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Work Experience

Scan your pantry with AI to optimize your grocery habits and simplify your life

🥗 My Smart Pantry: Beyond Budgeting

TL;DR 🧠

Role: Solo UX/UI designer, researcher & content writer

What I did:

Led user research and information architecture
Used Lovable to build and test the product with real behavior
Set up Hotjar to gather insights and iterate based on real usage

This isn’t just another pantry app — it’s a people-first tool designed to reduce food waste and support seniors, busy families, and users with disabilities. Built with empathy to be tested with real users and iterated with care.

👀 Curious?
📖 Explore the full journey in my Notion case study
📱 Try the live app

👇 Skim the highlights below

Finding the Real Problem 🔍

Most grocery-related apps focus narrowly on budgeting or price comparison. But my user research—through interviews, surveys, and competitor analysis—revealed deeper frustrations:

🌍 Food Waste & Time Loss: Users weren’t just overspending, they were forgetting what they had, leading to waste and last-minute stress

👵 Exclusion Through Complexity: Many apps didn’t consider the needs of seniors or users with disabilities. Poor contrast, tiny buttons, or missing guidance made them unusable

💡 Underused Potential: People didn’t want to micromanage, they wanted a smarter way to make the most of what they already had, not just start from scratch every week

This wasn't just a UX problem — it was a human problem. That’s when I realized the app needed to go beyond budgeting.

👇 Here's what some of them shared:

The Solution: Meeting Real Needs 🎯

🧠 AI-curated Recipes — based on what’s in your pantry and your preferences.

📦 Visual Pantry Tracker — scan items, get expiry alerts, reduce waste.

🛍️ Smart Shopping Lists — synced with recipes, avoids duplicates.

♿ Accessible by Design — large buttons, contrast-aware UI, future testing with seniors.

👉 Want to see it in action? Check the live app or read the full case study in Notion

Learnings & Reflections 🌱

1. Design means listening: I traded assumptions for real voices. People told me they needed clarity, ease, and a sense of being truly supported.

2. Inclusivity needs to be real: Adding an “accessibility” button isn’t enough. I want to co-create with seniors and people with disabilities, so they help define how inclusive design really works. That’s my goal for the next phase.

3. UX + Dev + AI = Superpower: I pushed beyond design tools to understand code, connect Git + Lovable + Hotjar, to analyze real usage data. It made my process stronger, faster to iterate and way more insightful.

4. Being open to surprise: Sometimes the idea you start with… isn’t the one people need. And that’s OK! Being adaptable is not a flaw, it’s UX gold.

Learnings & Reflections 🌱

1. Design means listening: I traded assumptions for real voices. People told me they needed clarity, ease, and a sense of being truly supported.

4. Being open to surprise: Sometimes the idea you start with… isn’t the one people need. And that’s OK! Being adaptable is not a flaw, it’s UX gold.

What’s Next ✨

Running accessibility tests with seniors and users with disabilities

Refining onboarding flows and recipe UX based on Hotjar insights

What’s Next ✨

Running accessibility tests with seniors and users with disabilities

Refining onboarding flows and recipe UX based on Hotjar insights

Hello Bots and Humans! 🚀

If you’re searching for:

UX/UI Design · Inclusive Design · Accessibility · Food Waste App · Pantry Scanner · AI-Powered Recipes · Meal Planner UX · Usability Testing · Heatmap Analysis · Hotjar · Git · Lovable · Mobile-First Design · UX for Seniors · Human-Centered Design · UX Portfolio Case Study · UX Growth · Empathy-Driven Design · Research-Based UX

...you’ve found the right designer! 😄

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