PantryPal

A recipe app that has every convenience.

Phone mockups of PantryPal.
Roles
User Research, UX/UI Design, Prototyping
Timeline
10 Weeks (April 2024 - June 2024)
Team
Edmond Lee, Bao Chang, Brandon Smith, Kavya Pabbaraju, Ziyi Huang

Overview

A recipe app that's all about convenience. PantryPal essentially plans meals for you. Whether you're on a crunch and need something simple and quick or you're feeling fancy, PantryPal offers all sorts of easy-to-follow recipes tailored to your dietary needs and preferences. With PantryPal, you'll know how much you'll need, from ingredients to time allotted.

THE PROBLEM

What do I cook? Can I even cook it?

We've all been there. You look at the fridge and all you do is stare. Perhaps your fridge and pantry is empty? Or perhaps you need some inspiration? Maybe you're feeling lazy and just need something cooked fast. Whatever the reason is, you end up making a hasty choice to make a mishmash of whatever you've had.
How could we address the issue of not know what to cook, let alone not having enough ingredients or time to cook a healthy and delicious meal?

research

I need ideas, I need ingredients, I need it done!

Conducting surveys and interviews, I noticed that from the results of the two, our users all faced the same problems: struggling with inspiration and time constraints, all while needing to meal prep to fit their schedule.
"Definitely [annoyed by] to find that there's not enough ingredients to make what I want"
"i think there should be simple recipes i can plan the day before for 2-3 servings"
81% of the responses are frustrated with time constraints.
63% of our survey responses say they simply have no idea what to cook.
Affinity diagram of interviewees' cooking habits.Affinity diagram about interviewees' cooking habits.
Some users even suggested filters for dietary needs and preferences, budgets and easy tutorials; feedback that's commonplace in our surveys and interviews.

Time to cook up a solution.

An app that suggests [simple and quick] recipes based on user preferences with easy but detailed cooking tutorials, while offering users shopping lists and a pantry feature to let them take more control over their cooking.

Competitive analysis

What ingredients are apps missing?

I began researching several food apps in order to see what potential gaps lie within them. I noticed that most of the apps I looked at had search filters that were either limited or non existent; most notably being the lack of dietary options. Not to mention that the lack of ingredient substitutions could be off-putting for those who simply don't want to seek out the expected ingredient. Additionally, all these apps except Mealime felt like a one-time use and that's something that we didn't want to happen with a cooking app that's meant to be your convenient cooking pal. My idea for PantryPal eventually centered around the idea that the app would cover all of these gaps in order to be a recurring, convenient tool for those who want a nice, homemade meal.
Competitive analysis against SuperCook, Cookpad, MyFridgeFood and Mealime.

Ideation

Alright, let's start prepping our ingredients!

The team and I began with a design plan. We felt that PantryPal needed to support a pantry and shopping list that can be integrated with clear and concise recipes that could be planned out for the weeks to come. Though there definitely some features we would like to add in the near future, such as community features to share and review apps.
Sticky notes on "must haves" and "nice to have" features.

Welcome to PantryPal! What now?

Based on our user needs, I made a user flow that depicts a brand new PantryPal user who is there for the hopes of being able to find quick and easy recipes to plan out their week.
A user flow for PantryPal depicting a brand new user navigating through the app.

Wireframes

Turning the heat to low-fi...

My team and I drew up some hand-drawn sketches so we can start to have a rough layout guide on what PantryPal would look like.
Initial, hand-draw sketches of PantryPal.
Then we collaborated and what would work to which I then began developing low-fidelity wireframes on Figma.
Low-fidelity wireframes of PantryPal on Figma.

Visual Design

Our app wants to be your PantryPal!

PantryPal needed to feel super inviting and friendly to use. A red and green color scheme with a white background would make the user feeling more confident and welcomed in their cooking abilities, with our font choices of Poppins and DM Sans providing a bubbly and modern feel to the app.

We chose the name "PantryPal" because that's what it is! Sometimes you just stare at the fridge, wishing you had some ideas and inspiration. Thus our app is your PantryPal!
Sign up screen of PantryPal.
Colors and Typography for PantryPal.

Final solution

Eat what you need to eat. Or want!

PantryPal will ask you if you want to set up your dietary needs, preferences and your Pantry. Take control of what you eat.
Users selecting any allergies and dietary needs on PantryPal.

Find your perfect meals, hassle-free.

Need some inspiration? Have an easy time searching through PantryPal. May seem dull, but PantryPal does its best to cover everything that you need. You don't have to stress about time constraints and sift through dietary need-friendly recipes when PantryPal does the bulk of the work for you.
User going through search filters on PantryPal.

Everything about the recipe at your fingertips.

No need to jump to different websites. No need to worry about your calories or your macros. All the information you need is present and made clear in the interface so you never have to look anywhere else. Missing ingredients? You'll know what to add.
An overview of a recipe in PantryPal, including nutrition facts, time to cook and cost per serving.
User adding missing ingredients to the shopping list and the recipe to the planner.
User scrolling through the recipe directions.

Meal plans, shopping plans, it's all here!

View your meal plan for the week and adjust as needed. PantryPal's shopping list also makes it convenient for you by letting you know what to get, how much to get and what it's for.
User looking at the Meal Plan and Shopping List page in PantryPal.

reflection

The small details add up!

I enjoyed working on PantryPal, especially as the team's sole UX/UI designer though it was definitely a steep learning curve. I really felt the importance of needing to add all kinds of features and even small details that all add up to improve a user's experience without them realizing what goes behind the scenes to uplift their experiences. It was exciting to gain more practice into user research; it's extremely important to really pay attention to what users want and to be able to emphasize with them. Creating the interface was also an amazing but challenging experience as I needed to constantly revise what would be an effective layout for the user.
Glad to have you here still.