Rouxbe Online Cooking School Blog

We’ve been getting some amazing feedback regarding the quality of our video recipe content in general. To my surprise, very few people have commented on the things we call “drill downs”.

Drill downs are one of the major benefits that Rouxbe has and they are a structural part in the Rouxbe learning experience. Here’s what we want to do: we want to help people to cook better. In one word it means we want people to learn. By example is one great way to learn, which is what our step by step videos are meant to do. But the catch is that we figure our audience ranges from newbies to experienced cooks and the idea is to make it as valuable to the new guy to the kitchen as well as the seasoned cook. Here’s where drill downs come in place. By the way, when I met Joe & Dawn they already had the basic idea of “drill downs” even before they knew that Rouxbe would be a web based project. So, you’re watching a step by step recipe video, then you see a highlight on the screen for a few seconds. What the highlight does is offers a link to go get “deeper” information about what was on the screen at that moment.

Now, this is not your typical “click on the shirt of the actor to buy the shirt”. No one wants to click on the video. In fact, no one wants to buy a shirt just based on some guy in a video totally unrelated to shirts wearing it. Rather, our drill downs are there for the viewer to go learn more about the specifics of the video, so it’s totally in context to what you’re seeing.

Let me explain with an actual example. If you’re not signed up with a free account on Rouxbe, go sign up and check out the Sauteed French Green Beans recipe. This is a simple one stepper recipe but it has 3 drill downs. As you play the “preparing the beans” step you’ll see that the 3 drill downs highlight at different points in time. At those points in time it’s when the drill downs have the most contextual relationship with the main video. When Dawn talks about the kinds of green beans she likes to buy, we highlight the drill down about “alternate green beans prep”.

If you want, you can click on the link at any time, not only while it’s highlighted. This will open the drill down window and pause the main player. The drill down has related information to choosing beans and what you can do to prepare these other kinds of beans and still get great results from the recipe.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a great idea. First, we interest you in choosing a recipe. When you select a recipe you’ve already shown your curiosity about the particular recipe. Then, if you select a drill down that you’d benefit from, well, it’s totally in context to the recipe you selected. Now we know that you are really interested in the content of the drill down. At that point it’s our responsibility to provide you with drill downs that you can use. In many cases the drill downs will give you tips and techniques, in others they will provide you with information to make a decision on what tool or ingredient to use, and in other cases you’ll find information to kitchen related products that may help you achieve the results of the recipe. Ultimately it will always be information you can use in the kitchen and specific to the recipe you choose to prepare. For the most part the information is gathered from the experience that our chefs have. We hope to transmit that experience based knowledge and wisdom to you via the drill downs.

Just to put this whole drill down thing in relationship to what other websites are doing consider the following. There are a lot of other websites that have video recipes, most of the time they’re not step by step; you see the whole recipe in one single video, often times shot with a home camcorder. Other websites offer tips and technique videos, but here’s the catch, with no context to anything. So you tell me how useful is to know how to carve a turkey or debone a chicken, when you don’t even know how to prepare the bird? You see now?

We really believe in the added value of drill downs. We’re making the effort of adding more drill downs to offer you more related knowledge and experience that you can use. That just sounded like a marketing spill, but it’s true. Just take a look at the HD recipes, which are our newer ones. They are packed with useful information.

Please provide me with any feedback you may have about drill downs. Really.