Oli Lifeschool Kitchen: Combining AI, Culinary Creativity, and Social Impact
Discover how Oli Lifeschool Kitchen is using AI to change the culinary world. Explore the ways artificial intelligence is transforming the food industry and improving culinary creativity in this case study.
We helped our client from Japan create a unique AI-powered app that can help users improve their cooking skills and connect with other learners.
About Project
Founded in 2022, Lifeschool is a San Francisco-based technology startup with a mission to encourage individual personal growth through community connection and the development of life skills. At its core, Lifeschool is an AI-driven platform that turns everyday routines, including cooking, into engaging and interactive learning experiences. Lifeschool successfully combines the most up-to-date technologies with a community-driven approach, where users have a chance to grow through practical and real-life activities.
Curious Facts
Our client is a Japanese entrepreneur currently living in San Francisco.
While developing the app, the client was also in the process of applying for a U.S. talent visa. Using the Oli app was a key part of the application to showcase his innovation and technical vision.
The first version of the app was released within 5 months, followed by versions 2 and 3 over the next 3 months.
Client Request
Our client is an entrepreneur with a deep passion for cooking and the culinary industry. His main purpose was to make cooking effortless for everyone with no need to sift through manuals, guides, or endless tutorials.
One of the solutions to meet this goal was to bring AI into culinary. The app should allow users to enrich their dining experiences, make recipe development easy, and help every person with unprofessional culinary skills feel like a chef. Moreover, it should come up with the latest gastronomy and food trends, as well as push the boundaries of culinary creativity of multiple users.
In other words, the new product shouldn’t be just one of the common culinary schools but a smart kitchen app with an integration of AI, personalized recommendations, and sustainable cooking practices.
When Takuto approached us, he already had a complete design in hand. Our primary objective was to bring his vision to life by developing a seamless cross-platform mobile application. The app should also have a strong focus on advanced prompt generation to deliver dynamic and intuitive user experiences.
Lumitech was ready to help the client revolutionize culinary education by using the unique skills of our professionals and artificial intelligence tools since restaurant management is one of the niches we’ve been successfully working in for years.
Approach
First of all, we analyzed the project requirements, reviewed the existing design, and aligned on a shared product vision. We also needed to find the best approach to how AI tools would be integrated for a better user experience. This phase allowed us to identify potential challenges and offer scalable and user-friendly solutions. Using AI in the culinary world was a new solution at this time, and we tried our best to make it perfectly fit the needs of the users.
The core of the project leveraged OpenAI’s ChatGPT models to deliver intelligent, real-time culinary assistance. AI can help users in many ways, including choosing the right menu and transforming a cooking newbie into a chef.
To ensure seamless performance across both iOS and Android devices, we chose the following technologies:
React Native for the front end, enabling rapid development and an immersive user experience.
Python for the backend, taking advantage of its robust ecosystem for AI integration and API development.
Challenges
Collaboration with Designers and Multiple Design Iterations The initial design was completed before the development stage. As a result, we faced a gap between visual concepts and technical requirements. We had to revise the design, break it down into functional components, and work closely with the client. This tight cooperation allowed our team to ensure alignment between UX/UI and development feasibility. Moreover, the iterative process helped us refine the user experience and automate different processes while staying true to the original vision.
Advanced Prompt Generation & Design Consistency
Integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT into a highly customized chatbot interface required more than a simple API call. We had to carefully craft and fine-tune prompts to make sure that AI-generated responses matched the tone, flow, and layout of the app’s unique UI.
Culinary arts is a complex and diverse niche, making the cooking and restaurant industry one of the most challenging to integrate with AI. Therefore, maintaining a consistent and user-friendly experience across various contexts was both a technical and creative challenge for our team.
Strict Timelines With a tight development schedule, we needed to prioritize speed without compromising quality. So, we divided the app into multiple phased releases, focusing on core functionality enhanced with AI technology. This approach allowed us to get the first version of the culinary app done and iterate based on the customer’s feedback while keeping the required timeframes.
Core Features
AI Cooking Assistant Oli is a user-centric AI cooking assistant designed to guide you through every step of the cooking process. You can chat with Oli to get personalized recipe suggestions, add ingredients on the fly, adjust for your personal dietary restrictions, discover new flavor combinations, reduce food waste, and even co-create new recipes. It’s like having a smart sous chef right in your kitchen. Incorporating AI in the app allowed us to offer you immersive dining experiences and discover only those recipes that cater.
Canvas The Canvas feature lets you organize your favorite recipes into themed challenges or collections. Whether you're exploring new cuisines, mastering techniques, or setting weekly meal goals, Canvas turns your learning journey into an interactive experience.
Community & Public Profiles With Lifeschool, you can also add more social interaction to speed up your personal growth. Every user has a public profile showcasing their achievements, completed challenges, and shared recipes. You can engage with the culinary community by following others, exchanging cooking tips, and celebrating milestones together. Learning is always better when shared.
Summary
Through close collaboration and iterative development, we successfully brought the client’s vision to life. We created a smart, social, and scalable platform that uses AI algorithms for modern home learning. Moreover, we were among the first companies to add AI into culinary education. Still, artificial intelligence technology continues to advance, and we have more to offer to our prospective customers.
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