UX RESEARCH / CASE STUDY
FoodFeed
Most people decide what to cook by scrolling. FoodFeed is a recipe app built that way on purpose.
CONTEXT
M.A. Thesis
UX/UI Interaction Design
SCOPE
14 screens
research → hi-fi prototype
METHODS
Interviews, SWOT
heuristic, competitive
ROLE
Designer & builder
solo, with Claude Code
01 / THE PROBLEM
Everyone eats. But deciding what to make is a pain.
The same rotation
Chicken, steak, a veggie platter, fish. Repeat. It's not a lack of options — it's a lack of a way to decide.
Everyday home cooks face a recurring decision: what can I make with what I have? Between limited ingredients, time, budget, and personal preferences, finding the right meal can become harder than actually cooking it.
Too many variables
Time, budget, health goals, what's in the fridge, and what you actually want. Every day, the decision starts from scratch.
Recipe sites don't help
Most recipe platforms assume you already know what you're looking for. But the hardest part often happens before search: deciding what to make.
02 / THE INSIGHT
The research helped separate assumptions from what users actually needed.
METHOD 03
Heuristic evaluation
Usability gaps in the sites people already use daily.
METHOD 04
SWOT analysis
Where a new product could realistically win.
METHOD 01
User interviews
Ages 21–45, on how they really decide what's for dinner.
METHOD 02
Competitive analysis
Where existing recipe products stop short of the decision.
03/ WHAT I FOUND
Three findings that shaped the product.
01
People don't start with a recipe.
They start with what they already have, what they're craving, or what fits the time they've got.
02
Constraints shape the decision.
Dietary preferences, allergies, health goals, and available ingredients all influence what ends up on the plate.
03
SO WHAT
More choices don't always mean better choices.
Platforms offer thousands of options, but users still have to do the work of narrowing them down to something that fits.
The problem isn't a lack of recipes. It's the lack of a simple way to decide which recipe is right for you.
04 / THE PRODUCT
A feed of food — filtered by who you are.
What you see is what you get. Onboarding learns your constraints once, then the feed does the deciding for you.
Allergies & avoids, kept separate. Allergies raise a flag on any recipe that contains them. Dislikes just quietly drop out of the feed.
Step-by-step, optional
Confident cooks skim ingredients; newer cooks follow steps. Both paths exist
The feed. Two-card recipe rows under Trending / For You, with swipeable meal categories for users who want to get in and out fast.
Intake in view
Nutrition surfaced on the recipe, so eating well doesn't need a second app.
Dietary preferences. Faith-based diets, low sodium, low sugar — captured as identity, not a filter buried in settings.
Image-forward by request
Users judge a dish visually first. Photography leads every card.
05 / OUTCOME
14
✓
✓
✓
screens, every one traceable
to something a user said
A behavior-led concept
Built on how people already discover food instead of a new habit they'd have to learn.
Restrictions treated as first-class
Allergies, diets and dislikes handled in onboarding — so exploring feels safe, not risky.
A research practice I still use
Defensible design decisions, documented — the habit that carried into client and product work.
REFLECTION
This is where I learned to work structurally with ambiguity. Not to guess faster — to sit with the data until the real problem showed itself.
Most design work moves fast and agile. FoodFeed was the opposite, and it taught me what a project gains when it's genuinely rooted in research and documented well enough to defend.