We decided to conduct a survey to gather a large collective of results based around vegetarians, healthy eating habits and the cooking regime of the

general public. We did this so we could define exactly what would be the best target audience for us to approach with our recipe cards. It would also allow

us to make informed decisions on other key details such as the amount of time that should go into preparing a meal, the different types of ingredients

that could be used and whether or not people actually used recipe cards whilst making food.

We came to the decision that the most appropriate way to generate a large number of differing responses would be to use our social networking sites,

e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr to post out our survey and gain a large amount of responses, this also kept things anonymous as there were no face to face

encounters which is something that will have led to more reliable results.

Introduction

This data shows that the majority of the people who

responded to our survey were between the ages of

17 – 24. We can assume from this data that the

majority of our responses were from students, taking

this into consideration it may be a good idea to

create a student based recipe card that applies to

the age generation, which appears the most popular.

One of our ideas for recipe cards was to introduce

vegetarian meals that were suitable for children. After

collecting and analysing our results we realise that this

may not be the most beneficial type of recipe card to make.

This is because only 9 of our 100 results were of the age

range that may have children.

This data shows that the majority of our feedback

are female, whereas only 47% were male. Further

more, this proves that our research into producing

our recipe card will be more heavily influenced by

the female generation rather than the male.

Due to our research been more heavily influenced

by females, this could effect our overall approach to

producing a recipe card. This could involve us using

a more contemporary layout and a clean design

rather than heavily jumbled and cluttered with

information.

From our responses we have learnt that

the majority of individuals cook “often” or

“now and again”. This tells us that

cooking appears to not be a main priority

for a lot of people and often when it does

come to cooking a meal, people will look

for something simple and easy which

does not necessitate as much skill

required by someone that cooks “very

often”.

From our analysed results we can also see that a massive 31% of people cook either rarely or never. This could

be for a number of reasons such as the people who cook never or rarely could be of a younger age range and will

have their meals cooked for them by family members, or that they are students and opt to have takeaways for

convenience rather than standing and cooking their own meals.

After filtering our results we found that those who

answered „Never‟ to our question about how often

do you cook seemed to be primarily aged 16 and

under. This confirms our previous thoughts about the

younger people being made food by parents. The

other results that answered never were 17 – 24 and

30+ this could mean that those people choose to

have takeaways or go out for meals on a daily basis.

We can also see that the majority of people who

never cook are male. This could mean that aiming

our recipe cards at a predominantly female audience

could be something that proves very beneficial to

our final product.

Another element of data we can conclude through

our results are that the majority of males that never

cook are also 16 or under, again this relates back to

the fact that in society traditionally teenagers and

younger children have their meals cooked by their

parents or if not, opt for going out for meals on a

daily basis or ordering a takeaway.

These results are similar to the previous set of data,

from the same question - but we have selected the

filter option to “now and again”

From these results we can see that the majority of

the people that cook „now and again‟ are primarily

females aged between 17 and 24. From this we can

deduce that females that may be students are more

likely to cook meals for themselves. If the people in

question are indeed students they may share

accommodation which means that perhaps only one

person would cook for the household, or they would

alternate between each household member on a

daily basis.

Another aspect of our results we can consider is that

in this particular group of data there are no people

aged 30+ that cook “now and again”. This could

mean a number of things. It could mean that people

of this age group constantly cook meals for

themselves or that they live with a partner who

cooks their meal.

This particular question gave results that prove that the majority of the responses use the web to look for new

recipes. In today‟s era we are surrounded by new forms of easily accessible technology, a well known example

been the iPad – a handheld device that proves handy in the kitchen when wanting to look at a recipe whilst

cooking. Also the introduction of apps that choose random recipes on a daily basis for people that like to

experiment when cooking. Forms of print based media such as cookery books and magazines proved less

popular, as often these are less accessible and sometimes more expensive than electronic version and often

do not give many options or different forms of tutorials to meet specific audiences – they tend to only ever

branch out to one specific audience, been the older generation e.g. 25+

This question shows tremendously that the majority of responses are not a vegetarian and only 9% overall were.

Whilst the response we got that were vegetarians was very small using filters we can find out some valuable

information about the age, eating habits and buying habits of vegetarians. In the future we could have added more

options to the survey based around types of vegetarianism. For example, pescatarians are vegetarians who

abstain from eating all meat with the exception of fish. This means that the person is not strictly vegetarian and

could have caused inaccuracies with the survey. Another thing to consider would be the fact that vegans may not

deem themselves vegetarians as they technically are not and they may have answered no which would give

inaccurate results.

After filtering our results we can deduce that the

majority of vegetarians are 16 and under and are

very predominantly female. Whilst we only got 9

results that were vegetarian we can still gain

valuable data from this.

We now understand that very few people who are

around student age choose not to be vegetarians.

This could be because of the ease of access to

things like ready meals and takeaways whilst being

a student. Picking up a quick meal that can be done

with very little preparation is going to be very

appealing to the student lifestyle.

We can also find that the majority of vegetarians

are female. This can be put down to a number of

factors. It could come down to vanity, as women are

more likely to care about their outer appearance

and eating healthy foods will allow them to maintain

that. It will also allow them to remain healthy which

is something that appeals to women more than

men.

A large majority of the people that have chosen to become vegetarians prefer recipes that will explain

how to cook a healthy meal. This may seem like a relatively obvious statistic. A lot of vegetarians will

choose the vegetarian lifestyle to maintain their health. Eating healthily is something that a lot of people

desire as it can increase the longevity of life and will make the person feel better about themselves. For

example, circumstances caused by an unhealthy, high fat and salt diet include heart disease and

obesity – in society today the majority of people in the UK opt to avoid an unhealthy diet and sometimes

this can involve choosing to become a vegetarian.

Male Female

Here we used the “Filter” to distinguish which of our genders would spend the most amount of time preparing

a meal. As you can see from the results Women are generally more likely to spend up to 30 minutes

preparing a meal where as a male primarily will spend up to 20 minutes. However it does seem that the male

research is relatively inconclusive as there are a lot more males that are willing to spend 45 minutes

preparing. This shows that spending roughly 20-30 minutes on preparation time of a meal is an average limit

our audience would wish to spend cooking – this means that we should aim our recipes cards at 10-30

minutes tops to properly appeal to our target audience.

These 2 questions refer to mainly the product design and purpose overall; often it is important to take into

consideration the visual aspect of written communication as this is the first thing the audience will notice

before reading the text. Different layouts apply to different audiences, hypothetically a female audience may

prefer a more simple, contemporary layout with a clean finish – whereas a male audience may feel a

cluttered layout with lots of images/text is more suitable.

From the results that we have gathered it appears that creating a recipe card that contains an equal ratio of

pictures to text will be the most ideal outcome for both parties. A massive 73% of our respondents stated that

a recipe card would be useful when creating a meal. After filtering our results we discovered that 31 males

would find a recipe card useful and 42 women would find it useful. This shows that women are more inclined

to follow a step by step instruction when creating a meal where as a male would likely use other means of

instruction or attempt to do it himself.

The last question we conducted referred to the specific

ingredients people prefer to use when cooking. This can

prove a difficult set of results as shown above most of our

target demographic were 17-24 and mainly based on

students. Further more, this means that most of the

responses do not necessarily cook their own meals or buy

their own ingredients. As you can see from our results a high

percentage prefer to buy the cheapest available products,

this is what you would expect of a typical student as they try

to buy the bare minimum to get by, which can sometimes be

the reason for unhealthy living.

This graph shows the male demographic and

there choice of purchases of ingredients. The

majority of them will purchase a combination of

cheapest items that are organic. This tells us that

creating a recipe card that doesn‟t require overly

expensive ingredients would definitely be the

most efficient form of recipe card.

This graph shows the female demographics and

their ingredient buying habits. They have a relatively

similar buying pattern to males whilst edging slightly

more towards the cheaper products. This could be to

do with purchasing offers whilst shopping. It also

backs up our previous results about creating a

recipe card with cheaper ingredients.

After looking and analysing our results we have come to a final conclusion on how to approach the design and production process of our product. Our target demographic shows that we are edging more towards the

female audience around the age of 17-24, but we feel that producing a unisex series of recipe cards would be more beneficial to our cause as we would be appealing to a wider set of people rather than just one specific

group. Referring back to the age range, our responses show we had a larger impact of responses from students and young adults with only a minimal amount of responses coming from those over the age of 25. Taking this into consideration, it is vital to approach the product in a way that we ourselves, as students –would find interesting and appealing without neglecting the few results we got from older respondents. We could do this by creating a recipe card that is of a contemporary, clean layout with an equal ratio of pictures and text rather than having an unequal balance. This provides us with a sturdy platform to appeal to several audiences with a simple visual aspect rather than only focusing on one specific group, using bright fonts and

imagery that may not appeal to older audiences as it would to students.

We also conducted an interview with an individual in order to get a more open answer giving us several options rather than just one. The interview gave us a better understanding of specific questions and reasons for choosing their answers, an example been how they feel in particular about healthy eating. The response was positive and this opened up new opportunities to branch out more to a wider audience through stressing

the necessity of a healthy, nutritional diet.

Originally, our approach to the project was to create a series of recipes that would only take a maximum of 10 minutes to create – we felt this would appeal to busy families and individuals with a fast-paced lifestyle. But, after taking our responses into consideration with can see that in fact most individuals prefer to take longer than 10 minutes, the majority opting between 10-30 minutes. The results that we received showed that the

majority of people would like to buy a combination of ingredients that are not only cheap but also organic and free range. This gives us a great rough outline of the type of ingredients that we can research to put onto our recipe cards. We now know that if we put on a lot of expensive ingredients that the recipe cards will not be used as much or the people themselves will go out of their way to find a cheaper alternative so we may as well make it as convenient as possible by adding the cheapest possible options. Overall we are going to

primarily aim our recipe cards at students or those of a student age between 17 and 24 and will target both males and females. We feel that this will allow our recipe cards to be as accessible as they possibly can

which will hopefully lead to a greater success.

Conclusion

• Our primary age would be between the ages of 17-24, mainly

students.

• Our results proved primarily female respondents but provided

a substantial amount of male responses.

• The social grade of our audience would be C2DE, They will

buy cheap ingredients.

• The person will not necessarily be a vegetarian but will be

interested in experimenting in vegetarianism.

• Looking at our psychographic profiles we can conclude that

our audience are achievers and looking to aim for success

whilst been in education, either school, college or university.

• They may also be part of the profile, “Socially Conscious Type

A” - this group is not concerned with the world of achievement

or the world of family or community, but rather what effects

their actions have on society on a whole. In essence, they

want to make the world in which they live a better place. They

are especially concerned about the environment and our

society‟s impact on natural resources. Often they integrate into

beneficial causes such as recycling, driving fuel efficient cars

and buy products that are considered environmentally friendly.

They also believe in schooling and teaching the children, are

frequently highly educated with one or two university degrees,

mostly in the liberal arts.