Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, Devin Davies is an excellent cook. “I’m not a professional or anything,” he says, the same way people say they’re not good at something when they are.
But in addition to knowing the kitchen, Davies is also an experienced developer whose application Croutona kitchen utensil built by Swift, earned him the 2024 Apple Design Award for Interaction.
Crouton You’re part recipe manager and part exceptionally organized kitchen assistant. For starters, the app collects recipes from wherever people find them (blogs, family cookbooks, scribbled bits from the ’90s, wherever) and uses engaging machine learning models to import and organize them. “If you find something online, just hit the Share button to include it in Crouton” says the New Zealand-based developer. “If you find a recipe in an old book, just take a photo to save it.”
And when it’s time to start cooking, Crouton It strips everything down to the basics by showing only the current step, ingredients, and measurements (including conversions). It is not possible to switch from one application to another to know how many fluid ounces They are in a cup; No need to set a timer in a different app. Everything is handled directly in Crouton. “The key for me is: How quickly can I get you back to making food, instead of reading?” Davies says.
ADA FACT SHEET
Crouton
- Winner: Interaction
- Available in: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch
- Team size: 1
More information about crouton
Download Crouton from the App Store
Crouton It’s the classic case of a developer preparing something they needed. As the house’s de facto chef, Davies had pre-planned his meals on the Notes app, which worked until, as he laughs, “it got a little out of hand.”
At the time, Davies was in his prime as an iOS developer, so he thought he could create something that would save him a little time. (It’s in his blood: Davies’ father is also a developer.) “Programming was never my strong suit,” he says, “but once I started building something that solved a problem, I started thinking about programming as a means to an end, and that helped me.”
Davies’ full-time job was his meal ticket, but he also began teaching himself Swift. Swift, he says, clicked much faster than the other languages he had tried, especially as someone who was still developing a taste for programming. “It still took me a while to figure it out,” he says, “but I discovered early on that Swift worked the way I wanted a language to work. You can point out Crouton in some text, import that text and do something with it. The number of steps you don’t have to think about is amazing.”
I discovered early on that Swift worked the way I wanted a language to work.
Devin Davis, Crouton
Coding with Swift offered many built-in benefits. Davies relied on platform conventions to make navigation easier. Crouton familiar and easy. Lists and collection views leveraged the camera APIs. Text recognition powered by VisionKit; a separate model organized imported ingredients by category.
“You could separate a coarsely chopped onion from a regular onion and then add the quantity using a Core ML model,” he says. “It’s amazing how someone like me can build a model to detect ingredients when I don’t actually have any knowledge of how it works.”
Davies designed Crouton thinking about simplicity at all times. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what to leave out instead of bring in,” he says.
The application emerged quickly: the first version was made in about six months, but Crouton It simmered for a while before finding its audience. “My mom and I were the main active users for maybe a year,” Davies laughs. “But it’s really important to build something you can use yourself, especially when you’re independent, so there’s motivation to keep going.”
Davies served Crouton It was updated for a few years and the app eventually gained more traction, culminating in it winning the Apple Design Award for Interaction at WWDC24. That’s an appropriate category, Davies says, because he believes his approach to interaction is the special ingredient of his app. “My skill set is figuring out how the pieces of an application fit together and how to move through them from point A to B to C,” he says. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what to leave out instead of bring in.”
Crouton Recipes can be imported from blogs, cookbooks, scraps of paper, or anywhere else they can be found.
Davies hopes to take advantage of the coming months to explore the possibility of adding more flavor Crouton with Apple Intelligence, live activities on Apple Watch, and translation API. (Although Crouton is their main app, they also created an Apple Vision Pro app called crushing platewhich presumably is very useful for relieving stress when cooking).
But it’s important to him that any new features or updates mesh well with the current version. Crouton. “I’m a big believer in starting with core intentions and staying true to them,” he says. “I don’t think the interface, over time, has to be completely different.”
My skill set is figuring out how the pieces of an application fit together and how to move through them from point A to B to C.
Devin Davis, Crouton
Because he is a kitchen helper, Crouton It is a very personal application. It’s in someone’s kitchen at mealtime, helping people prepare food for their loved ones and allowing them to expand their culinary reach. It has a direct impact on a person’s day. That’s a lot of leverage as an app developer, even when a recipe doesn’t quite work.
“Sometimes I hear from people who discover a mistake, or even some sort of misunderstanding, but they’re always very polite about it,” Davies laughs. “They’ll tell me, ‘Oh, I was baking a cake for my daughter’s birthday and I put too much cream cheese on it and ruined it. But great application!'”
Meet the winners of the Apple Design Award 2024
Behind the Design is a series that explores the design practices and philosophies of Apple Design Awards finalists and winners. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their extraordinary creations to life.
