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Simply Simmer
Finding food that works for everyone
A mobile app prototype that helps people find recipes and restaurants that accommodate their dietary restrictions, including those of friends and family through linked profiles.
MY ROLE
Project Manager · UI/UX · UX Research · Prototyping
TEAM
3 students
DURATION
Spring 2026 · One semester
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, Adobe, Canva
From an everyday challenge to a shared solution
As project manager, I coordinated our team's milestones and collaborated with two teammates on research, interface design, and prototyping.
I helped design the wireframes and interface screens, develop interactive Figma prototypes, and conduct usability testing. I also contributed to feature ideation, including the linked-profiles feature, and helped shape the app's overall design.
See how Simply Simmer works
Explore the interactive Figma prototype. Some elements are not fully functional.
Try the Figma Prototype ↗
Prototype Walkthrough
Full prototype walkthrough · Recorded demonstration
The challenge
Finding meals that accommodate everyone's dietary restrictions isn't always easy.
When friends or family have different dietary needs, choosing a recipe or restaurant can require comparing several restrictions at once.
I experienced this with my own family, where finding meals that suited everyone sometimes meant preparing separate food or limiting where we could eat together. We wanted to explore how an app could make finding suitable food options easier while helping people with dietary restrictions feel more included in shared meals.
Research & discovery
We surveyed 27 people about their food habits, experiences with dietary apps, and what they wanted from food-related tools. We also researched MyFitnessPal, Mealime, Fig, and Spokin to understand how existing products approached dietary filtering, recipes, and restaurant recommendations.
INITIAL SURVEY
survey responses
WHAT WE EXPLORED
Dietary needs, food-related concerns, and what people value in recipe and restaurant apps.
/ 27
41% of respondents
Information and navigation mattered most
Number of respondents who rated each category as important (3 or 4 on a 4-point scale).
18
17
15
4
01
Clearer food information
Respondents wanted clear nutritional and ingredient information without excessive manual tracking.
Design response
We brought ingredients, nutritional details, and cooking instructions together on each recipe page.
02
Easier food discovery
Respondents wanted convenient access to recipes and restaurants, while some expressed frustration with cluttered interfaces and extensive food logging.
Design response
We prioritized recipe and restaurant discovery through browsing and filtering rather than building another calorie-tracking app.
Research-informed persona
Alex
22 years old · College student
Alex avoids dairy and often eats with friends who have different dietary needs. Finding recipes or restaurants that work for everyone means comparing restrictions before making plans.
Goals
Find recipes and restaurants that fit his diet
Enjoy meals with friends despite different dietary needs
Discover food options without extensive research
Frustrations
Difficulty finding restaurants for different dietary restrictions
Checking ingredients and menus for everyone
Limited dining options when making plans with friends
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
One search,
multiple dietary needs
Selectable linked profiles could help Alex find recipes and restaurants that accommodate his group, rather than searching for each person's dietary needs separately.
Alex is an illustrative persona informed by our initial research and the dietary challenges we explored.
Core design decision
What if you could search for meals based on everyone’s dietary needs,
not just your own?
I proposed linked profiles after seeing how difficult it could be for my family to find food that accommodated our different restrictions.
Instead of permanently combining everyone’s dietary restrictions, we designed a dropdown that allowed users to select which linked profiles to include for each search.
This meant someone could browse recipes for themselves or select family members when planning a shared meal. We incorporated profile selection into both recipe discovery and restaurant search.
We started with wireframes to establish the app's structure and navigation, then developed a low-fidelity prototype to explore interactions before moving into high-fidelity designs. I collaborated with a teammate on the interface screens, reusable components, and Figma prototyping.
01 Wireframe
Exploring screen structure and key user flows
02 Low fidelity
Refining navigation and interactions
03 High fidelity
Applying visual design and reusable components
We designed recipe pages with dietary tags, prep and cook times, difficulty levels, and nutritional information to help users find suitable recipes. Users can adjust portions with automatically updated ingredient measurements, save private cooking notes, and view tips from other users. We also added an option to display ingredient measurements alongside cooking instructions, reducing the need to scroll between sections.
Our initial branding used red and orange, but we felt the colors were too bold and intense for the experience we wanted to create. We explored other palettes and settled on green, which better reflected the app's focus on health, freshness, and well-being. We paired green with neutral colors to create a calmer interface that lets food photography and community content stand out.
Initial exploration
Bold, energetic colors that felt too intense for the intended experience
Final direction
A calmer palette that allows recipes and food photography to stand out
Prioritizing the core experience
We considered adding an automatically generated grocery list with grocery-delivery integration. Given our semester timeline, we focused on completing the recipe, restaurant, linked-profile, and community experiences instead.
Our original navigation bar featured a large plus button that opened options for creating recipes or community posts. During testing, we discovered a bug that prevented users from navigating elsewhere after opening it.
Rather than simply fixing the interaction, we reconsidered whether content creation needed a permanent place in the bottom navigation. We removed the button and moved those actions to their respective pages, keeping the navigation focused on the app’s main destinations.
Before
A central plus button opened options for creating recipes and community posts
After
Removed the plus button and moved creation actions to their respective pages
During testing, participants struggled to find the option to filter recipes and restaurants based on linked profiles. It was hidden within the general filter menu, even though accommodating multiple dietary needs was one of the app’s main features.
We added a dedicated button beside the search bar, making linked-profile selection easier to find and access without navigating through additional menus.
Before
Linked-profile selection was hidden within the general filtering menu
After
Added a dedicated profile-selection button beside the search bar
Testers pointed out that the large Post of the Day feature occupied too much space, especially when they weren’t interested in the featured content. The page also lacked a clear way to access friends and joined communities.
We reduced the featured post’s prominence and added Explore, Friends, and Communities tabs beneath the search bar, giving users clearer ways to browse different types of community content.
Before
An oversized featured post dominated the page, with limited navigation options
After
Reduced the featured post and introduced tabs for posts, friends, and communities
Additional refinements
Clearer page naming
Some participants were unsure what the Explore page contained. We renamed it Recipes to make its purpose immediately clear.
More helpful onboarding
We added an introductory walkthrough explaining the app’s main features to help new users understand how to get started.
What testing changed
Testing revealed a mismatch between which features received the most attention in our interface and which ones needed to be easiest to access. Removing the central plus button, making linked-profile filtering more visible, and reorganizing the Community page helped us establish clearer navigation priorities.
These findings guided our revisions from the mid/high-fidelity prototype to the final high-fidelity design.
We delivered an interactive, high-fidelity Figma prototype featuring recipe discovery, linked-profile selection, restaurant search, and community sharing.
After incorporating feedback from 10 usability tests, we refined the bottom navigation, made linked-profile filtering easier to access, and redesigned the Community page. We also improved onboarding and clarified page navigation.
We retested the final prototype with our professor and a few additional students, who found the experience clearer and more polished, with no major issues identified.
With more time, I would expand the prototype with additional screens and interactions to make the experience more functional. I would also refine the UI for a cleaner, more modern design and conduct more research with people who regularly manage dietary restrictions, followed by additional usability testing to further improve the app.
Simply Simmer walkthrough showcasing the prototype’s main features in a team-created video
Knowing a design too well can make it harder to recognize what’s confusing to someone else.
During usability testing, students struggled to find features and navigate interactions our team thought were straightforward. Watching them use the prototype helped me recognize how familiarity with a design can influence the decisions we make and reinforced the importance of testing with people unfamiliar with the product.
As project manager, I also learned how to balance ambitious ideas with a limited timeline, coordinate responsibilities, and help our team make decisions about the app's features and visual direction. This experience strengthened my ability to collaborate, prioritize, and adapt designs based on feedback.