SITI
​Marvelous Meal
Helping families plan meals
with confidence, not guesswork.
Marvelous Meal is a mobile app that helps families discover safe recipes based on food allergies, ingredients already available at home, and available cooking time—reducing unnecessary purchases while minimizing food waste.
Project overview
Marvelous Meal is an end-to-end mobile experience that connects recipe discovery, pantry management, and grocery planning into one streamlined workflow.
The project focuses on helping users with dietary restrictions make faster, safer meal decisions while reducing food waste and duplicate grocery purchases.
Roll
Timeline
Team
Tools
UX/UI Designer
4 weeks
Independent project
Figma FigJam Adobe Illustrator
Research, product strategy, interaction design, visual design, prototyping, and usability testing
February–May 2024
End-to-end design ownership
​Challenge
Planning everyday meals becomes surprisingly complicated when households need to balance allergies, existing ingredients, available time, and grocery shopping.
Most recipe apps help users discover meals—but they rarely help answer an equally important question:
"What can I safely cook today without buying unnecessary ingredients?"
1/3
Food produced globally
is wasted every year.
Many households manage
multiple dietary restrictions,
making meal planning more
time-consuming and stressful.
How might we help households discover recipes that are both safe to cook and practical with what they already have?
Research Insights
Interviews and surveys revealed that users struggled less with finding recipes—and more with managing everyday cooking constraints.
01
Safety comes first.
02
Existing ingredients are difficult to remember.
Users evaluate recipes by allergy compatibility before considering taste or appearance.
Many participants purchased duplicate ingredients because they could not remember what was already available at home.
03
Time determines cooking decisions.
Even appealing recipes are ignored when preparation time exceeds what users have available.
04
Recipe discovery and grocery shopping are disconnected
Users frequently switch between recipe apps, kitchen cabinets, and shopping lists before making a purchase.
Primary User
Busy Household Meal Planner
Plans meals for multiple family members while balancing dietary restrictions, available ingredients, and limited cooking time.
Goals
✓ Prepare safe meals
✓ Save planning time
✓ Reduce food waste
✓ Avoid duplicate purchases
Pain Points
• Unsure what ingredients are already at home
• Recipe apps ignore pantry inventory
• Difficult to satisfy multiple allergies
• Meal planning feels repetitive
Design Opportunity
Create one experience that combines recipe discovery, pantry tracking, and grocery planning.
Design Goals
Based on the research findings, I focused on three design goals that guided every major product decision.
Prioritize meal safety
Help users immediately identify recipes that fit their household's dietary restrictions before investing time exploring them.
Simplify grocery planning
Reduce duplicate purchases by connecting recipe ingredients with pantry inventory and shopping lists.
Reduce decision fatigue
Personalize recipe recommendations based on available ingredients, cooking time, and household preferences.
Decision 01
Designing around household constraints—not recipes
The problem
Users often discover recipes they cannot actually cook because of allergies, missing ingredients, or limited time.
The decision
Instead of recommending recipes first, the onboarding flow collects household allergies, commonly available seasonings, and cooking preferences to personalize every recommendation.
Why it matters
Users spend less time filtering irrelevant recipes and gain confidence that recommended meals are practical for their household.
Decision 02
Make recipe suitability immediately visible
The problem
Users repeatedly open recipe pages only to discover they lack ingredients or exceed their available cooking time.
The decision
Recipe cards surface preparation time, servings, allergy compatibility, and required ingredients before users commit.
Why it matters
This reduces unnecessary navigation and supports faster decision making.
Decision 03
Turn recipes directly into shopping actions
The problem
Traditional recipe apps stop after displaying ingredients.
The decision
Marvelous Meal separates ingredients users already own from those still needed and generates a focused shopping bag.
Why it matters
Users purchase only missing ingredients, reducing duplicate purchases and food waste.
Final Experience
Experience 01
Personalized onboarding
Users begin by providing household allergies, commonly available pantry items, and cooking preferences so recommendations are personalized from the start.
Experience 02
Finding the right recipe
Recipes are ranked around household constraints instead of popularity, helping users quickly identify meals that are safe and practical.
Experience 03
Shop only for what's missing
Instead of generating a complete grocery list, the app compares recipe requirements against pantry inventory and recommends purchasing only missing ingredients.
Usability Testing
Five moderated usability sessions revealed three recurring friction points that informed the final iteration.
Finding 01
Users overlooked allergy information
Observation
Iteration
Outcome
Participants focused on recipe images before noticing allergy compatibility.
Moved allergy indicators closer to recipe titles and increased visual emphasis.
Safety information became part of the initial scanning process.
Finding 02
Ingredient quantities felt difficult to adjust
Observation
Iteration
Outcome
Users struggled to modify quantities using small controls.
Enlarged touch targets and displayed quantities more clearly.
Editing became faster and required fewer repeated interactions.
Finding 03
Users wanted more control over shopping
Observation
Iteration
Outcome
Participants expected to review and edit automatically generated shopping lists.
Added manual editing and quantity adjustment before checkout.
The shopping experience felt more transparent and trustworthy.
Reflection
Lesson 1
Constraints create better recommendations
The most valuable part of the experience wasn't offering more recipes—it was helping users eliminate unsuitable ones earlier in the decision-making process.
Lesson 2
Automation still requires user control
Even when recommendations are accurate, users expect the ability to review and modify shopping decisions before purchasing.
Lesson 1
Designing for households is different from designing for individuals
Supporting multiple dietary preferences introduced product decisions that would not exist in a single-user recipe experience.
Next Steps
Explore barcode scanning
to simplify pantry tracking.
Validate long-term pantry
management behavior.
Measure whether personalized
recommendations reduce
food waste over time.