The Challenge
Cooking inspiration is everywhere, but organization isn’t. People save recipes in countless places - social media, screenshots, and browser tabs - but struggle to actually use them. Beginners feel especially overwhelmed by long recipe blogs, confusing steps, or inconsistent formats. How might we help home cooks collect, organize, and confidently cook from their recipes without the frustration of scattered sources?
The Process
Receta was designed through five key phases of Goal-Directed Design:
1. Research – Understanding how people cook, save, and learn.
2. Modeling – Creating personas to represent real goals and frustrations.
3. Requirements – Translating insights into functional, human-centered features.
4. Framework – Establishing structure and layout patterns for usability.
5. Refinement – Iterating on visuals, interactions, and emotional tone.
Research
To uncover how users currently engage with recipes, the team conducted user interviews, a literature review, and a competitive audit. We organized findings through affinity mapping to highlight behavioral trends and needs.
Key Insights:
• Cooking inspiration often comes from social media or friends.
• Users want simple, visual, and easy-to-scan recipes.
• Beginners need reassurance and quick wins.
• Long written content adds cognitive load and discourages use.
• Video recipes are popular but hard to organize.
• Users want a way to categorize and customize their recipes.
Personas
Two personas guided design decisions:
Bianca — The Beginner
Wants to gain confidence, understand cooking basics, and organize saved recipes without feeling lost.
Kevin — The Social Cook
Enjoys experimenting, sharing recipes, and connecting with other food enthusiasts.These personas kept the team focused on clarity, community, and personalization throughout the process.
Requirements
Using our personas, I created a requirements list that mapped each feature to a user goal and context of use.
Core Features:
• Import recipes from blogs, videos, and PDFs
• Auto-extract only relevant steps and ingredients
• Organize recipes into a personal cookbook
• Scale ingredient amounts automatically
• Build grocery lists from recipes
• Access quick help for cooking basics
• Celebrate progress with encouraging messages
Prototype
Using Figma, I designed a high-fidelity prototype that brings Receta’s vision to life. The interface draws inspiration from retro cookbooks and warm kitchen tones to create a sense of nostalgia and comfort. Users can import recipes, track progress, and personalize their cookbooks through intuitive navigation and visual cues that make learning to cook feel rewarding rather than intimidating. You can access the prototype below to experience Receta for yourself!
Test out Receta here!
Reflection
What I learned as a design leader:
Leading Receta through the Goal-Directed Design process reinforced how much structure shapes outcomes. Having a clear framework kept the team anchored to user goals rather than assumptions, and that discipline showed in every decision we made.
Designing for beginner cooks also shifted how I think about empathy. Frustration in the kitchen isn't always about a bad interface, sometimes it's about self-doubt. That insight pushed us to design for confidence, not just usability.
As team lead, I learned that clarity is a form of leadership. Keeping four designers aligned meant being transparent about priorities and creating space for collaboration, because the best ideas in this project never came from one person alone.
