cooking can create more benefits beside from sponsors and advertisements.
Firstly, They can sell a Wongnai cookbook that contains recipes from chefs, Wongnai Cooking Influencers, and the selected users.
On the cover page can be a celebrity or famous person in order to attract the book. Or creating a job board, where Wongnai Cooking gives a
space for users to write a portfolio in their profiles and charges an access for people who want to contact those users. For example, the owner of
restaurant wants to hire a chef, so he or she can pay Wongnai Cooking for an access to look for a user that matches with the owner’s criteria. In
addition, Wongnai Cooking and Wongnai Delivery can work together in a way of coin collecting. Users will be able to use the coins from ordering
food or posting a recipe in exchange for a discount in supermarket or delivery. Moreover, Wongnai Delivery can be a messenger which users in
Wongnai Cooking will order the ingredients and receive them directly by the messenger.

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 References

Akimitsu Sano - The Japan Times. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/tag/akimitsu-sano/

Health - United Nations Sustainable Development. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/

Nutritional Status of 0-6 Years Old Children in Area of Mueang Chaiyaphum District, Sutatip Watthanaphanalai, 2017

ยอดเด็กไทยขาดสารอาหารเพิ่ม นักวิชาการแนะทุกฝ่ายใส่ใจการกินเด็ก - Thaihealth.or.th | สำนักงานกองทุนสนับสนุนการสร้างเสริมสุขภาพ (สสส.).

(2018).Retrieved from http://www.thaihealth.or.th/Content/20232-ยอดเด็กไทยขาดสารอาหารเพิ่ม%20นักวิชาการแนะทุกฝ่ายใส่ใจการกินเด็ก.html

"อาหาร5หมู่"...เพื่อชีวิตดี๊ดีของเด็กสลัม. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.posttoday.com/social/local/372778

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