Websites can be huge, and navigating through lots of information can be daunting. A really good search feature can help, especially when a user knows what she’s looking for. Amazon.com has a useful search engine that makes it easy to pinpoint an item in their enormous marketplace.

But what happens when users aren’t sure what’s available? Often times, a few generic searches lead to some dead ends and an underwhelming experience. Discovery is important to keep people engaged, especially in the world of food.

We think one website that makes discovery fun is wikipedia. Every article presents the possibility of taking many different journeys of knowledge. For instance, let’s play a game of “five degrees of ‘chocolate’” on wikipedia and see where we end up (we’ll try and stick closely to food-related terms):

‘Chocolate’ >> ‘Antioxidants’ >> ‘Cardiovascular disease’ >> ‘Olive Oil’ >> ‘Omega-3 fatty acid’ >> ‘Flaxseed’

‘Chocolate’ >> ‘Truffles’ >> ‘Cream’ >> ‘Butterfat’ >> ‘Swiss cheese’ >> ‘Emmental (cheese)’

‘Chocolate’ >> ‘Hanukkah’ >> ‘Kosher’ >> ‘Fairtrade certification’ >> ‘Sustainable production’ >> ‘Farmers’ market’

We want to make discovery a useful feature of Foodoro because there are so many cool food makers and products we want to show off. To achieve this, we’re thinking long and hard about all the different ways people think about food and build features that makes discovery fun and eye-opening.

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