MealMatch Case Study

Project Type: Bootcamp project, UX Academy

Role: UX/UI Designer

Timeline: January 2025 - March 2025

Tools: Figma, Zoom

Simplifying Meal Planning and Children's Nutrition

As a mom, I found myself overwhelmed with introducing solids to my child. While there were countless resources available, none truly addressed the gap in meal planning and meeting my child’s nutritional needs. It was a constant struggle to figure out what to feed my son and when, especially as his nutritional needs evolved.

I realized many parents faced the same challenge. This became the focus of my research: understanding parents’ meal planning needs and how to create balanced, age-appropriate meals for their kids.

Research Objectives

Explore how parents plan and prepare meals for their children

Understand the routines, tools, and decision-making processes parents use when planning meals for their kids.

Understand how parents learn about nutrition and child development

Investigate how parents research nutritional needs and child development, and how they incorporate that knowledge into daily life.

Identify challenges parents face around meal planning, nutrition, and picky eating

Uncover the key difficulties—like dealing with picky eaters, balancing nutrition, and managing time or stress—that affect how parents feed their children.

Learn what kind of support and information parents are looking for

Discover what resources, guidance, or tools parents feel they’re missing when it comes to feeding their children and supporting their growth.

Bridging the Gap: Key Insights from Parent Research

During my initial research, I explored child development, meal planning, and nutrition to learn more about the topics before speaking with other parents. I made a competitive analysis of Solid Starts, Mealime, Cronometer, What to Expect, and BLW Meals to learn about applications surrounding introducing solids, meal planning, nutrition, and parenting.

Key Pain Points

Through interviews with five parents of young children, I identified common pain points:

Busy Lifestyles: Parents need quick, simple solutions.

Picky Eating: Parents value health, but struggle with getting kids to eat proteins and vegetables.

Lack of Knowledge: Parents often don’t know child serving sizes or age-appropriate nutrition.

Affinity Map Insights

I synthesized the results into an affinity map to find key themes. The results could be split into these categories: child development, meal planning, starting solids, picky eating, routines, resources and advice, challenges, and successes.

Understanding Our Users: Meet the Parents

From the research phase, it was clear that there were two types of users: the first time parent and the more seasoned one. Their different stage of parenting provided central areas of need.

Abigail: the first time mom

"I didn’t know what to do when my son was born."

Goals/Motivations: Learn about her son’s nutritional needs; find help with picky eating and meal ideas

Challenges: Uncertainty around serving sizes; picky eating; busy lifestyle

Expectations: Easy-to-read, accessible resources that fit into her lifestyle

Eva: the experienced mom

"Whenever we have a problem, we’ll do some research to see if there are any best practices we should follow."

Goals/Motivations: Find quick tips and best practices; get inspiration; provide healthy meals

Challenges: Picky eaters, dislike for meal planning; encounters occasional parenting issues that require research

Expectations: Quick resources when needed; advice, not pushed ideologies

Turning Mealtime Struggles into Success

Through research and conversations with parents, I learned that mealtime is not just about feeding kids, but also about managing picky eating and ensuring nutritional balance.

Busy parents often struggle to plan healthy meals and adapt recipes for picky eaters. The solution needed to be simple, quick, and tailored to help parents plan meals with what they already have, while supporting nutritional needs.

I created a storyboard to show how the app would integrate into their daily routines, addressing these challenges seamlessly.

From Concept to Screen: Building the User’s Journey

The main user flow, centered around finding meal ideas, was designed to meet the needs of busy parents. It shows the process from entering ingredients to receiving tailored meal suggestions.

Based on feedback for a practical, quick, and easy solution, I added a feature where users could input ingredients they already had. This allowed parents to generate recipes using available ingredients while receiving nutritional guidance and picky-eating tips within each recipe—streamlining mealtime and reducing the effort for parents.

Personalized Onboarding Survey: Tailoring the Experience

To provide a personalized experience, I developed a survey to gather information on users' lifestyles, dietary preferences, and their children's eating habits. The survey adapts the meal planning suggestions based on the unique needs of each family, ensuring the app remains relevant and helpful.

Building the Brand

I developed a brand identity that reflects health, joy, and simplicity. The mood board featured vibrant colors and a balanced design, creating an uplifting vibe. Clean fonts and a logo embodying happiness and connection were chosen, with the name “MealMatch” clearly reflecting the app’s purpose. The goal was to make meal planning empowering and enjoyable.

Bringing the Idea to Life: The Prototype

Once the wireframes were refined, I created an interactive prototype to bring the app to life. This allowed me to validate the user flows and ensure the design was intuitive and aligned with user needs.

Click to view!

Validating the Experience: Usability Testing

I tested the app with five participants, observing their ability to find recipes and complete the onboarding survey.

Results:

Task Success Rate: 100%

Customer Effort Score: 4.7/5

“The app is really comprehensive and simple.”

“It would definitely meet my meal-planning needs. It’s so easy and quick.”

"The questions for the household diet should say 'your family' instead of 'you.'”

Users were impressed with the app and expressed a desire for it to be available in real life. While there were a few minor technical critiques, the overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Moving Forward: Future Enhancements

Overall, the feedback was positive and users expressed great interest in the app. Given more time, I would expand the sign-up process to allow multiple child profiles, refine the survey’s wording, and explore additional features like user-generated recipe ratings to further enhance personalization and engagement.