1. Introduction
We decided to conduct a survey to gather a large collective of results based
around vegetarians, healthy eating habits and the cooking regime of the
general public. We did this so we could define exactly what would be the best
target audience for us to approach with our recipe cards. It would also allow
us to make informed decisions on other key details such as the amount of
time that should go into preparing a meal, the different types of ingredients
that could be used and whether or not people actually used recipe cards
whilst making food.
We came to the decision that the most appropriate way to generate a large
number of differing responses would be to use our social networking sites,
e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr to post out our survey and gain a large amount
of responses, this also kept things anonymous as there were no face to face
encounters which is something that will have led to more reliable results.

2. This data shows that the majority of the people who
responded to our survey were between the ages of
17 – 24. We can assume from this data that the
majority of our responses were from students, taking
this into consideration it may be a good idea to
create a student based recipe card that applies to
the age generation, which appears the most popular.
One of our ideas for recipe cards was to introduce
vegetarian meals that were suitable for children. After
collecting and analysing our results we realise that this
may not be the most beneficial type of recipe card to make.
This is because only 9 of our 100 results were of the age
range that may have children.
This data shows that the majority of our feedback
are female, whereas only 47% were male. Further
more, this proves that our research into producing
our recipe card will be more heavily influenced by
the female generation rather than the male.
Due to our research been more heavily influenced
by females, this could effect our overall approach to
producing a recipe card. This could involve us using
a more contemporary layout and a clean design
rather than heavily jumbled and cluttered with
information.

3. From our responses we have learnt that
the majority of individuals cook “often” or
“now and again”. This tells us that
cooking appears to not be a main priority
for a lot of people and often when it does
come to cooking a meal, people will look
for something simple and easy which
does not necessitate as much skill
required by someone that cooks “very
often”.
From our analysed results we can also see that a massive 31% of people cook either rarely or never. This could
be for a number of reasons such as the people who cook never or rarely could be of a younger age range and will
have their meals cooked for them by family members, or that they are students and opt to have takeaways for
convenience rather than standing and cooking their own meals.

4. After filtering our results we found that those who
answered „Never‟ to our question about how often
do you cook seemed to be primarily aged 16 and
under. This confirms our previous thoughts about the
younger people being made food by parents. The
other results that answered never were 17 – 24 and
30+ this could mean that those people choose to
have takeaways or go out for meals on a daily basis.
We can also see that the majority of people who
never cook are male. This could mean that aiming
our recipe cards at a predominantly female audience
could be something that proves very beneficial to
our final product.
Another element of data we can conclude through
our results are that the majority of males that never
cook are also 16 or under, again this relates back to
the fact that in society traditionally teenagers and
younger children have their meals cooked by their
parents or if not, opt for going out for meals on a
daily basis or ordering a takeaway.

5. These results are similar to the previous set of data,
from the same question - but we have selected the
filter option to “now and again”
From these results we can see that the majority of
the people that cook „now and again‟ are primarily
females aged between 17 and 24. From this we can
deduce that females that may be students are more
likely to cook meals for themselves. If the people in
question are indeed students they may share
accommodation which means that perhaps only one
person would cook for the household, or they would
alternate between each household member on a
daily basis.
Another aspect of our results we can consider is that
in this particular group of data there are no people
aged 30+ that cook “now and again”. This could
mean a number of things. It could mean that people
of this age group constantly cook meals for
themselves or that they live with a partner who
cooks their meal.

6. This particular question gave results that prove that the majority of the responses use the web to look for new
recipes. In today‟s era we are surrounded by new forms of easily accessible technology, a well known example
been the iPad – a handheld device that proves handy in the kitchen when wanting to look at a recipe whilst
cooking. Also the introduction of apps that choose random recipes on a daily basis for people that like to
experiment when cooking. Forms of print based media such as cookery books and magazines proved less
popular, as often these are less accessible and sometimes more expensive than electronic version and often
do not give many options or different forms of tutorials to meet specific audiences – they tend to only ever
branch out to one specific audience, been the older generation e.g. 25+

7. This question shows tremendously that the majority of responses are not a vegetarian and only 9% overall were.
Whilst the response we got that were vegetarians was very small using filters we can find out some valuable
information about the age, eating habits and buying habits of vegetarians. In the future we could have added more
options to the survey based around types of vegetarianism. For example, pescatarians are vegetarians who
abstain from eating all meat with the exception of fish. This means that the person is not strictly vegetarian and
could have caused inaccuracies with the survey. Another thing to consider would be the fact that vegans may not
deem themselves vegetarians as they technically are not and they may have answered no which would give
inaccurate results.

8. After filtering our results we can deduce that the
majority of vegetarians are 16 and under and are
very predominantly female. Whilst we only got 9
results that were vegetarian we can still gain
valuable data from this.
We now understand that very few people who are
around student age choose not to be vegetarians.
This could be because of the ease of access to
things like ready meals and takeaways whilst being
a student. Picking up a quick meal that can be done
with very little preparation is going to be very
appealing to the student lifestyle.
We can also find that the majority of vegetarians
are female. This can be put down to a number of
factors. It could come down to vanity, as women are
more likely to care about their outer appearance
and eating healthy foods will allow them to maintain
that. It will also allow them to remain healthy which
is something that appeals to women more than
men.

9. A large majority of the people that have chosen to become vegetarians prefer recipes that will explain
how to cook a healthy meal. This may seem like a relatively obvious statistic. A lot of vegetarians will
choose the vegetarian lifestyle to maintain their health. Eating healthily is something that a lot of people
desire as it can increase the longevity of life and will make the person feel better about themselves. For
example, circumstances caused by an unhealthy, high fat and salt diet include heart disease and
obesity – in society today the majority of people in the UK opt to avoid an unhealthy diet and sometimes
this can involve choosing to become a vegetarian.

10. Male Female
Here we used the “Filter” to distinguish which of our genders would spend the most amount of time preparing
a meal. As you can see from the results Women are generally more likely to spend up to 30 minutes
preparing a meal where as a male primarily will spend up to 20 minutes. However it does seem that the male
research is relatively inconclusive as there are a lot more males that are willing to spend 45 minutes
preparing. This shows that spending roughly 20-30 minutes on preparation time of a meal is an average limit
our audience would wish to spend cooking – this means that we should aim our recipes cards at 10-30
minutes tops to properly appeal to our target audience.

11. These 2 questions refer to mainly the product design and purpose overall; often it is important to take into
consideration the visual aspect of written communication as this is the first thing the audience will notice
before reading the text. Different layouts apply to different audiences, hypothetically a female audience may
prefer a more simple, contemporary layout with a clean finish – whereas a male audience may feel a
cluttered layout with lots of images/text is more suitable.
From the results that we have gathered it appears that creating a recipe card that contains an equal ratio of
pictures to text will be the most ideal outcome for both parties. A massive 73% of our respondents stated that
a recipe card would be useful when creating a meal. After filtering our results we discovered that 31 males
would find a recipe card useful and 42 women would find it useful. This shows that women are more inclined
to follow a step by step instruction when creating a meal where as a male would likely use other means of
instruction or attempt to do it himself.

12. The last question we conducted referred to the specific
ingredients people prefer to use when cooking. This can
prove a difficult set of results as shown above most of our
target demographic were 17-24 and mainly based on
students. Further more, this means that most of the
responses do not necessarily cook their own meals or buy
their own ingredients. As you can see from our results a high
percentage prefer to buy the cheapest available products,
this is what you would expect of a typical student as they try
to buy the bare minimum to get by, which can sometimes be
the reason for unhealthy living.
This graph shows the male demographic and This graph shows the female demographics and
there choice of purchases of ingredients. The their ingredient buying habits. They have a relatively
majority of them will purchase a combination of similar buying pattern to males whilst edging slightly
cheapest items that are organic. This tells us that more towards the cheaper products. This could be to
creating a recipe card that doesn‟t require overly do with purchasing offers whilst shopping. It also
expensive ingredients would definitely be the backs up our previous results about creating a
most efficient form of recipe card. recipe card with cheaper ingredients.

13. Conclusion
After looking and analysing our results we have come to a final conclusion on how to approach the design
and production process of our product. Our target demographic shows that we are edging more towards the
female audience around the age of 17-24, but we feel that producing a unisex series of recipe cards would be
more beneficial to our cause as we would be appealing to a wider set of people rather than just one specific
group. Referring back to the age range, our responses show we had a larger impact of responses from
students and young adults with only a minimal amount of responses coming from those over the age of 25.
Taking this into consideration, it is vital to approach the product in a way that we ourselves, as students –
would find interesting and appealing without neglecting the few results we got from older respondents. We
could do this by creating a recipe card that is of a contemporary, clean layout with an equal ratio of pictures
and text rather than having an unequal balance. This provides us with a sturdy platform to appeal to several
audiences with a simple visual aspect rather than only focusing on one specific group, using bright fonts and
imagery that may not appeal to older audiences as it would to students.
We also conducted an interview with an individual in order to get a more open answer giving us several
options rather than just one. The interview gave us a better understanding of specific questions and reasons
for choosing their answers, an example been how they feel in particular about healthy eating. The response
was positive and this opened up new opportunities to branch out more to a wider audience through stressing
the necessity of a healthy, nutritional diet.
Originally, our approach to the project was to create a series of recipes that would only take a maximum of 10
minutes to create – we felt this would appeal to busy families and individuals with a fast-paced lifestyle. But,
after taking our responses into consideration with can see that in fact most individuals prefer to take longer
than 10 minutes, the majority opting between 10-30 minutes. The results that we received showed that the
majority of people would like to buy a combination of ingredients that are not only cheap but also organic and
free range. This gives us a great rough outline of the type of ingredients that we can research to put onto our
recipe cards. We now know that if we put on a lot of expensive ingredients that the recipe cards will not be
used as much or the people themselves will go out of their way to find a cheaper alternative so we may as
well make it as convenient as possible by adding the cheapest possible options. Overall we are going to
primarily aim our recipe cards at students or those of a student age between 17 and 24 and will target both
males and females. We feel that this will allow our recipe cards to be as accessible as they possibly can
which will hopefully lead to a greater success.

14. • Our primary age would be between the ages of 17-24, mainly
students.
• Our results proved primarily female respondents but provided
a substantial amount of male responses.
• The social grade of our audience would be C2DE, They will
buy cheap ingredients.
• The person will not necessarily be a vegetarian but will be
interested in experimenting in vegetarianism.
• Looking at our psychographic profiles we can conclude that
our audience are achievers and looking to aim for success
whilst been in education, either school, college or university.
• They may also be part of the profile, “Socially Conscious Type
A” - this group is not concerned with the world of achievement
or the world of family or community, but rather what effects
their actions have on society on a whole. In essence, they
want to make the world in which they live a better place. They
are especially concerned about the environment and our
society‟s impact on natural resources. Often they integrate into
beneficial causes such as recycling, driving fuel efficient cars
and buy products that are considered environmentally friendly.
They also believe in schooling and teaching the children, are
frequently highly educated with one or two university degrees,
mostly in the liberal arts.