Designing an intuitive meal planning experience that helps users cook more, stress less, and waste nothing.

Began by identifying the core problem: busy individuals and new home cooks feel overwhelmed by meal planning, grocery shopping, and discovering new recipes. Conducted exploratory research to understand user behaviors and pain points, establishing a clear design direction focused on simplicity, guidance, and reducing decision fatigue.

Developed a primary persona: Hagar, a recently married woman who never had to cook before and now feels overwhelmed managing meals for her household. Her goals include learning simple recipes step-by-step, planning weekly meals to avoid stress, generating smart grocery lists, and reducing food waste. Her frustrations, limited cooking experience, ordering takeout too often, and not knowing what ingredients to buy, directly shaped the app's core feature set.

Defined a brand identity that feels warm, approachable, and encouraging. The brand voice is funny and conversational; the tone adapts contextually, playful during onboarding and feedback, concise when creating grocery lists, and detailed when displaying recipe steps or encountering errors. The visual language uses a soft pink and warm neutral palette with the Nunito Sans typeface, reinforcing a friendly and trustworthy character that motivates users to cook more.