Challenge

Cooking apps are meant to simplify everyday cooking, but users often feel overwhelmed by cluttered layouts, endless scrolling, and unclear recipe navigation. Kitchen Stories, despite its popularity, struggled with usability issues that frustrated users and reduced retention. The challenge: How can we make digital cooking more intuitive, enjoyable, and efficient?

Approach

• User Research: Conducted semi-structured interviews and usability tests with frequent and casual app users to uncover pain points in recipe discovery and cooking flow.

• Journey Mapping: Visualized step-by-step user paths to identify drop-off points and moments of frustration, particularly around search filters and in-recipe navigation.

• Competitor Benchmarking: Analyzed top cooking apps (e.g., Tasty, Yummly, NYT Cooking) to compare onboarding, search experience, and in-app cooking support. This helped highlight best practices in design simplicity and engagement.

• Prototyping & Testing: Built wireframes and interactive prototypes in Figma. Ran A/B tests on recipe categorization and cooking modes (step-by-step vs. continuous scroll).

Impact

The redesigned experience streamlines recipe discovery, clarifies navigation, and makes cooking with the app easier. Users completed cooking tasks faster, reported feeling “less distracted,” and expressed greater satisfaction with the overall flow. The insights and prototypes provided Kitchen Stories with a clear roadmap for improving engagement and retention while staying competitive in the crowded cooking-app market.