Previously, I spent 6 months working on the website redesign for the meal-kit service, Chef'd. Using my knowledge and experience in this industry, I decided to revisit this concept, and use food as a basis to explore some less conventional UI patterns. I swear this was not just an excuse to look at beautiful pictures of food...
The concept: The driving elements of my design were minimal UI, full screen imagery, and gesture based navigation. The result is a content-driven, simple, and immersive browsing experience.
For the user browsing with one question on their mind, "what should I eat?", photography plays one of the most important roles in selling the product. That's why I chose to build this design around full screen imagery.
Too often, designers are slapping the shopping cart icon on the screen. This is one more piece of visual clutter. In this experience, the shopping cart appears only after the user has added an item to the cart. The placement at the bottom of the screen makes it the most easily accessible area; the most important buttons are easiest within reach.
Placing text on top of an image is always a challenge. Complementary color blocks ensure legibility while adding a customized touch.
As part of my goal to create an immersive browsing experience, I designed the navigation to be as simple as possible, and use the same intuitive gestures as the rest of the experience. Instead of the typical bottom tab navigation, overloaded with icons, the user can explore the main area of the app by simply swiping on the navigation. A lot of users will want to simply re-order a past favorite; and that's just a swipe away.
Social media apps have proven that when it comes to browsing, most people prefer swiping and scrolling. It creates a more intuitive and comfortable browsing experience. Swipe gestures are at the foundation of this app experience, making for a simple and fun way to browse.
Cynthia Lu: design
All photography used/modified for mockup purposes. I do not take credit for any of the photography/imagery used in this project.
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