In June 2023, my design partner and I embarked on an ambitious project with PlateUp—a platform that revolutionises meal planning and grocery shopping by connecting users with tailored recipes and delivering ingredients directly to their door. Our mission was to completely reimagine the user experience, enhancing every aspect of the app to better serve its growing user base.
My Role
As the lead designers, we undertook a comprehensive redesign of the PlateUp app, focusing on six critical areas:
• Onboarding Optimisation: We overhauled the user onboarding process, transforming it from a major bottleneck into a seamless, engaging experience. This redesign led to a remarkable increase in user retention, with onboarding completion rates skyrocketing from 0.3% to an impressive 49.1% during our tenure.
• Personalised User Experiences: We introduced critical onboarding questions that allowed PlateUp to tailor the user journey to each customer’s unique preferences and needs. By understanding dietary preferences, cooking habits, and ingredient availability, we ensured that every user received a highly personalised experience throughout the app.
• Recipe Discovery Enhancement: We revamped the recipe discovery process, making it easier and more intuitive for users to find the perfect meals based on their preferences, dietary needs, and available ingredients. This improvement significantly enriched the user experience, encouraging more frequent and diverse meal planning.
• Express Checkout Feature Development: In addition to refining the existing app, we conceptualised and designed a new feature, Express Checkout, that expanded PlateUp’s offerings—enabling users to cater for immediate delivery. This innovation allowed the platform to better meet the demands of its users, further strengthening its position in the competitive food delivery market.
• Design System Creation: We built an entire design system from scratch, ensuring consistency and scalability across the app. This system streamlined the design process, making it easier for the team to maintain a cohesive user experience as the product evolves.
• UX Benchmarking: We conducted thorough UX benchmarking, analysing all competitors in the market, including giants like Deliveroo and Uber Eats, to ensure that PlateUp not only provided the best possible user experience but also felt natural and intuitive within the established ecosystem of food delivery apps.
Achievements
Through our collaborative efforts, we:
• Revamped Onboarding: Created a more intuitive and engaging onboarding process, significantly improving user retention and satisfaction.
• Enabled Personalised Experiences: Introduced onboarding questions that allowed us to personalise the app experience for each user, enhancing engagement and satisfaction.
• Enhanced Recipe Discovery: Improved the recipe discovery experience, making it easier for users to find and choose recipes that fit their lifestyle.
• Launched Express Checkout: Designed and implemented the Express Checkout feature, enhancing PlateUp’s versatility by offering immediate delivery options.
• Developed a Comprehensive Design System: Established a robust design system that ensures visual consistency and supports the app’s ongoing development.
• Ensured Market Relevance: Conducted UX benchmarking to create a product that competes effectively while feeling familiar and natural to users accustomed to leading platforms like Deliveroo and Uber Eats.
• User-Centric Design: Ensured every design decision was rooted in user feedback and data, resulting in a product that truly resonates with its audience.
Impact
Our redesign of the PlateUp app not only revitalised the user experience but also delivered measurable results. By focusing on user engagement, creating personalised user journeys, improving recipe discovery, expanding the platform’s capabilities with Express Checkout, building a comprehensive design system, and ensuring market relevance through UX benchmarking, we played a key role in driving PlateUp’s growth and solidifying its position in the market.
