Maybe you're like me and you like to cook, experiment, and learn new things. Season started off as a great morning to-do app, but quickly shifted towards focusing solely on connecting home cooks with each other to create a cohesive community.

This was a fun project I did shortly after school to expand on some ideas that I had building over a couple of months.

Chances are, you’ve found yourself getting ready to cook, feeling uninspired, or just not sure what to make with the limited time you have. I know I’ve been there plenty of times, especially as a college student. What I was missing in my ‘culinary training’ was that gentle nudge from a community of home chefs, all excited to experiment and make great healthy food.

That’s where Season comes in. It’s a mix of social media and a culinary experience, bringing together the ease of sharing and discovering recipes all in one place. Season’s goal is to turn the average home chef into a skilled artist, giving them that gentle nudge from ‘I’ll just make ramen tonight’ to ‘Oh, I’ve got 45 minutes to make this dish—and I’ll have leftovers for days.'

Justin is a great example of someone who spends quite a bit too much on takeout food, $1500 a month. He wants to be able to cook nice dinners that are cost effective, but doesn't have time to search the web for recipes and often is flooded with ads.

The first step to creating a great mobile experience is making sure the user feels welcome. This can be done through a personalized onboarding process, connecting them with familiar faces, or engaging them with content that feels relevant right from the start.

Exploration of onboarding was a step in the right direction when starting this project. How can I make the user feel welcome and want to continue the onboarding. The UX of the onboarding is the hook of the app, without a great onboarding, users are bound to delete the app and never look at it again.

Users are welcomed with personalized cooking options and preference settings, like nut-free, gluten-free, vegan, and more, all powered by an algorithm that improves recommendations. This personalized onboarding establishes a connection with the user, boasting a great UX that encourages them to stay engaged on the platform.

A great homepage continues the serotonin boost a user feels from the moment they open your product. Season’s homepage welcomes users with a tailored carousel of recipes trending in the community. The algorithm starts by offering top picks based on the onboarding process, and as the user cooks more, it adjusts to create an even more personalized experience.

On a user flowchart, the next step a user would take is most likely looking for a recipe. And after a great onboarding experience and home page, by this point, the user is invested in your product. They want to keep exploring. Season allows a user endless exploration into the culinary world by organizing the recipes page into categories and recommended meals that we believe are the best choice for them.

The goal is to have the user move swiftly through your product, always knowing their next move. Any sign of friction creates a bad experience and makes the user second-guess their commitment to your platform.

Clear instructions are vital in a culinary app. If a user feels confused, they won’t learn as effectively. It’s critical for the product experience to minimize friction, especially when a user is cooking something they’ve never tried before.

Season’s instructions are clear and show key details when needed. If a user is reducing heavy cream, they can start a timer, which becomes prominent for quick reference. Pausing the timer returns the instructional view, helping the user see what the food should look like.

Simple navigation, legibility, and fluidity are all essential when designing these experiences on mobile. Users can press the hamburger menu in the drawer to access recipe steps, check their progress, or go back to double-check, all while a progress indicator keeps them on track.

Profiles allow users to engage with each other and build a sense of community on the platform. On their own profile, users can view their saved and liked recipes. From a spectator’s view, they can see the user’s recent recipes if shared, and even reach out with questions or just to say hi!

Any product benefits from a consistent design language. I built a design system centered on the platform’s experience and the critical information users need. Engaging UI, paired with an exceptional experience, leads to happy users and a loyal user base.

To truly push the boundaries of what is possible for a cooking app, Apple released the Vision Pro around the time I started making this. What better way to immerse myself in spatial design than by bringing Season to visionOS? Ultimately, I had to stop designing because I became too busy, so this project was halted—but it’s great to look at what could have been.

While many of the mockups for this were purely educational, it was a fun challenge to explore how to translate a mobile application’s two-dimensional experience into spatial design.

The welcoming mobile screen that users are familiar with translates well to visionOS. Recipe of the day is presented front and center, and a tailored experience of recipes follows underneath in a carousel format.

Keeping a cohesive experience between two platforms is essential for enabling users to seamlessly switch between visionOS and iOS. Whatever users save on iOS is automatically saved on visionOS and vice versa. Bookmarked recipes are presented in a smaller modal element with a grid view, which can be quickly switched to a list for easier navigation.

And when a user selects a recipe, they are presented with this screen, so that they can adjust measurements such as the serving size, if they are cooking for a large party, and and view allergies that might be present within a meal.

Around this point, development stopped as I became too busy - But, designing for a spatial application raised new questions for me to think about: How would I translate this mobile experience to 3D space? How would users interact with floating elements versus a mobile screen? and many more things.

This was always a work in progress, but it’s exciting to see what could be—a platform that delivers an exceptional experience and lets people like me keep doing what I love: learning, cooking, and meeting new people.