SlōFood

Context & Problem

Most people who stop cooking at home do it for the same few reasons: not enough time, not enough energy, and too much to think about. I wanted to understand how food fits into a busy schedule, whether someone has ten minutes to spare or a whole hour. I found that long prep times and the daily question of what to make wore people down the most. That fatigue kept pushing them toward ordering out, and toward spending more than they meant to.

Process

I started by talking to people about their cooking habits, and built a persona named Imani, a 26-year-old product analyst who orders out six to eight times a month and wants to cook more to save money. Looking at other apps, I saw that none of them helped a beginner get started with meal prep. I figured that if I put ready-to-go meals and ingredients right in front of people, about a third would cook two or more meals in their first couple of weeks. So I built the features around taking the pressure off: quick recipes you can make in 5 to 20 minutes, a favorites tab for the meals you keep coming back to, and a restock feature that quietly reorders anything you have run out of.

Final Design

Outcome

The clickable prototype backed up the idea, and I set clear targets so I would know it was working: 2,000 users favoriting at least two meals within three weeks, a third of them cooking two or more meals every two weeks, and $5,000 in grocery spending over the first two months. Together, those were the signs that SlōFood was actually changing habits and pulling people away from ordering out.