Macro Meal Planning
An app that connects beginner meal planners with experienced meal planners to help college students eat healthy on a budget.
Project Overview
Challenges
Meal planning is something that falls to the wayside for college students and many young adults, however it is a necessary chore for those that want to eat healthy on a budget. The burden of adding this chore to an already full schedule is daunting, and many opt for faster less healthy meals like fast food.
Solution
My objective while creating Macro was to bridge the gap between saving money by meal planning and saving time, by making meal planning a quick and easy process.
Skills
Figma, UX/UI Design, Research
Role
Product Design, User Interface Design, Content Design
Timeline
4 Weeks
The Design Process
Step One - The Brand
Establishing both the visual and conceptual base for the brand was a crucial step that I completed in the first week of this project. I wanted to communicate Macro’s relation to food.
Step Two - The Userflow
After conducting a thorough search though visual inspiration and researching Cognitive Behavioral Therapy I designed a full set of wireframes, focusing on visual hierarchy, layout grids, and content design.
Step Three - The Wireframes
Sprint three involved designing a full set of prototypes based on the needs of the user personas, applying finished branding to each page, creating illustrations, and adding prototyped animations.
Step Four - The Comps
The app includes features such as an advanced search function to easily find content, a grocery list automatically created from your panned meals, easy access to meal planning mentors, and categorization of the food you have on hand to give recommendations on meals you have ingredients for.
I created a desktop and tablet view to go with the mobile app design. This would be especially helpful for the mentors who are creating content, to help them edit recipes and meal plans on a larger screen.
The Prototypes
Persona 1 - Hannah
Hannah is one of the user personas created to guide the process of designing this app, ensuring that I am meeting the needs of the target demographic.
Hannah can use Macro to find detailed meal plans created by mentors in the app, connect to a mentor and see their content specifically, organize groceries and lists, and search for plans with a robust search function.
The Summary
Macro
Macro helps college students eat healthy without breaking their budget or spending countless hours on saving money by connecting them to mentors who know how to meal plan.
Lessons Learned
Throughout the process of creating this application I was able to learn valuable lessons on user interface design, accessibility standards, and the process for creating a product from the market research to the finishing touches in the interface.
