Netanel Taub
My Role: UX Designer
Research
Wireframe
Prototype
Testing
2025
MealMate
MealMate is a solution that simplifies meal planning and grocery management while helping to reduce food waste and save money through a weekly meal calendar.
It was created as part of a UX Design course at BrainStation, London.
The idea stemmed from a personal challenge: managing cooking and food shopping within a busy schedule. Inspired by meal kit services, I began to wonder, what if you could have the same convenience, but with your own recipes and a smart shopping list that syncs with your preferred supermarket?
MealMate offers exactly that. Its goal is to make meal planning easier without taking away the freedom and creativity of home cooking.
This project allowed me to apply the full design thinking process, from identifying a real user problem to developing a tailored digital solution. It also sparked a deeper interest in user research, which became one of the most rewarding parts of the journey.
Problem Space
- Busy individuals and parents often struggle to plan meals, manage groceries effectively, and maintain healthy eating habits.
- This leads to challenges like food waste, overspending, and the stress of last-minute meal decisions.
Hypothesis
If people have access to a simple, intuitive meal planning app that combines:
- A Weekly calendar that is intuitive and easy to use.
- A Place to store their favourite recipes and discover new ones.
- A Smart shopping list that can sync with your meals and favourite supermarket.
They will adopt healthier eating habits, reduce expenses and experience less food waste.
Secondary Research
Households are responsible for 70% of food waste, around 6.7 million tonnes a year. The average household throws away £470 worth of food annually. Planning meals can help reduce this by encouraging people to buy only what they need.
Key benefits of Meal Planning
Improved Diet Quality: People who plan meals tend to eat a more varied and nutritious diet, with a higher intake of fruits and vegetables.
Cost Savings: Planning reduces impulsive buying, cuts dining out, and streamlines grocery trips.
Better Family Mealtimes: Regular planning supports more shared meals, improving communication and bonding.
Healthier Habits: Encourages balanced eating and has been linked to lower obesity rates, especially among women.
Primary Research
Interviews
I interviewed three individuals aged 32 to 40, two with children and one without.
My questions focused on their household dynamics, cooking habits, meal planning routines and grocery shopping behaviours.
I also had informal conversations with several others to gain additional insights into whether their eating habits were deliberate, habitual or driven by necessity.
Interview Synthesis
- Meal planning is inconsistent and usually improvised, often cycling through the same familiar dishes due to habit or lack of inspiration.
- People prefer using recipes from chefs or platforms they trust, and they need a convenient way to store and access them all in one place.
- Grocery shopping feels disconnected from meal planning, leading to forgotten items, food waste or repeated trips to the store.
- Takeout is a common fallback, driven more by decision fatigue or lack of planning than by preference. Users would cook if the process felt easier.
Personas
- Jessica Black, a mother, who is struggling to find a work/life balance.
- Liam Torres, a sales manager who lives with his partner, travels a lot but has no children.
App Design
Value Proposition
A simple, intuitive meal planning app built around a clean weekly and daily calendar.
Adding meals is effortless, just write a quick note or select from your saved recipes.
Users can build a personal library by saving recipes from different sources or purchasing curated cookbooks through the app, all formatted for easy, consistent reading.
A smart Shopping List feature lets users add ingredients directly from recipes and send them to their favourite online supermarket.
The app encourages deeper use but works beautifully even at its most basic: a streamlined calendar that works effortlessly on its own.
First Sketch
Planning
Wireframes
Key Considerations:
- Minimise the number of screens needed to save and organise recipes.
- Make it easy to save recipes into folders for future planning.
- Allow users to quickly add saved recipes into the meal calendar with minimal friction.
High Fidelity Frames
User Testing
Process & Takeaways
I tested both the wireframe and high-fidelity prototypes with two different participants at each stage. I asked them to complete specific tasks to observe how they navigated the app, what feedback they shared, and how useful they found its features.
Key Improvements Based on Feedback:
- Added interaction cues to make it clearer when actions are complete.
- Removed overcomplicated features and reduced the amount of screens to reduce user overwhelm.
- Improved separation between buttons.
Prototype
Works Best on Laptop/Desktop
Supporting Growth
- £20.9 billion in revenue Was generated through affiliate marketing in the UK in 2023 according to APMA.
- £17 Earned For every £1 spent on affiliate marketing.
- According to Statista (2024), the UK online grocery market was valued at £25 billion in 2021.
- Forecasts projecting growth to nearly £30 billion by 2025.
Final Reflection
This project taught me how deeply food habits are tied to time, stress, and everyday routines. Through interviews and user testing, I learned the importance of designing for real life, keeping things flexible and intuitive.
If I had more time, I’d expand testing to more users, learning about other age groups and different lifestyles.
I’m proud of how MealMate evolved from a simple idea into a clear, user-centred solution and I’m excited to keep improving it.
Thank You!
If you found this interesting, Let’s Have a Conversation.
