MyCheff

MyCheff

Cook never was Easier, Helping to improve the indepedent living

Cook never was Easier, Helping to improve the indepedent living

Movil design

2023

Application

Overview

MyCheff is a mobile cooking app designed to assist independent users with meal preparation. I led the UX/UI design, integrating AR to preview dishes and an AI voice assistant for hands-free guidance.

My contributions

Defined core features and collaborated on product strategy

Led user interviews and usability testing

Designed AI voice assistant interaction flow

📊 Results

🔺 90% of testers found the AR feature useful for meal planning


🔺 75% felt the AI assistant made the cooking process easier


🚀 We reached a working MVP and received strong interest from health-focused and tech-savvy communities looking to invest in personal wellness tools

Projects

Projects

Design Process

Design Process

Discover

Define

Ideate

Design

Busy individuals aged 20-35 who are health-conscious and tech-savvy often struggle to find personalized, convenient, and engaging solutions for preparing meals that meet their specific dietary needs. Existing recipe apps offer limited customization and lack interactive features that enhance the cooking experience. There is a need for a mobile app that not only provides tailored recipe recommendations based on user input but also offers an immersive and engaging experience through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) to visualize dishes, making healthy cooking both accessible and enjoyable.

Problem Statement

Objectives & Goals

The objective of the Mobile App Recipe Interface design challenge is to create a user-centric, engaging, and innovative experience by incorporating AI-driven personalized recommendations and AR visualization, differentiating it from existing recipe apps. The goal is to enhance user satisfaction, increase engagement, and ensure high retention rates by delivering tailored recipes that meet specific health and dietary goals for the target audience of men and women aged 20-35. Success will be measured by user engagement with the app’s unique features, retention rates, conversion to premium features, and overall user satisfaction.

The objective of the Mobile App Recipe Interface design challenge is to create a user-centric, engaging, and innovative experience by incorporating AI-driven personalized recommendations and AR visualization, differentiating it from existing recipe apps. The goal is to enhance user satisfaction, increase engagement, and ensure high retention rates by delivering tailored recipes that meet specific health and dietary goals for the target audience of men and women aged 20-35. Success will be measured by user engagement with the app’s unique features, retention rates, conversion to premium features, and overall user satisfaction.

Research

Understanding users and competitors to shape a smarter cooking experience

Opportunities for differentiation

Through competitor analysis, we uncovered critical gaps in personalization, emerging technologies, and interface design—giving us clear opportunities to innovate and differentiate MyCheff in a crowded market.

Product Strength

Product Weakness

Yummly

SideChef

Tasty

Strengths: Yummly is a popular recipe app known for its robust search functionality and extensive library of recipes. It offers personalized recommendations based on user preferences and dietary restrictions.

Weaknesses: While it provides basic personalization, Yummly lacks advanced features like AI-driven health recommendations and AR visualization. The user interface, though functional, could be more modern and engaging.

Strengths: SideChef stands out for its step-by-step cooking instructions and integration with smart kitchen appliances. It offers a user-friendly experience, particularly for novice cooks, with voice-guided instructions.

Weaknesses: The app does not focus heavily on personalization, and while it supports voice guidance, it does not leverage AI to tailor recipes based on individual health goals. AR features are also absent.

Strengths: Tasty is well-known for its visually appealing recipe videos and a vast collection of easy-to-follow recipes. It has a strong social media presence, making it highly recognizable among younger users.

Weaknesses: Tasty’s personalization is minimal, focusing more on popular and trending recipes rather than user-specific needs. It lacks interactive elements like AR and AI-driven suggestions, which could enhance the user experience.

Opportunities

AI-Driven Personalization: None of the analyzed competitors fully leverage AI to provide tailored health recommendations based on comprehensive user data (e.g., age, height, weight, and dietary goals). This presents an opportunity to offer a more personalized cooking experience.

AR Visualization: The absence of AR in competitors’ offerings is a significant gap. Introducing AR to visualize dishes before cooking can make the app more engaging and interactive, setting it apart from existing options.

User Experience and Interface Design: While most competitors offer functional interfaces, there’s room for improvement in creating a more modern, visually appealing, and user-friendly design that resonates with the target audience.

Lack of Deep Personalization Across Competitors

Although apps like Yummly offer some personalization, none of the competitors truly harness user health data (age, weight, height, goals) to offer customized recommendations. This opens a unique opportunity for MyCheff to stand out with AI-driven nutritional guidance based on real user profiles.

🔍 Key Insights from Competitor Analysis

🔍 Key Insights from Competitor Analysis

These insights helped us shape MyCheff’s unique value proposition focused on intelligent assistance, immersive design, and inclusive user experience.

Missed Opportunity in AR Integration

Although apps like Yummly offer some personalization, none of the competitors truly harness user health data (age, weight, height, goals) to offer customized recommendations. This opens a unique opportunity for MyCheff to stand out with AI-driven nutritional guidance based on real user profiles.

UI/UX Gaps in Leading Platforms

While competitors have large content libraries, their user interfaces are often outdated or cluttered, especially when guiding users through cooking steps. MyCheff can provide a cleaner, voice-guided, gesture-friendly UI optimized for hands-free cooking, particularly appealing for modern and younger audiences.

How might we...

help users cook independently in a simple and guided way

make the cooking process less intimidating for beginners

allow users to visualize meals before cooking using AR

provide smart, personalized recipe recommendations using AI

support users with voice-guided, hands-free cooking

adapt the app to different user needs (diet, time, skill level)

build a flexible system that works for daily, weekly, or spontaneous cooking

help users cook independently in a simple and guided way

make the cooking process less intimidating for beginners

allow users to visualize meals before cooking using AR

provide smart, personalized recipe recommendations using AI

support users with voice-guided, hands-free cooking

adapt the app to different user needs (diet, time, skill level)

build a flexible system that works for daily, weekly, or spontaneous cooking

Design prompts that guided our thinking toward smarter and more intuitive meal preparation.

Design prompts that guided our thinking toward smarter and more intuitive meal preparation.

💡 How Might We Empower Cooks?

💡 How Might We Empower Cooks?

Low-fidelity screens crafted to test user flow and core interactions.

Low-fidelity screens crafted to test user flow and core interactions.

Wireframes

High-fidelity designs that bring smart recipe discovery to life with AR and AI support.

High-fidelity designs that bring smart recipe discovery to life with AR and AI support.

🍽️ Turning Ideas Into Reality

🍽️ Turning Ideas Into Reality

Competitor Analyst

Comparing leading apps to uncover gaps and inspiration

Comparing leading apps to uncover gaps and inspiration

Busy individuals aged 20-35 who are health-conscious and tech-savvy often struggle to find personalized, convenient, and engaging solutions for preparing meals that meet their specific dietary needs. Existing recipe apps offer limited customization and lack interactive features that enhance the cooking experience. There is a need for a mobile app that not only provides tailored recipe recommendations based on user input but also offers an immersive and engaging experience through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) to visualize dishes, making healthy cooking both accessible and enjoyable.

Problem Statement

Product Strength

Yummly

Strengths: Yummly is a popular recipe app known for its robust search functionality and extensive library of recipes. It offers personalized recommendations based on user preferences and dietary restrictions.

SideChef

Strengths: SideChef stands out for its step-by-step cooking instructions and integration with smart kitchen appliances. It offers a user-friendly experience, particularly for novice cooks, with voice-guided instructions.

Tasty

Strengths: Tasty is well-known for its visually appealing recipe videos and a vast collection of easy-to-follow recipes. It has a strong social media presence, making it highly recognizable among younger users.

Product Weakness

Yummly

Weaknesses: While it provides basic personalization, Yummly lacks advanced features like AI-driven health recommendations and AR visualization. The user interface, though functional, could be more modern and engaging.

SideChef

Weaknesses: The app does not focus heavily on personalization, and while it supports voice guidance, it does not leverage AI to tailor recipes based on individual health goals. AR features are also absent.

Tasty

Weaknesses: Tasty’s personalization is minimal, focusing more on popular and trending recipes rather than user-specific needs. It lacks interactive elements like AR and AI-driven suggestions, which could enhance the user experience.

Opportunities

AI-Driven Personalization: None of the analyzed competitors fully leverage AI to provide tailored health recommendations based on comprehensive user data (e.g., age, height, weight, and dietary goals). This presents an opportunity to offer a more personalized cooking experience.

AR Visualization: The absence of AR in competitors’ offerings is a significant gap. Introducing AR to visualize dishes before cooking can make the app more engaging and interactive, setting it apart from existing options.

User Experience and Interface Design: While most competitors offer functional interfaces, there’s room for improvement in creating a more modern, visually appealing, and user-friendly design that resonates with the target audience.

Opportunities for differentiation

Through competitor analysis, we uncovered critical gaps in personalization, emerging technologies, and interface design—giving us clear opportunities to innovate and differentiate MyCheff in a crowded market.

Before and after

I enhanced the filter functionality within the app, allowing users to refine their searches with greater precision, incorporating filters for specific dietary goals, ingredient preferences, and even cooking techniques.

I enhanced the filter functionality within the app, allowing users to refine their searches with greater precision, incorporating filters for specific dietary goals, ingredient preferences, and even cooking techniques.

This improvement addresses a common pain point found in competitor apps where filters were either too broad or lacked customization, making the recipe search process more efficient and tailored to individual needs.

💡 Findings

🍳 Users feel overwhelmed when starting a recipe

When users open the app, many are unsure how to begin cooking or what tools/ingredients they need beforehand.

🎨 Users want to customize recipes and filter by goals

Participants expressed a strong desire to filter recipes by dietary goals (e.g., weight loss, high-protein) and to mark or favorite specific dishes.

🔄 Switching between steps feels clunky

Users found it frustrating to move between steps during cooking—especially when their hands were messy—suggesting the need for voice commands or hands-free navigation.

After usability testing, we discovered users had trouble tapping on recipes. Increasing spacing and hit areas significantly improved interaction and accessibility.

Spacing and Tap Area Improvements

Users can follow step-by-step instructions, track nutrition, and activate AR cooking mode—all in one screen.

Guided Cooking, Simplified

Throughout this project, I learned the value of designing not just for functionality, but for emotional connection—especially when blending emerging technologies like AR and AI into everyday tasks like cooking. Testing with real users reminded me how powerful simplicity and clarity can be. I'm grateful for everyone who gave feedback, challenged assumptions, and contributed ideas. Every insight helped shape a better experience, and I carry those lessons with me into every future project.

Throughout this project, I learned the value of designing not just for functionality, but for emotional connection—especially when blending emerging technologies like AR and AI into everyday tasks like cooking. Testing with real users reminded me how powerful simplicity and clarity can be. I'm grateful for everyone who gave feedback, challenged assumptions, and contributed ideas. Every insight helped shape a better experience, and I carry those lessons with me into every future project.

🙏 Learnings & Gratitude

Overview

MyCheff is a mobile cooking app designed to assist independent users with meal preparation. I led the UX/UI design, integrating AR to preview dishes and an AI voice assistant for hands-free guidance.

My contributions

Defined core features and collaborated on product strategy

Led user interviews and usability testing

Designed AI voice assistant interaction flow

📊 Results

🔺 90% of testers found the AR feature useful for meal planning


🔺 75% felt the AI assistant made the cooking process easier


🚀 We reached a working MVP and received strong interest from health-focused and tech-savvy communities looking to invest in personal wellness tools

Discover

Define

Ideate

Design

Recent Projects

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Go to projects

Recent Projects

UX/UI Design

MyCheff — Cook smarter, live easier.

An intelligent cooking assistant that uses AR and AI to guide users step-by-step and personalize every meal—from your kitchen, with your voice.

UX/UI Design

Agricultic — Smart farming, simplified.

A digital platform built to support local farmers by streamlining product management, pricing, and distribution—all in one place.

UX/UI Design

Music + You — Where music sparks connection.

A music-based dating app that helps users express themselves, connect emotionally, and break the ice through the songs they love.

Go to projects