BudgetBites

Budget meal planner app

For this project, I really wanted to create something that I would personally use. As a university student, I felt one of my biggest struggles was home cooked meals.

Problem

Students are broke, busy, and lazy, but still need easy ways to organize and plan their meals.

Solution

A meal planner app that helps to collect meals based on your budget, time constraints and effort.

Problem

Students are broke, busy, and lazy, but still need easy ways to organize and plan their meals.

Solution

A meal planner app that helps to collect meals based on your budget, time constraints and effort.

Role

Product designer

Timeline

Jan - Mar '22

Plan your plate

The homepage uses a large dynamic poster to showcase different content, from popular recipes and seasonal eats to first-time user onboarding. From there, users can explore recipes and add them directly into their created plans.

Plan your plate

Build your plan

Users can create new plans based on different budgets, timelines, and preferences. All of their existing plans are saved like playlists, making it easy to revisit and customize them anytime.

Build your plan

Users can create new plans based on different budgets, timelines, and preferences. All of their existing plans are saved like playlists, making it easy to revisit and customize them anytime.

Cook with confidence

Users can view recipe details like ingredients, nutritional value, and reviews before adding them to a plan or starting right away. When cooking, they can follow easy steps with visuals and videos, or enter Touchless Mode for voice controls when their hands aren’t free.

Cook with confidence

Research and ideation

To define the app direction, I looked into student eating habits and the main journeys the product needed to support.

Research and ideation

To define the app direction, I looked into student eating habits and the main journeys the product needed to support.

Defining student needs

To better understand my audience, I interviewed 6 post-secondary students about their struggles with eating during school. Their main pain points were cost, time, energy, and not knowing what to make. From there, I analyzed similar products and mapped key user journeys to help shape the app’s direction and core features.

Analysis

The next step was to roughly outline my creative brief from my findings to help guide myself during designing and iteration.

Main hypothesis

"If we allow students to plan meals based on their own budget, they can save more money."

Main scenarios

You find recipes to meal plan according to your budget. You want to make a quick snack. You want to discover a new recipe.

Business opportunities

Allow users to formulate plans based on specific limitations. Create and access multiple plans for reuse.

Analysis

The next step was to roughly outline my creative brief from my findings to help guide myself during designing and iteration.

Main hypothesis

"If we allow students to plan meals based on their own budget, they can save more money."

Main scenarios

You find recipes to meal plan according to your budget. You want to make a quick snack. You want to discover a new recipe.

Business opportunities

Allow users to formulate plans based on specific limitations. Create and access multiple plans for reuse.

Exploration and iteration

Before landing on the final designs, I did light testing with the same 6 friends to get feedback on concepts and usability. Below is some rough work and early ideas.

Exploration and iteration

Before landing on the final designs, I did light testing with the same 6 friends to get feedback on concepts and usability. Below is some rough work and early ideas.

Too much planning

Early versions included grocery price comparisons and meal-by-day scheduling, but these features branched too far from the core problem. They made the app feel more complicated than it needed to be, especially for casual users who just wanted easier ways to find meals.

Faster decisions

Some early explorations used more creative inputs like calendars, scrollers, and a vertical explore feed. Testing showed that these made the experience slower than expected, so I simplified the flow and moved toward a masonry grid that let users see more at once and decide faster.

Reflection and takeaways

What I learned from this project.

Figma 101

Being my first major design project, I experienced a lot of things for the first time, but I was able to learn A LOT. Looking back, I have grown a lot with Figma. The way my past self grouped and manipulated my work made creating this case study so much harder 😭

It's not one and done

For some reason I hadn't expected to do as much exploration and iteration as I had thought. Even if the idea sounds dumb, quickly designing out those thoughts is important.

Reflection and takeaways

What I learned from this project.

Figma 101

It's not one and done

For some reason I hadn't expected to do as much exploration and iteration as I had thought. Even if the idea sounds dumb, quickly designing out those thoughts is important.