a playlist feature for organizing and sharing Netflix content

Easily create, organize, and share Netflix playlists for a more personalized experience.

Project type: End-to-end mobile app design and branding

Role: Sole UX/UI designer

Industry: Food & Nutrition

Tools: Figma and FigJam

Duration: Q2-Q3 2025

Introduction

Potential Feature Benefits

  • Users can browse, swipe, and save recipes, making it easier to plan meals quickly without stress.

  • The app tailors recipe suggestions to a child’s preferences, dislikes, and dietary needs, helping caregivers find meals that actually work for their family.

  • Ingredients from selected recipes can be automatically added to a grocery list, streamlining shopping and reducing meal prep time.

  • Interactive features like swiping to explore and saving favorites keep users engaged and make meal planning more enjoyable.

  • By providing recipes that match children’s tastes and dietary needs, PickyPal helps caregivers reduce frustration and create more enjoyable mealtimes.

PickyPal helps users plan meals for children by offering a variety of intuitive tools. Users can scroll through recipes to explore options, or use the swipe feature to quickly browse when they’re unsure what to make. Favorite recipes can be saved for easy access later, and ingredients can be automatically added to a grocery list, streamlining shopping and meal preparation. These features work together to make meal planning efficient, personalized, and stress-free.

Project Overview

Planning meals for children can be challenging, especially when accommodating picky eaters’ preferences, dislikes, and dietary needs. Caregivers often struggle to find recipes that satisfy both nutrition and taste, leading to stressful mealtimes. PickyPal addresses this gap by offering a personalized, intuitive way to plan meals, making it easier to create enjoyable, balanced meals that children actually want to eat.

Who We’re Designing For

Through research into meal planning challenges, I identified caregivers of young children (approximately ages 25–40) as the primary users for PickyPal. These users often juggle busy schedules while trying to accommodate children’s preferences, dislikes, and dietary needs. They value tools that simplify meal planning, reduce stress, and help ensure their children eat balanced meals. While PickyPal is designed with this audience in mind, its personalized meal planning features can benefit anyone caring for children with selective eating habits.

App - Feature Overview

Research

Research Objectives

The goal of this research was to understand how caregivers plan meals for children, with a focus on challenges related to picky eating, dietary needs, and meal preferences. I aimed to learn how users select, organize, and save recipes, as well as what features would make meal planning easier and more efficient. I also explored frustrations and pain points in existing meal planning methods to identify opportunities for innovation. Research was conducted through in-person and virtual user interviews with caregivers of young children.

Notable Focus Points

  • Investigating what tools, apps, or methods caregivers currently use to plan meals, including recipe sources, meal kits, or online platforms, to understand gaps and opportunities for improvement.

  • Exploring strategies caregivers use to accommodate children’s food preferences and picky eating habits, and how this impacts meal planning and recipe selection.

  • Understanding how caregivers navigate allergies, intolerances, or other dietary restrictions, and what features could support safe and efficient meal planning.

  • Learning about pain points and stressors in meal prep and planning, and uncovering opportunities for features that simplify or make the process more enjoyable.

After conducting user interviews with caregivers of young children, we categorized key findings to identify common challenges. Many participants expressed frustration with meal planning, particularly when accommodating picky eating, dietary restrictions, and allergies. Users found it difficult to track recipes and organize meals efficiently, often relying on scattered resources like online searches, printed recipes, or memory. Participants highlighted that planning meals that their children would actually eat is a frequent source of stress. Overall, caregivers desired tools that simplify meal planning, offer personalized recipe suggestions, and allow easy saving and organization of favorite meals to reduce daily mealtime friction.

Analyzing Interview Transcripts

Define

Establishing Structure and Defining the Experience

To create a practical and user-friendly experience, I took an iterative approach, continuously refining PickyPal based on caregivers’ feedback. I focused on understanding how users choose, organize, and track meals for children with varying preferences and dietary needs. By developing personas, user flows, and user journeys, I was able to map the most efficient ways for caregivers to plan meals, save recipes, and manage grocery lists. This process ensured PickyPal delivers a streamlined, intuitive, and stress-reducing meal planning experience.

User Personas

After analyzing interview insights and identifying common challenges, I created personas representing the primary users of PickyPal. The first persona is a caregiver focused on expanding a child’s palate, seeking ways to introduce new foods while keeping meals enjoyable. The second persona is a caregiver managing a picky eater, looking for strategies to plan meals that their child will actually eat while balancing nutrition and convenience. By understanding these users’ goals, pain points, and behaviors, PickyPal’s design ensures a personalized, intuitive, and stress-reducing meal planning experience.

User Flows

Designing user flows was essential for creating an intuitive and efficient experience in PickyPal. The two initial flows I focused on were:

  1. Logging into the app and accessing the main dashboard

  2. Saving a recipe and automatically generating a grocery list

After testing and iterating based on user feedback, I refined these flows to minimize steps and simplify navigation. The primary flow emphasizes saving recipes and creating a grocery list, allowing caregivers to plan meals quickly while ensuring all necessary ingredients are tracked. This approach makes the meal planning process more efficient, organized, and stress-free for caregivers

Design

Designing the App Experience from the Ground Up

Building PickyPal from the ground up allowed me to create a cohesive and intuitive experience tailored specifically to caregivers’ needs. I developed wireframes and prototypes that prioritized ease of navigation, recipe discovery, and grocery management. UI elements were designed to be clear, approachable, and child-friendly, while interactions like scrolling, swiping, saving recipes, and generating grocery lists were structured to minimize friction. By designing both the visual and functional systems together, PickyPal provides a streamlined, engaging, and stress-reducing meal planning experience from the first tap.

Wireframes

Throughout the design process, I explored multiple variations of sketches and layout ideas through low-fidelity wireframes, focusing on key interactions like scrolling through recipes, swiping to browse, saving meals, and generating grocery lists. Once the structure and user flows were established, I refined the designs into mid-fidelity wireframes to test functionality and layout on mobile screens. After several iterations based on feedback, I transitioned into high-fidelity designs, finalizing visual elements, usability, and consistency to create a polished and intuitive mobile-first meal planning experience.

Lo-Fi Wireframes

Mid-Fi Wireframes

Hi-Fi Wireframes

These mid-fidelity wireframes provide a foundational view of PickyPal’s core interactions. While additional screens were designed to connect various user flows, these wireframes highlight how users will browse recipes, save meals, and generate grocery lists, serving as the primary blueprint for the app’s functionality.

Test

Usability Testing & Prototyping

Prototype for Phones (Tasks #1-3)

I conducted task-based usability testing with caregivers using a mobile prototype of PickyPal. Participants were asked to complete key tasks such as browsing recipes, saving meals, and generating grocery lists, while thinking aloud to share their thoughts and frustrations. I observed their interactions, stepping in only if they encountered significant difficulties, to better understand pain points, usability issues, and opportunities for improvement.

To validate PickyPal’s design, I conducted usability testing with a high-fidelity mobile prototype. Caregivers were observed as they explored recipes, saved favorite meals, and added ingredients to grocery lists, revealing where the experience was smooth and where it needed improvement. Insights from these sessions guided adjustments to navigation, feature layout, and interaction flow, resulting in a more intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly meal planning app.

View Hi-Fi Prototype

Key Performance Benchmarks for Task Completion

    • Target Completion Time: < 1.5 min

    • Error Allowance: 0–1

    • User Confidence (1–10): 7–8

    • Target Completion Time: < 30 sec

    • Error Allowance: 0–1

    • User Confidence (1–10): 7–8

    • Target Completion Time: < 20 sec

    • Error Allowance: 0–1

    • User Confidence (1–10): 7–8

    • Target Completion Time: < 20 sec

    • Error Allowance: 0–1

    • User Confidence (1–10): 7–8

    • Target Completion Time: < 20 sec

    • Error Allowance: 0–1

    • User Confidence (1–10): 7–8

Testing Methods and Execution

Measuring Usability & Success Metrics

Testing showed that PickyPal’s main features were easy to navigate and highly user-friendly. Participants consistently rated the experience between 9 and 10 for ease of use, with 10 being the highest score. Users completed all tasks well within the target times without encountering errors, demonstrating that the app enables quick, efficient, and stress-free meal planning.

While no major usability issues were observed, participants suggested several opportunities for future improvements. One caregiver noted that some button interactions could provide clearer feedback, which can be refined in upcoming iterations. Another participant highlighted that adding the ability to adjust ingredient quantities per child would make meal planning even more accurate. Users also expressed interest in grouping items in the grocery list by category and exploring additional personalization options for recipe recommendations. These insights provide a roadmap for enhancing PickyPal’s functionality and overall user experience in future updates.

Iterations

Most of the design remained consistent, with only minor adjustments made to enhance the current usability and polish the interface. Refinements included improving button feedback and optimizing transition times between screens, which helped make interactions feel smoother and more responsive. While these changes improved the cosmetic and functional quality of existing features, larger potential iterations, such as integrating a more advanced grocery list management system or adding customizable meal planning templates, were identified but deferred for future versions due to time constraints. This approach allowed the prototype to remain focused and functional while still acknowledging opportunities for growth in later releases.

Conclusion

This project provided valuable insights into designing a user-centered meal planning experience for caregivers. While the current prototype effectively supports browsing, saving recipes, and generating grocery lists, usability testing revealed opportunities for refinement and future exploration. For upcoming iterations, I plan to explore enhancements such as streamlining navigation further, improving visual feedback for interactions, and experimenting with adaptive features that respond to caregiver preferences and usage patterns. Feedback also highlighted potential avenues like customizing recipe recommendations based on past behavior, adding in-app guidance for new users, and refining transitions to make the app feel more responsive. These insights reinforce the importance of iterative design: even small adjustments can have a meaningful impact on usability, and continuous evaluation ensures that PickyPal evolves to meet the real needs of caregivers in an intuitive and enjoyable way.