The majority of people find meal planning frustrating and time-consuming, even though they know it makes life easier. The biggest hurdle isn't the cooking—it’s the indecision.

Daily Dish was built to turn meal planning from a chore into a seamless experience. Rooted in user research, this prototype focuses on solving decision paralysis by providing meal inspiration and grocery coordination, simplifying the entire journey from figuring out what's for dinner to a finished shopping list.

To gain insight into user behaviors and attitudes toward meal planning, I conducted a survey with 12 participants. The numbers revealed that "decision paralysis" is a major pain point:

I followed up the survey with user interviews to get deeper insights. Many participants shared that meal planning "felt harder than it should be". The recurring themes weren't about a lack of cooking skills, but rather a lack of ideas, constant indecisiveness, and a struggle to find the motivation to plan ahead.

I looked at three competitors, including Plan to Eat, to identify what worked well and where gaps existed. While they had great features (like web importing and dietary filters), they felt cramped, were difficult to navigate, or had long onboarding processes. None of them combined inspiration and ease-of-use into one seamless experience.

To make sense of the data, I used an affinity map to group the insights into clear patterns. This led me to focus on two goals: simplifying the flow to reduce stress and save time, and providing inspiration to help users beat indecision.

I created two user personas from my research findings. Emily, a lawyer, needs variety without the time-consuming planning, while Ross, a university student, needs a foolproof way to organize his shopping and avoid wasting food.

To make sure the app actually felt intuitive, I started by building a sitemap to organize the main navigation and high-level structure. From there, I developed user and task flows to visualize exactly how a user would move through key actions, like finding meal inspiration or adding a recipe to their meal plan. I used these as a guide in creating my mid-fidelity wireframes.

I conducted usability testing on my wireframes and the feedback I received helped me pivot on three critical areas:

I took the feedback I received and continued on to create high-fidelity wireframes. I conducted usability testing once again to determine their effectiveness. Testing my wireframes revealed that there were still a few areas of improvement. I made two major iterations:

Below are the final designs of Daily Dish.

The critique of users from usability testing is essential. Implementing the feedback I was given made the app more intuitive and enhanced overall user experience. This process emphasized the importance of iterative design and user feedback in creating a seamless experience.