U CHEF

PROJECT BACKGROUND

U Chef was developed as a project to identify and enhance a specific experience for a single user through thoughtful design. The process began with ethnographic research to uncover an everyday challenge, followed by ideation, prototyping, and user feedback. The user remained central to every design decision, ensuring that the final outcome felt personal, practical, and meaningful.

Lexi is a university student who due to her busy lifestyle, struggles with saving her money and making healthy eating choices and needs a way to develop budgeting habits and find easy recipes she can cook at home because her existing unsustainable spending patterns are affecting her financial well-being and jeopardises the ability to move out or travel in the future.

The U Chef app will help reduce Lexi’s impulse to overspend on meals by scanning her fridge and pantry to suggest quick, low-effort, and budget-friendly recipes based on what she already has. It also tracks her spending on eating out and lets her compare what she would have spent versus what she saved, so she can feel she made smart, satisfying choices.

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SCENARIO VIDEO