New version of Tesco Recipes for iPad now live on App Store

The mobile team who created the sumptuous Tesco Recipes for iPad application have just informed me that the new version has gone live on Apple's iTunes App Store. If you have already downloaded this free iPad app before then you'll be prompted to update the application when you enter the App store and look at 'updates'.

You'll recall me being a big fan of this app - partly because of the wonderful photography and partly because it allows me to shop grocery products online thanks to its ability to add the recipe's ingredients to my Tesco.com grocery basket. I am able to think about meal planning rather than have to think about individual products all the time.

The updated version has new content and new features, as well as removing some bugs from the first edition of the application. We've also fully tested it against iPad's new operating system, IOS4.3.

This app makes the iPad perfect for kitchen use (and I can tell you from first hand experience that iPads do survive ingredients being accidentally splattered on them!).

You can tell if your copy of the app has been updated because the photograph of a Christmas pudding has been removed from the start-up/home-page and replaced with the photography below which is frankly just making me hungry. I must find out who does the photography and shake their hand!

Tesco Recipes App for iPad launches

Yes we've just launched our first (and frankly gorgeous) iPad app - Tesco Recipes.

The app was designed of course by our mobile app creators extraordinaire - Ribot, who used the 'salivation commences' slogan in their blog post as that sums up for me regarding what this app is all about.

Andy Beale, IT Manager into whom our fledgling production mobile development team reports, commented:

Special thanks to Sreelatha in India who has worked tirelessly to test the application and who is a cornerstone of Tesco's engineering team. Also thanks to Owen Day who actually led the project for IT at Tesco and helped the team to release this for our customers before Christmas. 

The application's mix of gorgeous presentation, access to over 1000 recipes and the ability to add ingredients straight to your Tesco.com grocery basket is just sensational (click images below for bigger picture):

In their blog post, Ribot wrote:

Christmas has come a day or two early this year for those that have been yearning for a source of inspiration whilst grocery shopping on their iPads… Well, we’re happy to announce that Tesco Recipes has been launched!

Bringing together the mouth-watering and inspiring photos and recipes from Tesco Real Food and the simplicity and utility of the Tesco grocery shopping experience, you can now purchase all the ingredients for your favourite recipes with ease.

This project wouldn’t have been possible without all the hard work by Rob, Jerome and Ian – the designers at ribot, Neil and Lei – the very talented ‘developers’ and of course Becky and co. from the Tesco team!

Happy shopping and Happy Christmas to all the foodies out there!

I couldn't put is better myself. Well done everyone involved!
Click here to go to iTunes to download the app for your iPad.

Tesco Groceries app for iPhone / iPod Touch - Walkthrough

Let's take a walkthrough of the Tesco Groceries app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (the latter running in "iPhone mode").

Here is the opening screen (when you first use the app, you will be asked to tap in your Tesco.com grocery login email and password). You can choose a delivery slot, and see when the next order is due (which you can amend if you wish):

The Shopping List is your own memo pad, allowing you to type any product name in free-form text, perfect for remembering items quickly as you think of them. You could easily use the app in any shop as an electronic version of a written list, or tap the text to perform a live product search at Tesco so we can entice you with great prices and special offers:

Tapping the square next to the item makes a "tick" appear, just as you would tick a paper list as you choose products:

If you're like me, then the first place to go when putting together an order is to use the Favourites list. When you registered your account and used a Clubcard, your Favourites list stores all the items you have previously purchased online and in-store. 

You can also filter your favourites to view just those on special offer.

In the example below, notice that one of the products has a green background - this means that product is already in your basket. All searches showing products in your basket will be highlighted this way so you can change the quantity or even remove them if you wish.

Here is the 'shop' screen. Either type in some text to find the product you are looking for, or follow the department - aisle - shelf hierarchy to browse for products:

Here is an example text search for chips. Again we highlight products on special offer:

Finally here is the basket. From here you tap the checkout button which will cause the app to start the iPhone's Safari browser which will connect into a checkout special page designed for iPhone on the Tesco.com grocery web site. If you are called Paolo then your delicious chips and beer diet will soon be on its way. For everyone else, at least you'll get the entire grocery range to choose from - on average that's more than 20,000 products. Healthier products are available...!

So there you are - our new little app for iPhone giving you personal, pocketable access to our complete grocery home shopping service. It's taken a year of planning, design, coding and testing by a fantastic team across Tesco.com and our mobile design and development partner Ribot.

Now it's yours. Enjoy!

Tesco Groceries app for iPhone now live in iTunes App Store

Here it is:

Tesco.com's grocery heart and soul in a little app.

This changes everything. Again.

("Again", because we launched on Nokia first!)

Tesco and Ribot present this powerful pocket of grocery home shopping to you now. We simply call it Tesco Groceries which says so much in so few words.

Oh, the decisiveness of purpose, passion for excellence and focus of hard work by so many people for a year to give birth to this little bundle of joy, the love child of Tesco.com and Ribot our mobile design and development partner....*

If you have iTunes on your computer, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, follow this link:

http://itunes.com/apps/TescoGroceries

Walkthrough follows in the next article.


* Yes of course I'm sounding O.T.T. - this has been the centre of my working life for over a year now, so indulge me. Ribot have put their all into this little app and I salute them. Normal service will be resumed after a celebratory drink or two tonight methinks! What on earth shall I do tomorrow?! Oh yes, a Tesco presence on other smart-phone operating systems to come, especially now I've fallen back in love with my Nexus One again after its upgrade to Android 2.2. Anyway...

Tesco home shopping on an iPad?

Today we met with the designers who are building our grocery mobile apps so we could review progress and think about what we wanted to do over the coming year.

They brought two iPads with them.
On one iPad they had a mock-up of Tesco grocery shopping on it.
On the other they had their presentation.

Don't take anything away from the design on the iPad above - it was just to prove the point. An iPad grocery home shopping design surely deserves an sumptuous interface - a beautifully imagined virtual store with shelves on which the products sit:
The wine aisle could consist of wooden shelves with occasional bottle-boxes and the sense of a cellar back wall.
The bread aisle could have the bread products on flour-dusty shelves with the sense of sails passing a window in the background as the brain perceives the inside of an olde windmill. I'm even hearing Windy Miller's Windmill sound effect... (link goes to "Oatso Simple" ad with Windy Miller and the sound of hiswindmill in the background).

See what I mean? That's what an iPad does to the imagination. If I can be turned from mildly sceptical to moderately enthusiastic in the time period of a single meeting, imagine what we could do with the Leadership team's enthusiasm levels.

So now I think I better spend R&D budget on an iPad after all.

It a was good meeting.

iPad fans disrupt Tesco.com

Tesco.com HQ has been disrupted by colleagues with iPads who seem to create groups of people who gather around them whenever they carry the things about the office. Which they're doing. Blatantly.

Sarah (middle) and Becky (right) caught admiring Lucia's iPad.

(the chocolates are there because there is always gooey food around Tesco.com HQ)

Oh and they get them out and nonchalantly go to the Tesco.com website which they zoom about impressively with various hand gestures, or run a drawing application and sweep about the screen creating instant art with some fluffy-ended pen thing.

The iPad doesn't come with an webcam, so sweet thoughts of using one in a kitchen where the customer points a barcode or just the product itself at it to try visual searching for easy grocery ordering is not available.

So I'm not buying one, not even on R&D budget!

What do we think of the Apple iPad?

The launch of Apple's new tablet computer, the iPad, certainly caught my attention for 3 reasons:

1. I enjoy spending an hour each evening consuming web content (news, blogs, video, social sites) with only occasional typed interactions - my laptop is massively over-specified for such use.
2. I like to try out recipe ideas in the kitchen, and wondered if this might be an alternative to paper printing - and my beloved Macbook Pro isn't going anywhere near the place with all that flour and water and raw ingredients and stuff getting in the keyboard or sucked into the fan inlet.
3. I'm a geek with a soft spot for Apple, so it just would catch my attention (you want honesty here, right?).

Tablet computing is geared towards consuming media content rather than creating it. You wouldn't want to type a novel or major report using it - it's all about reading and watching stuff (with a smattering of feedback), rather than creating or adapting it. This use alone places the tablet computer somewhere between the smart phone where it's all about consuming content except for voice and text, and the laptop which is as much about creating and adapting content as reading and watching it.

Of course you might argue that Netbooks fit between smartphones and laptops. Rubbish. A Netbook is a laptop with all the goodness taken out of it. Cheap, value electronics and poor-quality-everything. Yes OK you might take a netbook where your beloved Macbook Pro, Latitude or Vaio might fear to tread, but that's only because you've lost £200 when you drop it and it smashes into a million value pieces. Come to think of it, Macbook Pros, Latitudes and Vaios are expensive enough to include drop survivability in their design and will be happy in those fearful places. That makes the Netbook even worse value.

No, tablet computers are not really value devices even though they are cheaper than good laptops. Their job is to bring content to you in a convenient and easy to use manner:

• Powerful enough to offer decent & fast web browsing and media playback on a high quality multi-touch screen that is easy on the eyes and fingers.
• Convenient enough to take round the house with you - to pick up and put down like a magazine or newspaper. Pore over a recipe in the kitchen, enjoy your favourite blog updates in the bath (waterproof ones, please!), and read your favourite e-books in bed. Use just with the natural stroking and tapping of your fingers.
• Inexpensive enough to not have as your 'main' computer yet being cheaper only because 'unnecessary' parts such as keyboard, mouse, too many ports are missing. What's there is to be always of good quality.

Seeing demos of the iPad are certainly impressive; my only criticisms are:

1. Still no support for Flash or Silverlight. Yes I know HTML5 can offer this level of intensive experience but it's not quite implemented in some of the major browsers/versions of browser our customers are using yet. We've only just got ourselves away from wiring a dual site for IE6 (with its 'special' HTML formatting) vs. every-other-browser (with their W3C standard compliance) and don't want to start HTML4/5 divisions if we can help it.
2. No webcam! Oh how I want customers scanning products by holding them up to the camera - most Netbooks and all premium laptops *do* have a built-in cam. This type of device is certainly suited to the kitchen and I note that some other tablet brands of tablet have built in camera (one of the team has told me they have spotted video source support in the iPad SDK so I suspect a blot-on webcam will be available soon).

However let me balance my criticisms with this important conclusion: Tablet computers are going to be big, they are going to be in the kitchen (amongst other rooms) and we will certainly research a great Tesco.com customer experience for them. Why? Because if Steve Jobs and Apple have invested in the market with iPad, the tablet concept as a whole is sure of success.