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Timeline
Feb 2026 to present
Platform
Device, iOS, Android
Role
Sole designer
Team
12 people
The device in 3D. Drag to rotate it.
Overview
Most people who can't cook aren't short of recipes. They're short of someone at the stove saying now, not yet, too hot. Cravv, a kitchen-tech startup in Bangalore, is building that someone. Tara sits above the cooktop, watches the pan through a camera and a thermal sensor, and talks the cook through a dish one step at a time, on a round screen that shows only what matters now. The tagline: “Anybody can cook”.
I joined in February 2026 as the only designer on a team of twelve. This page traces how Tara reached its current form, how the screen was arranged so each piece of information lands when it's needed, and how the voice's persona was shaped for different moments in a cook.
The problem
Three things go wrong at the stove: timing, quantity and heat.
In interviews, people rarely said they didn't know what to do. What went wrong was the doing.
50+
customer interviews
40
transcripts analysed
259
survey responses
Wrong moment
Onions in before the oil is hot.
Wrong amount
A spoon of salt that was really two.
Wrong heat
A pan left on high and come back to burnt.
The dish doesn't match what the cook expected
And the recipe gets the blame.
Three causes, one outcome.
Process
Three builds to get to round
Each build answered what the last one couldn't.
Build 1: a box, no screen
Cameras, sensors, a speaker and a mic. Voice guidance only.
Why it changed
Cooking has too many moving parts to hold in your head: temperature, time left, the ingredient list.
Saying the wake word every time you forgot a number got irritating.
Live changes, like a temperature drifting out of range, were missed completely.
People needed to see the feedback.
Build 2: a box, rectangular screen
Easy to procure. Fit the same enclosure.
Step 3 of 9
Add onions, sauté until golden
176°C · 02:14
Next: turmeric, chilli, salt
Why it changed
The screen felt cramped.
It looked dated next to Echo and Nest, which set the shape people expect from a voice device.
Oil and water collected at the corners, layer by layer.
A shape people already trusted, and one that wipes clean.
Build 3: round
One round screen. Rounded edges everywhere.
Why it stayed
Familiar, for a product this new.
Reads in a glance.
Sheds oil and steam instead of storing them.
The one in beta now.
Build one to three, and why each changed.
Designing for a glance
About a second, from arm's length, at an angle, through steam.
What has to survive: the step, the quantity, the heat.
About one second
That's the attention a cook can spare mid-stir.
Arm's length
The device sits above the hob, not in the hand.
At an angle
Usually from the side, rarely head-on.
Through steam
Contrast and size do the work, not detail.
The four constraints, and what has to survive them.
Design
The screen
The screen got simpler each time
The first version carried the whole step, a timer, the temperature and a preview of what came next. Testers found it confusing mid-cook. The second moved it into a circle. The third kept the circle and cut the content to three tiers.
Step 3 of 9
Add the onions and sauté until golden, then add the paste
176°C
Timer 02:14
Next: turmeric, chilli, salt
You'll need: onion 2, tomato 1
V1, rectangular
Everything at once. Testers found it confusing mid-cook.
Step 3 of 9Add the onions and sauté until golden, then add the paste176°C, 02:14Next: turmeric, chilli, salt
V2, circular
The right shape, still carrying too much.
V3, three tiers
Previous, now and next. Only the middle is large.
V1, V2 and V3, side by side.
Information hierarchy
The current step sits in the centre, largest and brightest. The next step sits below, so the cook can get ready. The last one sits above, small and dim, to keep track. The outer ring shows recipe progress, nothing else.
Top
The step you just finished, dimmed.
Centre
What to do now: an action, an ingredient, a quantity.
Centre arc
Heat, when the step depends on it.
Bottom
What comes next, dimmed.
Background
The flame level, as a wash of colour.
Outer ring
How far through the recipe you are.
Step 1 of 6
Step through a cook. Each part of the screen is described on the right.
Three words per instruction
An action, an ingredient, a quantity. Bundled recipe lines are split, and the device waits for each step.
In the recipe
“Add the onions and sauté until golden, then add the paste.”
On the device, one at a time
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
One line from a recipe, and the same line as the device shows it.
The flame lives in the background
Blue for low, yellow for medium, red for high, caught from the corner of your eye while facing the pan.
Low flame
Blue, as a soft wave behind the text.
Medium flame
Yellow, as a soft wave behind the text.
High flame
Red, as a soft wave behind the text.
The same step at low, medium and high flame.
The heat
Two ways of showing temperature
A target is a red line climbing the arc; the step starts when it reaches the end. A range is a green band the marker must stay inside. Testers valued this feedback above everything else.
Reach a target
A red line climbs the arc. The step starts when it reaches the end.
Hold a range
The marker has to stay inside the green. The device speaks only when it drifts out.
A target on the left, a range on the right.
Three levels of assistance
Full recipe guides every step. General assistance covers dishes people already know, helping only with heat and timing. Monitoring watches boils and pressure cooking, counting whistles instead of minutes.
Full recipe
For a dish you've never made.
What it does
Guides every step, with heat and timing where they matter.
When it speaks
At every step.
General assistance
For a dish you already know, like crepes or rotis.
What it does
Watches only heat and timing. No steps.
When it speaks
When the pan is ready, and when to flip.
Monitoring
For boiling, pressure cooking and boil-overs.
What it does
Counts pressure-cooker whistles instead of minutes.
When it speaks
At halfway, at two minutes left, and at the last whistle.
Each mode, what it does, and when it speaks.
The voice
No buttons
Early on I argued for physical buttons because I trusted them to work every time. Testing changed my mind.
Hands are full
People talked to the device mid-stir, from across the kitchen. Speaking cost less than reaching for anything.
Wet, oily fingers
Touch was unreliable at the stove. Voice isn't.
Cheaper hardware
No buttons, no touch layer, no extra parts to seal against steam.
One habit, not two
With buttons, some people would have stopped talking to it. Removing them kept voice the only way in.
What testing showed.
Designing the voice
With no buttons, the voice is the whole interface. We benchmarked it against Alexa, Siri and Gemini, gave it one character with three situational modes, and let it adapt to age, region, language, gender and skill. In alpha, 28 of 50 testers wanted more than instructions, so it now speaks in six kinds of line.
Reassurance
“It always looks a bit dry at this stage. Keep stirring and it will come together.”
AgeRegionLanguageGenderCooking skilladjust the voice
Six kinds of line. Choose one to see how it sounds.
Impact
Alpha ran with fifty testers over 100+ cooking sessions, half in their own kitchens and half in ours.
90%
rated it 8/10 or higher
50%
said they'd pay for it
50
alpha testers
What won them over: cooking a dish they'd never made, without thinking, and getting it right.
Next phase
Beta moves into more kitchens next, with most alpha findings already in the build. The thermal camera's rim-reading fix goes to beta to be tested against real stirring. Burner-size variance is still unsolved.
Shipped3
Too much on screen confused people mid-cook.
→Cut the screen down to three tiers.
Testers wanted the voice to feel more personal.
→Six kinds of line: cues, appreciation, warnings, predictions, reassurance, conversation.
Two spoonfuls in a row were counted as one.
→Standard spoons ship in the box, and the device waits 6 seconds between additions.
Testing in beta1
Stirring threw off the thermal camera, which reads the surface.
→Read the rim of the pan instead.
Still open1
A recipe tuned on a small burner burnt on a bigger one.
?No fix yet. Recipes will need to account for burner size.
Everything alpha turned up, pinned by where it stands.
Reflection
Cravv changed how I think about users. People rarely tell you where their attention goes; you have to watch for it. At the stove it was split between the pan, the heat and the next step, and every decision on the screen had to earn a share of it. I stopped asking what a screen could show and started asking what someone could take in while their hands were busy.
It also taught me to hold my instincts loosely. Some of my strongest opinions didn't survive a round of testing, and the product was better for it. As the only designer on a team of twelve, a big part of my job was making decisions visible, in flowcharts and specs the engineers could question, so we disagreed early and on paper, before anything reached the hardware.