Seasonal Paradise: A Mobile Food Ordering Experience

My Design Process: The step by step approach for Seasonal Paradise.

1. User Research

To understand user needs and food ordering behaviors, I conducted:

• User interviews with 4 people who frequently use food delivery apps, uncovering users pain points such as frustrations like cluttered menus and lack of fresh food options.

• Competitive audit of platforms like Jumia Food, Glovo, and Uber Eats to identify gaps in seasonal food offerings and personalization features.

My key insight: Users want quick, healthy, and trustworthy options but current apps often overwhelm with choices and lack freshness context.

2. Define Problem statements and Goals

From my research, I was able to craft these core problem statement:

• Busy users struggle to discover fresh, seasonal meals in current food delivery apps, leading to frustration, unhealthy choices, and lost time.

• Users often face a disjointed and confusing ordering experience in mobile food delivery apps, from browsing meals to checkout, which leads to frustration and drop offs.

Hence, with these Problem statements, I was able to come up with the following important goals:

• Make seasonal meals easy to discover and order.

• Design clear, consistent navigation and interaction patterns.

• Reduce friction in the checkout process with fewer steps and better guidance.

• Create a smooth and intuitive end-to-end user journey.

3. Brainstorming and Ideation

After defining the core problem, I moved into the ideation phase which is a crucial step. Here I explored multiple directions, challenged assumptions, and began shaping the solution into a usable product.

Then I forged ahead to exploring possibilities by asking key "How might I" questions which will help me translate users problems into better designs. Some of which includes:

• How might I help users find meals without feeling overwhelmed?

• How might I make the food ordering flow feel effortless and intuitive?

• How might I suggest meals without being intrusive, generic or even biased?

Those questions helped me guide my brainstorming sessions and helped keep the ideas grounded in real user pain points.

For the Brainstorming phase, I used techniques like

• Affinity mapping which helped me to group user pain points and match them with potential features.

• Card sorting which helped me to rethink how food categories and filters could be organized more intuitively.

I was able to generate about 14 ideas some of which includes;

• Appropriate visual meal previews to reduce guesswork.

• A properly combined list of the used ingredients for more accessibility in the design.

• A step indicator on the order flow for user clarity.

• A “quick pick” feature for time saving meal selection.

• Visual indicators for freshness and meal prep time.

After filtering, refining, and merging ideas, I focused on a few that stood out:

Visual Ordering Cards – Each meal card shows an image, clearly stated price tag, and ingredients (eg: ginger, garlic, pepper), helping users make confident choices at a glance.

Streamlined Checkout Flow – The order flow was designed to have not more than 3 steps, using visual feedback (progress indicators, summary cards) to reduce confusion and friction.

Guided Discovery – Users are presented with 3 simple starting points: “Discounted meal,” “Hot deals,” and “Categorized meals”. This helped me to reduce overwhelm while still encouraging exploration.

My next step was User Journey

I created detailed user flows to ensure a seamless journey from:

• Home screen →Hot deals →Category→ Menu → Checkout
  Each interaction point was designed to minimize effort, reduce decision fatigue, and ensure clarity.

In summary, this phase ensured that every design decision was user driven, creatively informed, and intentional. By investing time in divergent and convergent thinking, I was able to move forward with a concept that balances simplicity, functionality, and visual appeal which gave me a foundation for a frictionless food ordering experience.

4. Implementation and Design

After a structured ideation phase, I transitioned into the visual design and user interface development, focusing on clarity, usability, and a simple but engaging food ordering experience.

My Design system and style choices includes:

• Color Palette: A pale blue background with soft accents of orange and gray to evoke warmth and appetite, while keeping the interface modern and friendly.

• Typography: For my texts, I used clear and legible fonts with strong visual hierarchy. I used larger text for CTAs and meal titles, medium for labels, and light fonts for descriptions thereby making the app easily scannable.

• Iconography & Imagery: High quality food images and intuitive icons were used to make the interface visually rich and emotionally appetizing, while still easy to navigate.

My Interaction and Accessibility considerations were as follows:

• Visual hierarchy: Information is grouped logically using spacing and font weight (e.g., meal title, price, and description are visually separated) thereby helping users quickly understand content without cognitive overload.

• Color contrast and Legibility: Primary buttons and icons (like the orange checkout button) use colors with sufficient contrast against white backgrounds, ensuring readability even in bright environments or for users with low vision.

• Descriptive visual elements: Ingredients are represented by icons rather than just text, benefiting users who may be unfamiliar with certain ingredient names.

• Consistent Iconography and Labels: Familiar and consistent icons (e.g., home, search, cart) help users intuitively navigate the app. I ensured that each icon has a label or clear purpose to prevent confusion.

Outcome

The final UI design blends functionality with aesthetic appeal, supporting users through a frictionless, enjoyable experience from discovery to checkout. The layout, color, and interactions were all carefully considered to help users make confident and fast decisions which is a key factor for food delivery contexts.

5. Prototyping and Testing

Once the visual designs were complete, I moved into the prototyping and usability testing phase to bring the user journey to life and validate the design choices with real users. This phase was crucial in identifying pain points early and iterating toward a more polished and user centered experience.

Prototyping

Using Figma, I created an interactive high-fidelity prototype that allowed users to navigate through the entire core flow of the app. From browsing meals on the homepage to completing a checkout.

Some key prototype features included were:

• Tappable meal cards leading to detailed product view.

• Interactive quantity steppers.

• Toggles which was included in the notification page to allow users make their own notification decisions.

• Clickable category cards on the home page.

I built the prototype to help mirror a real user journey, so users could experience the full interaction model. It also allowed me to test micro interactions and content flow not just static visuals.

Usability Testing

With the prototype ready, I conducted moderated usability testing with 2 users who regularly use food delivery apps. Each session lasted 15–20 minutes and I followed a task based approach which was "Find a lunch meal and check out".

I mainly focused on:

• How users navigated through meal categories.

• Whether the checkout process felt smooth and trustworthy.

• Whether or not there was any confusion around interactive elements or visual cues.

• How easy it was for users to order a meal and checkout.

My findings and insights after the usability testing:

• Users appreciated the minimal design and referred to the interface as “clean” and “not overwhelming.

• The ingredient icons made the meal page feel more informative without needing to scroll through long text thereby making the process shorter and easier.

• One user complained that some buttons were not quite responsive. I went over my prototype connections to solve the problem.

Overall Outcome

By validating the design through prototyping and testing, I was able to confidently refine the user experience based on actual behavior not just assumptions. This phase ensured that Seasonal Paradise was not only visually appealing but also intuitive, usable, and enjoyable to interact with.

Additional Things to Note

• Tools used: Figma, Notion (for planning), Google Forms (for user surveys).

• Project Duration: From Exploration to final design, the project generally lasted for 3 weeks.

• I worked independently on the project.