FOODI — Meal Planning App | Product & UX/UI Design
Nora Molaei
FOODI
Foodi is an AI-driven application that helps users reduce grocery costs by generating personalized meal plans based on local discounts and existing ingredients.
Foodi is an app that suggests recipes based on your diet and budget.
It collects weekly grocery deals from local supermarkets and turns them into personalized meal suggestions tailored to your preferences.
Foodi helps you save money and eat better.
ROLE
Project Type
DURATION
FOCUS
The Problem
Understanding real grocery behavior — not assumptions.
Rising Grocery Prices
High grocery prices make budget-friendly meals a challenge.
Although discounts are widely available, shoppers struggle to turn them into structured meal plans.
For people following diets like keto or vegan, balancing nutrition with affordability becomes even more difficult.
Research & Discovery
How users move from savings to a structured meal plan
Interviews
10 semi-structured interviews with households
Behavioral Survey
40 participants
Persona
What I Observed
What we saw in real behavior
People want to eat healthy
Healthy meals often feel expensive
when shoppers try to stay with in budget
Discounts don't translate into meals
Shoppers see many deals but don't know how to turn them into meals.
Discounts drive impulse purchases
Promotions often trigger unplanned buying instead of structured meal planning.
Budget pressure creates stress
Constant price comparison creates decision fatigue while shopping.
Key Insight
The core problem wasn’t finding discounts — it was turning scattered deals into confident meal decisions.
Market Context
A large overlap between saving money, eating better, and planning meals.
75%
Actively search for grocery discounts
60%
Try to eat healthier or follow a diet
Market Demand
This isn’t a niche problem. It’s a large behavioral overlap.
Behavioral Overlap
A large segment simultaneously seeks savings, health, and meal inspiration.
Demographic Breakdown
Budget-conscious and health-aware consumers span multiple age groups, not a single demographic.
Solution Validation
From Insight to Solution
Instead of asking users to compare grocery discounts, recipes, and dietary needs separately, Foodi turns these disconnected decisions into one simple planning experience.
Foodi helps users answer two questions at the same time:
What should I cook?
What can I afford?
By connecting nearby grocery discounts with dietary preferences and meal planning, Foodi suggests affordable meals that users can actually cook.
Experiment Setup
6-week test
Behavioral experiment with real shoppers
30 Walmart shoppers
Budget-conscious participants
Email-based meal suggestions
Personalized recipes matched to weekly discounts
80% cooked at least one suggested meal
This showed that personalized, deal-based meal ideas could lead to real action
Not a single demographic
Budget-conscious and health-aware shoppers appeared across different age groups.
FOODI Solution
Simple Flow
Store Discounts
Collects nearby weekly grocery deals.
Dietary Preferences
Considers user diet, health goals, and household needs.
Smart Shopping List
Organizes ingredients into a practical shopping list.
Key Features
Discount → Meal Conversion
Scattered discounts into real meal ideas
Shoppers see many deals but don’t know how to turn them into meals.
Automatically gathers ingredients
Decision Simplification
Removes the need to compare and plan manually
Experience Design
How users move from savings to a structured meal plan
Happy Path
Set Preferences
Define dietary needs, budget, and household context.
Browse personalized deals and meal suggestions based on available discounts.
Select a meal that fits both user preferences and budget.
Review Recipe
Check ingredients, directions, and estimated cost.
User Felow
Turning strategy into a simple product flow
I translated the product logic into low-fidelity screens to test how users would move from discounts to meal planning.
Sketch
Low-fidelity
Design System
Creating a warm and practical visual language
The interface was designed to feel approachable, easy to scan, and supportive of fast everyday decisions
Final UI
Designing the final experience
The final interface brings together savings, meal discovery, and planning in a clearer and more actionable way.
Reflection
What I learned from designing Foodi
This project helped me think beyond discounts as isolated information and design a more actionable meal-planning experience.
Designing for real-life constraints
Users are not only looking for savings. They are balancing time, health goals, budget pressure, and mental effort.
Reducing decision fatigue matters
The value of Foodi comes from helping users decide faster, not from showing them more options.
Savings become useful when they become actionable
Discounts only matter when users can turn them into meals they can actually cook.
Let’s be friends!
Made with 💕, ☕, and lots of 💃🏻
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Posted Sep 15, 2026
Designed FOODI, a meal-planning app concept connecting grocery deals with budgets and dietary needs, informed by user research and interactive prototyping.
