Projects: Foundational Design
Personas, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Testing & User Flows
Uni Chef
My team and I designed a cooking app called Uni Chef, that encourages busy University students to find joy in cooking while balancing their academic responsibilities. Our goal with Uni Chef was to guide students through the cooking process, including customizable features, budget friendly recipes, and step-by-step instructions.
Project Title: Uni Chef
Focus Areas: Design Thinking, UI/UX
Role: Project Manager
Methods: Persona, Wireframes, Figma, User Research & Testing
Outcome/Impact: Mid-Fidelity Prototype; Alignment with User Feedback
Persona: conducted a survey & market research to create a persona, Indy Bloxam, for our project
App Layout & Color Scheme
We intentionally selected light grey and earthy green tones to reflect nature, health, and fresh, nutritious food, aligning with Indy’s healthy eating goals highlighted in the persona.
Low-Fidelity Prototype (Figma)
This prototype includes a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, which is divided into five separate pages: “Home”, “Recommended Recipes”, “Calendar”, “Recipes”, and “Profile”. It allows users to seamlessly navigate and switch between the various pages with ease.
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Homepage: Inspired by existing cooking apps, a scrollable cuisine wheel allows users to freely browse cuisines, with the selected option highlighted, and a “Recommended Recipes” button linking to curated dishes.
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Recommended Recipes: Designed to reduce cooking overwhelm, the Recipe Folder helps students save and revisit favorite recipes, each clearly showing cook time and simple instructions, with a top search bar for quick and easy discovery.
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Calendar: Guided by research showing time management as a priority for users, the Calendar integrates meal planning into the daily schedule, with a personalized greeting, clear task timeline, and meal prep blocks that make cooking feel realistic and routine.
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Recipe Folder: allows users to save and revisit favorite recipes, with a search bar for quick access. Selected recipes are visually highlighted and open into an expanded view showing ingredients and instructions, with clear exit options to return to the main folder for an intuitive experience.
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Profile: The Profile page follows standard app conventions, allowing users to view and manage account information, support, language settings, and sign-out options.
Low-Fidelity Prototype - Final Design
Made the following revisions and additions based on feedback from fellow classmates and course professor:
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Back buttons to the Recipe page
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Edit recipe option on the Calendar
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Consistent solid blocks to Calendar
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Contrast/darker text color on Calendar
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Sort feature for Recipes
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Amt of time to prepare food & serving sizes/recipe
Environmental Redesign
My team redesigned a staircase in the Environmental Engineering Building at the University of Waterloo to make it more inviting and connected to nature. The redesign supports student health and well-being and aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals related to sustainable campuses.
We based our methodology on Tim Brown's three core criteria for successful innovation: Desirability, Feasibility and Viability.
Project Title: Reframing the Stairs: A Context-Driven Redesign
Areas: UXR, Site analysis, visual mockups
Role: Project Manager and Design Lead
Outcome/Impact: Spatial UX Concept
