Foodie is an app for roommates

A digital tool designed to make cooking and meal planning with roommates fun and stress-free. The app helps users organize grocery lists, plan meals ahead, and coordinate cooking together in an intuitive, playful interface. Users can gather and curate their favorite recipes, creating a shared collection that everyone can contribute to and enjoy. It’s all about fostering collaboration, reducing kitchen chaos, and turning everyday meals into shared experiences.

*This is a redesign! The description remains the same with an updated UI and new look!

the brief

Cooking with roommates often breaks down due to miscommunication, uneven labor, conflicting schedules, and lack of planning. While many people want to cook more intentionally and communally, existing tools focus on individual meal planning rather than shared systems. This results in food waste, repeated grocery trips, and frustration in the kitchen.

  1. Support collaborative meal planning among roommates

  2. Encourage food education and shared cooking skills

  3. Reduce friction around grocery shopping and prep

  4. Create a sense of community and accountability in shared kitchens

  5. Design an intuitive, friendly system that fits naturally into daily routines

Key Features

  1. Shared Meal Planner: A collaborative calendar where roommates can plan meals together and see who is cooking when

  2. Smart Grocery List: Automatically generated lists based on planned meals, editable by all roommates

  3. Prep & Task Assignment: Simple task breakdowns (chop, shop, cook, clean) to distribute responsibility fairly

  4. Recipe Hub: A shared space to save recipes, learn basic cooking skills, and explore new meals together

Research

Research focused on understanding the social and logistical challenges of cooking in shared living environments. Through informal interviews, personal observation, and competitive analysis, patterns emerged around miscommunication, uneven labor, and lack of shared visibility.

Key insights revealed that roommates want to cook together but struggle with planning, grocery coordination, and accountability. Existing tools were found to prioritize individual users, leaving a gap for systems designed around shared ownership. These insights directly informed Foodie’s emphasis on collaborative planning, shared grocery lists, and lightweight task assignment.

Research was conducted within an academic context and relied primarily on qualitative insights from peers. While this limited the scale of findings, it allowed for deeper, experience-based understanding of shared living dynamics.

  1. Meal planning often fails because it requires too much upfront coordination

  2. Grocery lists become a source of conflict when ownership is unclear

  3. Roommates want shared visibility, not micromanagement

  4. Cooking together is more likely when roles are loosely defined but visible

  5. Users feel intimidated by apps that assume high cooking expertise

Research Insights

Conclusion

Foodie demonstrates how thoughtful UX design can transform an everyday pain point into an opportunity for connection and shared responsibility. By centering collaboration, visibility, and approachability, the project reframes cooking not as an individual task but as a communal experience. Rather than over-structuring behavior, Foodie provides gentle systems that support communication and reduce friction, allowing roommates to build healthier habits around food together.

Design Focus

  1. Warm, friendly visual language to reduce intimidation around cooking

  2. Clear hierarchy and simple interactions to support group use

  3. Emphasis on collaboration rather than individual control

  4. Accessible UI for users with varying cooking experience

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