Role: Founding Product Designer

Client: Iron Recipe

Industry: Consumer Mobile App, Food and Cooking

Scope: Mobile App

Year: 2024

Iron Recipe is a mobile cooking platform that helps users discover, cook, and share recipes from different parts of the world, combining curated recipes, step-by-step cooking instructions, and short-form cooking videos in one guided mobile experience.

People wanted an easy way to discover and explore recipes from anywhere, whether they were confident cooks or just learning, but most recipe platforms didn't serve everyone well or give experienced cooks a way to earn from the recipes and content they created. Iron Recipe needed to be genuinely open to anyone, while still giving serious cooks and creators a real path to monetize their work.

As founding product designer, I designed a mobile experience built around three core activities, discovering recipes, following guided cooking instructions, and engaging with short cooking videos called bites.

Alongside this, I designed a tiered access system, free, basic, and premium, so users could experience real value on the platform before ever being asked to commit financially.

The platform also brought creators and everyday users together through communities, where people could connect with others around shared interests, follow creators they liked, and even create their own communities to build around a shared topic or style of cooking.

Users can join as free, anonymous users with no email or details required and get restricted but real access to unlimited recipes and bites.

Basic users provide a name and email for expanded access, including publishing content, though their earnings from sales are capped.

Premium subscribers unlock full access, including community creation and keeping a hundred percent of their earnings.

This structure was designed to lower the barrier to entry and reduce bounce rate, giving every user some level of real access regardless of whether they paid, so they'd have a reason to keep coming back and, over time, a reason to upgrade.

Experienced cooks and chefs can publish and sell their own recipes on the platform, with earnings tracked in points that convert into the user's local currency when withdrawn. Creators with higher engagement and sales are ranked and surfaced more prominently, giving serious creators a reason to invest in building a following on the platform.

Every recipe can be read as text, watched as a video, or listened to as audio, so users can engage with content in whichever way suits them, including visually impaired users who rely on audio. This made the platform usable for a wider range of people rather than assuming everyone consumes recipes the same way.

Bites, short cooking videos similar to Reels or TikTok content, were designed specifically to keep users coming back. Watching a thirty-second video of someone cooking gives users a quick sense that they could try it themselves, encouraging repeat visits in the way short-form video does on other platforms.

Users can filter content by cuisine, diet, meal type, and other preferences across the home feed, recipe listings, and bites, letting them shape what they see rather than browsing an undifferentiated feed.

The final design delivered a complete mobile experience that made recipes and cooking content accessible to anyone, regardless of skill level or budget, while giving serious cooks and creators a genuine way to earn from their content.

The tiered access model gave every user real value from their first visit, without requiring payment or personal details upfront, directly addressing the drop-off that happens when apps hide their pricing until after sign-up.