MUNCH!
Make the most out of your dollar through easy budgeting.
An AI-powered meal-planning and budgeting app helping international students build cooking and financial literacy.
DURATION
4 Weeks, Fall 2024
ROLE
Lead UX/UI Design, Research, Prototyping
TOOLS
Figma, ProtoPie, After Effects
TEAM
Joann Vu, Amy Zhao, Isabella Lian
(OVERVIEW)
THE PROBLEM
Canadian International students are facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity due to economic factors and a lack of support.
THE MISSION
How can we help international students manage their grocery budget and make affordable home-cooked meals?
(PROCESS)
IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM
International students are thrown into the deep end with little support to integrate into Canadian society.
Through surveys and interviews with 8 participants, we learned that international students wished they had more financial guidance. Few were confident in their cooking abilities and felt overwhelmed in grocery stores, pushing them to eat out despite the high prices.
With this in mind, we derived 3 main goals to achieve with our app.
COOK WITH CONFIDENCE
Support the development of students’ cooking and planning abilities.
REDUCE SPENDING
Build strong financial habits of budgeting, organization, and finding the best deals.
PERSONALIZATION
Provide customization to respect the diverse diets of international students.
OUR APPROACH
Use AI to craft customizable, affordable recipes, with live local price comparisons.
MEAL-PLANNING
Created the main flow and interfaces to generate and schedule meals.
Generate recipes tailored to your skill level, dietary preferences/restrictions, and budget. Add ingredients to your grocery list, where you can view live price comparisons from grocery stores in your proximity.
LOG TRANSACTIONS
Manage your spending with simple logs and animated graphs.
ANIMATIONS
Created promotional animations to emphasize features.
INTERACTION HIGHLIGHT
Using imagery to reduce cognitive load of ideating categories.
Upon feedback from testing, I revised the Cuisine Preferences UI to include illustrated icons. These visual aids give users ideas on inputs they can provide.
OUR VIDEO PITCH
Walk through the main features of Munch!
(reflection)
WHAT I LEARNED
An app for all is an app for none.
Initially, we wanted a large sample of research participants to capture the full picture, but I quickly realized that this approach would lead us to surface-level solutions and an impossible task of accommodating to everyone. Focusing on deeper interviews within our specific niche allowed us to address issues more effectively.
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(CONTACT ME)
Let's create something extraordinary together!
Let's create something extraordinary together!
Joann vu © 2025
Designed by Joann Vu