Cooking is a user-friendly recipe exploration and meal planning app, designed for food lovers who want to discover new recipes, plan meals for the week, and streamline grocery lists. My design goal was to balance visual delight with clean usability for both novice and experienced home chefs.

As the UX designer, I led the design process from ideation to the development of an interactive prototype. My responsibilities included user research, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, and iterating on designs to ensure an intuitive and engaging user experience.

Users often felt overwhelmed by recipe discovery tools that have too many filters or unclear navigation.

Meal planning and grocery list creation were tedious and disconnected.

Created a simplified, immersive home screen with featured recipes and intuitive categories.

Designed an in-app meal planner + auto-generated grocery list.

Prioritized mobile usability: large tap zones, minimal filtering steps, real-time feedback when selecting recipes.

To design an intuitive and user-friendly recipe discovery platform, I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to gain insights into user needs and behaviors. I found that many users search for cooking tutorials multiple times a week but often struggle with disorganized and overwhelming recipe websites. Several key pain points emerged during research:

Limited Filter Options: Many cooking websites lack advanced filtering, making it difficult for users to find recipes that match their specific needs, such as dietary restrictions, cooking time, or skill level.

Lack of Video Tutorials: Some platforms provide only text-based instructions, which makes it harder for users to follow along, especially for complex recipes.

Absence of Global Recipes: Users looking for diverse, international cuisine often have to search multiple websites, as most platforms do not offer a wide range of global recipes in one place.

Missing User Feedback: Many cooking websites do not allow users to leave ratings or reviews, making it difficult for others to assess the quality and success of a recipe before trying it.

Sketched paper wireframes for each screen, addressing user pain points such as filter options, user feedback, global recipes, and video tutorials. The screen variations were designed with a focus on optimizing the search experience for users.

I conducted a usability study. Findings from the first study helped guide me in iterating on designs.

Enhanced Filtering & Accessibility: Users preferred a range meter over checkboxes for better control and requested the ability to search recipes using pantry ingredients for added convenience.

Improved Usability & Engagement: Users wanted a more visible "Save for Later" icon, the option to print recipes, and a “Try or Not” button to enhance interaction and usability.

New users completed their first recipe selection in under 2 minutes on average.

Meal planner usage rose by 60% due to intuitive planner + grocery list integration.

Drop in abandoned grocery lists: ~50% fewer users left lists incomplete.

Consistent UI components cut design iteration time by ~30% for future screen additions.