A pioneer in the hard-anodized steel cookware industry, Hestan’s innovative products span over 45 years. Developed by chefs for chefs, Hestan’s newest products, the Hestan Cue, integrates technology with their cookware to get perfect cooking results every time. Looking to enhance the user experience, Hestan reached out to Tactile to help redesign the Hestan Cue Smart Cooking System’s mobile application that drives their connected cooking tools.

Hestan originally positioned the cooking system as a tool to help cook more sophisticated meals. However, the tool was perceived as too complex and geared toward speciality meals rather than everyday cooking.
Tactile observed several cooking sessions and cooked with a prototype to identify the following challenges: (a) create an intuitive step-by-step cooking guide, (b) focus on the current and upcoming step, (c) determine a gesture and swipe strategy, and (d) integrating the manual cook mode button on burners.

Paired with Hestan’s smart induction burner and connected cookware, the Hestan Cue Smart Cooking app accurately controls temperature providing perfectly cooked food every time whether it’s using a recipe or manually using the induction burner for temperature control. Critical to the design process was creating a touch screen experience that’s easy to navigate while cooking. Tactile worked with Hestan’s chef to review visual designs for further refinements.

Unique to the app is the peak-ahead visual to preview the next step and the progress bar showing where you are in the recipe. The Hestan Cue Smart Cooking app’s step-by-step guided cooking makes preparing complex meals for family and friends—effortless. Working alongside the development team, Tactile was able to understand the constraints and provide recommendations in order to optimize the user experience.