Professional work · Product discovery
PrettyRecipes
Refining an early recipe concept through testing, research, and product discovery.
Some details are simplified because the product is not public and did not progress beyond discovery.
From an early idea to discovery
PrettyRecipes started as an early product idea with a basic Figma Make prototype and some initial research and personas already in place. My first task was to refine the existing prototype and wireframes, improving the flows, structure, and interface decisions.
After wireframe refinement, testing, and competitor research, the team recognised that the product direction needed deeper discovery before moving into detailed UI. I then led much of the later discovery work.
What I worked on
My work covered both the early prototype and the later discovery phase, from interface refinement to research synthesis.
Clarifying what the product should become
The deeper challenge was to understand whether the product direction reflected how people actually save, plan, adapt, and share recipes.
People do not simply save recipes in one neat place and follow them exactly. They collect inspiration from different platforms, adapt recipes while cooking, plan meals around real-life constraints, forget where they saved things, and sometimes want recipes to look more polished when sharing, printing, or publishing them.
Testing helped reveal that the main uncertainty was no longer how the current flows should work, but which product direction was worth developing.
The project needed to understand
- How people actually save and rediscover recipes
- What makes recipe organization feel helpful instead of like extra work
- How meal planning fits into real weekly routines
- When visual recipe design matters
- How motivation could support different user goals without feeling forced
From refinement to discovery
Initial concept and prototype
PrettyRecipes began as an early recipe product concept with a basic Figma Make prototype and some initial research and personas already in place.
Wireframe refinement
I was asked to refine and improve the existing prototype and wireframes, focusing on clearer UX flows, structure, and interface decisions.
Testing and reframing the product questions
Testing and competitor research revealed that the team needed to validate the product direction before continuing into detailed UI.
Market and competitor research
I mapped the wider landscape of recipe apps, cookbook builders, and publishing tools, then analysed key players more deeply for UX patterns, strengths, and opportunities.
Discovery interviews and synthesis
I planned and conducted five behavior-focused interviews, then synthesised the findings into insights, patterns, opportunities, and feature directions.
Gamification exploration
I proposed an identity-based motivation concept built around users’ different goals and behaviors.
High-level, behavior-focused
The research focused on real behavior and motivation rather than asking users to evaluate isolated features. The goal was to understand how people currently collect, create, organize, plan, personalize, and share recipes, to clarify the product direction and identify meaningful motivation paths.
What the discovery covered
The discovery covered recipe saving, organization, meal planning, recipe adaptation, sharing, cookbook creation, and users’ motivation to return to a recipe product.
Understanding a crowded market
I created a broad competitor overview across many recipe-related and cookbook-related tools, comparing their categories, platforms, use cases, business models, pricing, reviews, feature coverage, strengths, weaknesses, and UX patterns. I then analysed selected competitors more deeply, focusing on their flows, UX decisions, strengths, weaknesses, and gaps.
The research included direct recipe-app competitors as well as adjacent tools for cookbook creation, photo books, self-publishing, and print-on-demand.
Together, the research suggested an opportunity for a calmer, lower-effort experience across saving, rediscovery, planning, and visual output.
Recipes are scattered everywhere
Users kept recipes across social platforms, notes, screenshots, messages, documents, and memory, which made rediscovery difficult.
Rediscovery matters more than perfect organization
Users liked the idea of organization, but manual categorization felt like extra work. Search, filters, and lightweight grouping offered more value than requiring users to categorize everything manually.
Meal planning is not one behavior
Some users planned only lunches, some meal-prepped one dish for several days, some planned mentally, and some wanted reusable menus. Planning was often connected to grocery shopping and reducing decision fatigue.
Recipes are often adapted
Users changed recipes based on available ingredients, diet, taste, health needs, or experience. This pointed toward supporting notes, substitutions, edited versions, and personal tricks.
Visual polish becomes valuable at moments of sharing
For private use, many users mainly wanted speed and clarity. Visual polish became more important when recipes were shared, exported, printed, or used publicly.
Turning behavior into product direction
I synthesized the interviews into a set of high-level, anonymized outputs the team could use to discuss where the product should go next, rather than a list of isolated feature requests.
Motivation through identity
The identity-based gamification exploration was an initiative I proposed. Different users had different motivations — planning meals, building recipes, saving and organizing collections, creating cookbooks, or sharing visual recipe outputs. This opened a direction where progress could reflect users’ goals instead of relying on generic points and badges.
The full internal system is not included here, but the broad direction stayed the same: make progress feel meaningful, not like pressure.
What this project shows
This project shows my ability to work across changing early product phases: improving an existing prototype, supporting testing, researching a crowded market, conducting user interviews, synthesizing messy behavior patterns, and helping turn an uncertain product idea into clearer product opportunities.
It also shows that I can recognise when polishing an existing concept is no longer enough and deeper product questions need to be answered first.