What’s Cooking? A five part series on upcoming features for KitchenPC

The past few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time analyzing usage patterns, gathering statistics, talking to customers, and compiling the data to help pave the roadway for the next major iteration of KitchenPC.  Incontrovertibly, I’ve made some huge mistakes with the site so far and spent countless hours developing features that have been met with luke warm reception at best, insisting there is a market for providing solutions to problems that don’t exist.  The meal planner is near impossible to understand, the meal calendar assumes a level of discipline that is almost non-existant in the typical family, and my user interface seems to punish anyone charitable enough to attempt to upload a recipe.  To top it off, the typical culinary enthusiast continues to seek their next kitchen conquest through the likes of Google, fearful of a monogamous relationship with any one recipe website in particular.

This post will serve as a prolog to a five part blog series allowing me to share some of my exciting ideas for upcoming major changes to the website.  Wait a second, Mike!  Aren’t you giving away trade corporate secrets?  Shouldn’t these ideas be kept in an underground vault in the CIA, or guarded by a fire breathing dragon?  Surely, AllRecipes.com is already digging through your garbage; the world of online recipes is a cut-throat industry, where innovation is king and first to market is always an advantage, right?

I must disagree.  Of the myriad reasons I find to blog, this one is paramount; to bring in my user base as a core part of my business process.  A two-way dialog must exist between a product and its users, and ideas must see the light of day before they can be vetted.  I’d love nothing more than to toss out a random thought and have real users say, “I hate that idea, but what if you solve my problem this way instead.” or “Oh you need to do that today!  I can’t wait to tell all my friends!”

KitchenPC is definitely a web-startup to take the “fail early, fail often” approach.  Being without the extensive resources required to really dig deep into the customer psyche up front, it’s really the only way for a one-man startup to succeed.  I’m just taking my thought process one step further by publicizing my ideas up front (especially the major ones), even at the risk of others copying and executing on them before me.  My instinct right now tells me it’s far more dangerous to keep everyone in the dark and announce fully baked features that merely stir a tepid reaction.

So, stay tuned over the next five blog posts to hear about major changes, new features, and the future of KitchenPC!  These are exciting times, and I think each will bring the site one step closer to being a major player in the market.  Enjoy!