Diet-Conscious Design
Transforming the digital landscape for diet-conscious individuals
In recent years, I’ve noticed that vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options have become more common on restaurant menus and in grocery stores. Since I didn’t have any dietary restrictions myself, I hadn’t given much thought to their significance. That changed last year when a close friend suddenly developed multiple food allergies and intolerances. I didn’t fully understand why these changes were happening to her, but seeing her struggles firsthand made me more aware of the importance of food safety. Everyday foods like nuts, dairy, and certain meats—things I could eat without a second thought—became major challenges for her.
We worked together to find as many resources as possible to help support her dietary restrictions, but we quickly found out that the choices were too few and too specific. Most apps only focused on a single function or specific restriction and few addressed their diverse needs comprehensively, leaving a gap for an all-encompassing solution that caters to various dietary requirements and user needs.
Some Examples
Yuka
While Yuka is an excellent app with thousands of positive reviews, it’s only limited to scanning ingredient lists, indicating whether it’s safe/healthy, and providing better product suggestions. It’s excellent for what it advertises, but is not a comprehensive option for diet-conscious individuals.
Find Me Gluten Free
Like Yuka, Find Me Gluten Free is another wonderful app with many positive experiences. Unfortunately, it’s dedicated only to those who have celiac disease and are looking for restaurants with gluten-free options. It’s great for those who are looking specifically for gluten-free, but for individuals with other dietary restrictions, it’s far from favourable.
SuperCook Recipe By Ingredient
Another amazing app like Yuka and Find Me Gluten Free, however, it’s dedicated to only the feature of finding recipes. It’s not specific to those who have dietary restrictions as its main feature is discovering recipes by inputting the ingredients you have at home, which is an excellent option for most individuals. However, it would likely be better to have an option that excludes ingredients as a diet-conscious individual would likely be open to many options, as long as those options are safe for them.
Some Key Insights
After consulting with my friend and exploring the available market for resources, I garnered several key insights:
Not everyone is aware of dietary restrictions, if not all of the most common ones
Diet-conscious individuals need to be able to scan ingredients to ensure they don’t contain their restricted ingredients
They need more convenience and accommodation when it comes to shopping or ordering food
For people who have recently obtained these dietary restrictions, they need a community to gain insight from and to be able to find recipes that are safe for them
Parents also need information and resources about their child’s newly developed dietary restrictions
User Personas
Creating A Solution
While Alex Carter, Lisa Rodriguez, and David Brown all have varying backgrounds, they do share a common need, which is a resource that combines and supports all of their struggles. Given that there are over 5.7 billion unique mobile subscribers worldwide in Q1 2025 according to GMSA Intelligence, it is reasonably safe to assume that it would be ideal to make such a resource available as an app for a start. With all of their needs and struggles in mind, I drew a few rough sketches for this app.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
After creating these wireframes, I felt that they didn’t fully encompass what I had envisioned. I realized I had forgotten to include a page to scan ingredient labels. I also felt that the map of all of the local restaurants wasn’t necessary, as I had planned for restaurants and grocery stores to connect their address with Google Maps in their store information on the app. In addition, the browsing page wasn’t necessary as there were already search bars included for the order/pickup page, recipes page, and community page. I decided to remove the map page and browsing page altogether and instead, included a page to scan ingredient lists with an in-app camera, leading to these results:
Medium Fidelity Wireframes
With these (still) rough sketches in mind, I took it one step further and turned them into medium-fidelity to see how they would fit on as an app. I felt my designs were a little cluttered so I simplified them to ensure a cleaner experience for the users to provide better ease of access.
Choosing Colours, Typography, & Images
Feeling satisfied with my finished layout, I started with choosing colours to help form the brand’s image. The name I chose for the brand was Vitality, to invoke the feelings of liveliness and energy.
I wanted the users of the app to feel like it gives them a fresh start — a renewed experience. I also wanted them to feel the same way when it came to the colours I chose. As the colour green is often associated with health and nature, like my app and brand name are, I chose green as my main accent colour for the app. I used a vibrant grass green for my headings and buttons, a light mint green to contrast the grass green, and a deeper mint green as a secondary colour to balance the contrasting greens.
Next, I chose the typography. I wanted to ensure that the font is readable to a major of users as diet-conscious individuals may also have other restrictions besides food. I chose Inter as my main font for the app as it includes a large x-height, open letterforms, balanced spacing, and clear distinction between characters, ensuring a comfortable reading experience for the average user.
Afterwards, I moved on to the images. I wanted to use example images that showed colour and vibrancy without feeling too bold or overwhelming. I wanted to give the idea that the app is welcoming and also included aesthetically-pleasing images with a ‘healthy’ aspect. I’ve also included a few ‘unhealthy’ dishes to indicate that dishes of all kind can be enjoyed, even as an individual with dietary restrictions.
Including An Onboarding Section
After creating the main pages of this app, I realized that the app would need an onboarding process to introduce users to the app and to gather data from the new user to personalize their feeds and suggested content. I decided to include pages that asked for some basic personal information such as the user’s name, birthday, dietary restrictions, and user goals. These bits of personal information would help form a greeting on the main page, create a profile with a personal health card, indicate whether product ingredients are safe or not, and tailor grocery store, restaurant, and recipe suggestions for users.
The Final Results (For Now):
Prototyped version and more to come…