Food52 is an online platform that offers a space for home cooks to share their own recipes and stories to connect with others. The team approached Berkeley Innovation to help enliven their community and increase engagement among its members.
As a Product Design Consultant, I reimagined the website's community to a newly designed 0→1 mobile app, aiming to encourage greater activity for both the existing and new members of Food52.
*I redesigned this project as an individual designer in 2024 to compare my skill growth while showcasing improved designs for the case study. All decisions made with the stakeholders were left as was.
Timeline
February - May 2021
Redesigned Jan 2024*
Tools
Figma
Google Suite
Team
3 Product Designers
1 Project Mentor
3 Internal Stakeholders
(Sr. UX Director,
VP of Digital Product,
Sr. Product Manager)
Skills
Native Mobile Design
Interaction Design
Systems Design
Food52 allows all of its member to submit their own recipes, ask questions regarding cooking and cookware, and meet like-minded cooks. While there are 2M+ registered Food52 members, the engagement with the site's community offerings is significantly low.
Thus, to address this difference in engagement, Food52 approached us with the following question:
To design the ideal community, I first took time to understand its necessities. We analyzed 6 competitors and social forum platforms, then asked 14 active vs. non-Food52 users to describe their ideal community.
The ultimate goal of a community is to make friends (was that obvious?). But—without a trustworthy platform of authentic users, engagement and interaction cannot arise.
To increase engagement on Food52, we want to make sure that users trust the site and its members. Bonus points if we can shoot above and beyond and foster an environment of organic friendships.
Rather than an integrated experience throughout, Food52's community offerings were located under a single tab. As users mainly come to Food52 for recipes, when we asked users to freely explore Food52's site, they never navigated to the separated community tab—leaving these features in the dark.
Users are mainly encouraged to participate in the community by posting user-generated content (UGC), such as sharing their own recipes. However, even posting a short comment is time-consuming.
The lack of UGC, in turn, discourages other members to participate as they're met with an unengaged community.
As discovered before, a successful community is built on reliability and credibility. However, the current Food52 website fails to offer opportunities for users to build trustworthy connections with others.
