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Case Study: MealMatch

I created an app to help parents navigate meal planning, child nutrition, and picky eating.

Project Type

Bootcamp project, UX Academy

Role

UX/UI Designer

Timeline

January 2025 - March 2025

Tools

Figma, Zoom

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Background

Parents are constantly researching how to take care of their kids. One of the biggest milestones is introducing solids. Plenty of articles, books, and even apps help parents with this exciting stage. However, there seems to be a gap in child nutrition and meal planning. There could be a way that parents meet their child's nutritional needs (by age) and make appropriate meal plans.

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I developed a research goal to tackle this problem.

We want to know parents' needs in meal planning for their children and learning their children’s nutritional needs so that we can help them make appropriate meal plans.

Research Objectives

  • Understand how parents currently go about meal planning for their children

  • Understand how parents research nutritional needs and strive to meet them 

  • Determine what information users want to know when meal planning for their children

  • Learn if there are any frustrations/challenges parents face with nutrition, meal planning, and picky eating

  • Understand how competitors educate parents regarding nutrition and assist them in meal planning

  • Understand the challenges parents overcame and challenges they still struggle with in regards to their child eating

  • Learn how parents educate themselves about child development and incorporate this knowledge into their lives and routines

  • Understand what areas parents want more support in

Research Findings

Desk Research

I researched child development, meal planning, and nutrition to learn more about the topics before interviews.

Competitive

Analysis

I compared Solid Starts, Mealime, Cronometer, What to Expect, and BLW Meals to learn about applications surrounding introducing solids, meal planning, nutrition, and parenting..

User Interviews

I interviewed five participants with young children

  • Some prepared for milestones, while others took them as they came

  • Users generally do not like to cook or meal plan, but value health

  • All users dealt with picky eating, particularly proteins and vegetables

  • Users lack knowledge of child nutrition and food serving sizes

Synthesis: Affinity Map

(Click to view)

Personas

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

Abigail, the first-time mom

  • Goals/Motivations: to learn more information about her son’s nutritional needs; to get help with picky eating and meal ideas

  • Challenges: she doesn’t know what serving sizes her son needs or his nutritional needs; she deals with picky eating (especially with proteins and vegetables); she has a busy lifestyle and doesn’t have much spare time

  • Expectations: to have an easy-to-read and accessible resource; for a product to fit into her busy lifestyle

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

Eva, the experienced mom

  • Goals/Motivations: to find tips and best practices online if a problem arises; to use resources for inspiration; to provide her kids with healthy food

  • Challenges: sometimes challenges, such as sleep issues, come up and she has to research what to do; her kids can be picky eaters sometimes, she doesn’t like to cook or meal plan

  • Expectations: to have quick resources for when an issue arises; to get advice and ideas, but not have certain modes of thought pushed on her

Problem Definition

I’d like to explore ways to help parents with picky eating, serving ideas, and how to give their children food variety.

(Click to view)

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User Flow

(Click to view)

Wireframes

Low-Fidelity

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Prototype

(Clickable prototype)

Brand Identity

Moodboard_ End to End App_edited.png

Usability Testing

5 participants were asked to find a meal idea and review the sign-up survey.

Success Metrics:

  • task success rate: if a user successfully completed the task or not

  • customer effort score: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how easy was it to find a meal idea?" (1 = difficult, 5 = super easy)

Results

Finding a Meal Idea:

100%

Task Success Rate

4.7

Customer Effort Score

Key Participant Feedback

"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.'"

Next Steps

  • Based on usability testing, I would like to change the wording of some of the survey questions.​​

If I had more time and resources:

  • I would expand the sign-up survey to allow users to add multiple children to their profile. I would also like to explore other user suggestions, such as adding user ratings to the recipes.​

Conclusion

  • This process was important in helping me refine my UX/UI skills, get more experience working with users, and growing my confidence as a designer.

  • I had to create an application from the beginning, which was a foundational experience for my UX design journey. 

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