Barbecue Central — a Conceptual App

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Objective

Barbecue can be defined as an outdoor activity of friends, family, and burgers or a culinary way of preparing meats, vegetables, and desserts on an open flame. Information about barbecuing is scattered throughout the Internet on personal and professional websites with no specific website to encompass all things barbecue.

We propose an informational website that would explore all the above possibilities of barbecuing.  This website would consolidate information on everything barbecue. It would incorporate the history, cooking methods, meat preparation (rubs, marinades, sauces), meats (types, cuts, etc), and side dishes/desserts.

Persona Scenario 1

Take for instance our friend Robert, he was visiting his brother in Memphis, Tennessee. The two of them went out to dinner one evening to a famous barbecue restaurant.

Robert had such a great meal that when he returned home, he decided to teach his high school history class about barbecue throughout the course of the year. As he searched the Internet, he was amazed at how cumbersome it is to find barbecue information in one spot. 

Problem Space

Our team, through various research methods, hopes to explore, consolidate and construct an information site on everything related to barbecue.  It would incorporate history, cooking methods, meat preparation (like rubs, marinades, and sauces), specific cuts of meat and show recipes for side dishes and desserts.

Mission Statement

The all-encompassing barbecue website should give visitors a reputable place to discover, learn, share, and recommend all things barbecue.

Research

As the team began researching, we had a hard time finding websites with consolidated information on barbecue.  We performed a Google search on the word “B-B-Q.” Our search results returned places to eat barbecue, personal websites, images, and reviews. Not one of them had a single one-stop-shop to find everything on barbecue.

We performed a secondary search on “B-B-Q HISTORY”, our results returned various information on barbecue history, like Amazing Ribs-dot-com, Wikipedia, and the Smithsonian. We were also presented with images of historical events and information on barbecue’s origins. Again, no single website with all the information about barbecue.

Wikipedia: When we clicked to view the contents of this website, it discussed many things about barbecue, but focused primarily on the vocabulary of the word and the barbecue styles within the United States, and minor definitions of  techniques used in barbecue. But nothing on recipes!

Amazing Ribs: As we examined Amazingribs.com we noticed that much of it’s information was consolidated based on cooking methods, meat preparation, and cuts of meats; but much of this information is buried within advertisements and almost no information on barbecue’s history.

Smithsonian: The Smithsonian website gave more information on the evolution of AMERICAN barbecue, but struggled to express how it evolved throughout mankind’s history.

Card Sort

Our initial brainstorming on the barbecue domain raised questions about how the end user would find certain key pieces of information.  After consolidating multiple terms, we created a list of 135 terms and a preliminary set of seven categories: cooking, meats, desserts, sides, ingredients, marinades, and sauces. We chose a hybrid card sort over the typical open/closed solutions to help identify categories that we were not able to perceive during our initial brainstorm.  A hybrid sort allowed our participants to categorize and describe the barbecue domain they understand.

Recruitment

We recruited participants through social media (Facebook, Linkedin, etc), websites, email, and SMS.  We created a screener question to make sure we were gathering valuable feedback from people who eat meat.

Findings: Demographics

  • 55 Participants
  • 29 of 55 participants sorted all 135 cards into an average of 12 categories
  • Over 2/3 of participants are intermediate in cooking skills
  • Over ½ had consumed meat on most days within the last week

Dendrogram

Out of the 12 categories, our team was able to identify the following groups through dendrograms: (1) cooking, (2) desserts, (3) ingredients, (4) meats (beef, poultry, pork, lamb), (5) marinades, (6) sauces, (7) sides, (8) seasonings, and (9) seafood.

Figure 1. Dendogram of the categories based on the card sort.

Sitemap

The design of our sitemap came from the results of our card sort and the recommendations from our participants.  Since the card sort reinforced our initial idea of what a barbecue website might entail, we now had standardized categories and a better understanding of our user’s perception to begin the creation of our sitemap.

Top-level Categories

Our sitemap top-level categories were derived from the dendrogram and a majority of these groupings were merged down into manageable simple to use content categories: Cooking, Meats, Meat Prep, Sides & Desserts, History, and Events.

Figure 2. Sitemap based on the denogram and card sort outcomes.

The following information is to illustrate the over-all sections of the barbecue website:

Cooking

Content & Wireframes

This section will help describe and walk the visitor through easy tutorials and information on different styles of cooking barbecue (smoking, direct and indirect cooking, wood, charcoal, gas, and the use of different types of grills).

  • Smoking methods
  • Smoking apparatuses
  • Grill types
  • Fire-building/feeding materials
  • Direct Cooking
  • Indirect Cooking
Two images of wireframes for the content structure of the cooking and grill types sections.
Figure 3. BBQ Central wireframe for the cooking sections.

Meats

Content & Wireframes

The main dish to all barbecuing events.  This section will help the visitor identify different cuts of meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc) and how to select and prepare them to create a great barbecuing experience. These would include the different cuts of each.

  • Beef
  • Pork
  • Lamb
  • Poultry
  • Sausages
  • Other
A wireframe showing the meats section of the website.
Figure 4. BBQ Central wireframe for the meats section.

Meat Prep (Rubs & Marinades)

Content & Wireframes

Depending on where you are located, preparing barbecue can be as simple as salt and pepper or as complex as dry rubs and multi-dimensional flavored marinades.  This section will help the visitor learn about food preparation and make suggestions on how to use them in their recipes.

  • Rubs
  • Marinades
  • Sauces
Figure 5. BBQ Central wireframe for the meat prep and sauces sections.

Sides/Desserts

Content & Wireframes

This section should give recipes of side dishes and desserts that you can be easily prepared on the grill and will compliment your main dish.

  • Vegetable
  • Starch/Potato
  • Desserts
  • Casseroles
  • Breads
Figure 6. BBQ Central wireframe for the sides and desserts sections.

History & Events

Content & Wireframes

This section documents and illustrates the evolution of barbecue throughout the world.  It will describe how barbecue changed the way humans cook and preserve meat throughout history.  It will also describe how barbecue flavors and methods vary by region and direct visitors to corresponding recipes.  In addition, this section will highlight notable barbecue events/competitions and well-known regional restaurants.

Figure 7. BBQ Central wireframe for the history and events sections.

Team Members