Grocery Shoppin made easy.
A grocory shopping app designed for students.
Role
UX/UI Design
User Research
Prototyping
Timeline
Sept 2025 -
Nov2025
(3 Months)
Tools
Figma Design,
Figma Slides,
Figjam
Team
Jessica Lu
Phoebe Yang
Lily Tang
01 CONTEXT
Grocery made easy for students
This course project redefines the way university students address study and focus habits, breaking distraction patterns while addressing emotions like guilt, stress, and anxiety.
Where might university students face difficulty with everyday processes, and how can we solve it?
02 PROBLEM
Food Is a Necessity
Food is a basic necessity, yet rising grocery prices continue to make affordable options difficult to access, especially for university students balancing limited budgets and demanding schedules. A typical student’s day is often filled with classes, assignments, work, and extracurricular activities, leaving little time for meal planning or grocery shopping.
According to Schilling (2024), “55 per cent of university students from 13 universities across Canada require access to low-cost food options, and 32.4 per cent are willing to skip meals to make ends meet,” highlighting the growing issue of food insecurity among students.
This project aimed to address both the time and financial pressures students face when grocery shopping independently.
How might we help ease the chore of grocery shopping for students with busy life schedules?
03 User Research
Conducting User Interviews
We interviewed 12 university students spanning different years and programs. Compiling our findings in a final affinity diagram, we identified three main pain points.
Budgeting
Students focus on saving money through sales, coupons, and comparing prices.
Convenience & Accessibility
Distance, transportation, heavy groceries, and limited time make accessibility important.
Personal Preferences
Dietary needs, product quality, and sustainability influence grocery choices.
User Personas
The Rookie
Harlow, 2nd Year Student
ABOUT
First-time living and shopping independently, Harlow looks for affordable deals and sustainable brands.
GOAL
Budget better, reduce impulse spending, and stay healthy and active.
PAIN POINTS
A busy schedule and the high cost of eating sustainably make it difficult to maintain her lifestyle.
The Student Athlete
Adam, 4nd Year Student
ABOUT
As a varsity soccer player and running club captain, Adam prioritizes healthy, fresh meals but struggles to find affordable halal options nearby.
GOAL
Plan and prepare nutritious, high-quality meals that support his athletic performance.
PAIN POINTS
Maintaining an expensive high-protein diet and shopping while fatigued make healthy eating difficult.
04 DESIGN DIRECTION
Low Fidelity
As a group, we discussed specific features and details of our app to create low-fi wireframes. My wireframes reflected my own ideas and early considerations of my team.
05 RESULT
Final Design
Through multiple iterations of our wireframes, we refined our ideas as a group and incorporated feedback to create our final design.
Discover New Ingredients
Our app recommends specific foods to users based on their activity and preferences like budget and dietary needs.
Easy Organization
Users can organize foods into different “Lists,” saving time instead of adding each ingredient individually to their cart.
Shopping Aid
Our app makes grocery shopping a breeze. It will calculate the most efficient route to all your foods, and guide you there.
06 TAKEAWAYS & NEXT STEPS
Reflection
I also learned a lot about designing and prototyping in Figma throughout this project. I enjoyed experimenting with different features, figuring out how things worked, and seeing my ideas come together into a functional prototype. Overall, this project helped me become more comfortable with Figma while also giving me a better understanding of how research and design can work together to create meaningful solutions.
One thing I appreciated most about the Shopping project was the attention to detail in the user research. It helped me better understand the UX process and showed me how research can be used to create designs that actually address problems people face in their everyday lives, rather than designing based on assumptions.
Things I would do differently
If I were to approach this project again, I would spend more time considering different solutions before committing to one design direction. I would also want to test my prototype more throughout the design process instead of waiting until later to identify areas that could be improved. This would allow me to catch usability issues earlier and make sure that each design decision is actually supported by user needs and feedback.
