Designing a mobile app to connect food enthusiasts through shared dining experiences, from concept to prototype.
Role
Industry
Tools
01. Context
A cooking app to connect people at home and around the table
"The most important social media platform in the world is not Facebook, it's FOOD."
Gatherlicious was born from the desire to create an app that goes beyond digital recipes it encourages people to connect, cook, and share meals together. Whether organizing a dinner with friends or planning a family lunch, the app bridges the digital and real-life experiences around food.
Name inspiration: Gather + Delicious = Gatherlicious.
02. Challenge
How might we design an application that simplifies recipe sharing and discovery, while fostering authentic, meaningful social interactions—both in person and virtually?
Key Challenge
Low engagement in typical cooking apps due to lack of emotional/social connection.
Disorganized planning for group meals or events.
Lack of inclusivity, especially for beginner cooks or non-tech-savvy users.
03. Process
Research: Understanding Habits and Motivations
To define the right features, I conducted user interviews focused on:
Cooking and hosting habits
Social motivations behind sharing food
Frustrations with existing recipe and planning tools
Key insights:
Many users struggle to organize what to cook and shop for when hosting.
Cooking is perceived as a bonding experience, not just a task.
Users value simplicity and prefer quick recipes when preparing meals with others.
04. Journey Mapping
Based on interviews, I mapped out a customer journey to visualize emotional peaks and friction points during a typical home cooking experience, starting from deciding what to cook, shopping, all the way to dinner time. This helped us define priorities like collaborative planning and reducing friction in recipe discovery.
05. Ideation & Prototyping
Using a Design Thinking approach, I:
Sketched early ideas to align on vision and functionality.
Created lo-fi wireframes to outline core flows like browsing, event planning, and collaborative features.
Designed hi-fi prototypes focusing on intuitive layout, visual clarity, and social engagement features
06. Solution and Results
Gatherlicious brings together:
A recipe discovery system with filters by occasion, cuisine, and difficulty.
A collaborative planning tool, where users can:
Share tasks (who brings what)
Split meal costs
Create joint shopping lists
A simple, elegant interface supporting both experienced cooks and beginners.
