SmartTaste AI

Getting to know the business goal

First, I held a kickoff meeting with the business owners and product stakeholders to gain a clear understanding of the product vision, business goals, and overall requirements for the SmartTaste AI application. This meeting helped me understand both the user needs and the business objectives behind the project.

The stakeholders wanted to design and deploy both iOS and Android applications targeted at users who are looking to adopt a healthier lifestyle. During the discussions, I gathered valuable insights into the business strategy, product expectations, and future vision for the platform.

The primary business goal was to rapidly design and develop an MVP so real users could begin testing the application as quickly as possible. The long-term vision of SmartTaste AI is to create a personalized nutrition app that helps millions of users better understand their food and drink choices, encouraging healthier habits and smarter daily decisions.

The app aims to provide users with intelligent recommendations and insights that support healthier eating and drinking behaviors through an accessible and user-friendly mobile experience.

Target audience

​

SmartTaste AI is designed for a diverse demographic of health-conscious users, ranging from ages 13 to 65. Our platform prioritizes accessibility, catering to anyone with a smartphone who seeks a seamless way to track nutrition and improve their dietary habits.

Inclusive Design at the Core: We specifically engineered the app to support multiple interaction models:

• Visual Learners: High-speed photo and barcode scanning for instant analysis.

• Accessibility-First: Robust voice-command functionality designed for users with visual impairments.

• Language: Currently 6 languages are supported

• Precision Users: Text-based input for those who prefer detailed, manual logging and conversational AI interaction.

​Since SmartTaste AI Involves with the daily life of may people I have maintain a great relationship with the user, our challenge was to evolve with customers and enter the highly competitive on‐demand food and drink digital industry.

SmartTaste AI offers a daily meal plan for benefits for premium subscriber members.  With this benefit we hope to create deeper relationships with SmartTaste AI customers. Smart taste ai is always open for user feedback and customer suggestions.

Key Competitors

Cal AI, Yuka, MyFitnessPal, Vivino

​​​

Competitor analysis

I conducted a detailed competitive analysis using available AI tools and market research to better understand the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities within the AI-driven nutrition industry. The goal was to identify gaps in existing solutions and uncover opportunities to create a more valuable experience for SmartTaste AI users.

As part of the research process, I analyzed leading applications such as Cal AI, Yuka, and MyFitnessPal. Each platform was evaluated based on features, user experience, AI capabilities, accessibility, and overall product positioning.

The research revealed that the AI nutrition market is rapidly shifting from manual food logging toward AI-powered, vision-first tracking experiences. Cal AI primarily focuses on fast calorie counting for fitness-oriented users, while Yuka emphasizes product and ingredient scanning. MyFitnessPal offers broader calorie and fitness tracking features with a strong focus on manual input and health monitoring.

Based on these insights, SmartTaste AI was positioned as a more holistic wellness companion with a broader and more user-centered feature set. The product strategy focused on combining AI-powered nutrition insights with additional features such as grocery planning, personalized recommendations, and multi-language accessibility to better support a diverse global audience.

Interview process

​

To prepare for the SmartTaste AI user research phase, I begin by establishing clear objectives centered around understanding how people manage their dietary habits and holistic health. Preparation involves crafting a semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions designed to uncover authentic behaviors, frustrations with current tracking tools, and how users naturally define "healthy vs. unhealthy" options. To ensure a comprehensive understanding, I recruits a diverse group of eight target users, ensuring the qualitative insights gathered represent a broad spectrum of lifestyle goals and tech-savviness before any design work begins.

The execution of these sessions is orchestrated entirely around the users' convenience to foster comfort and openness. Utilizing remote collaboration tools, I conduct one-to-one Zoom interviews scheduled flexibly around the participants' availability. To optimize data collection without compromising human connection, the designer collaborates with a co-worker who serves as a dedicated note-taker. This division of labor allows me to focus entirely on engaging the user and probing deeper into their experiences, while the teammate handles session recording, tracks active documentation, and notes non-verbal cues in real time.

During the session, the interview transitions into a tactical usability test and contextual inquiry to observe how users interact with early concept ideas or competitive interfaces. This qualitative feedback is then systematically paired with quantitative analytics to paint a complete picture of the user landscape. While the one-to-one interviews reveal the emotional why behind user frustrations—such as navigating complex grocery lists or wanting specific language support—the numerical data validates the statistical significance of these patterns, ensuring the final feature set is grounded in proven user necessity.

Ultimately, this rigorous synthesis directly shapes the application's information architecture and visual hierarchy. 

This empirical foundation guarantees that the upcoming design phase solves genuine user pain points with a highly tailored, intuitive interface.

​

Interview questions

SmartTaste AI: User Interview Guide

1. Introduction & Device Setup (Warm-up)

Goal: Build rapport, understand their tech ecosystem, and set expectations.

• "To start off, what smartphone do you currently use as your primary device? (iOS or Android?)"

• "In general, how often do you use your phone throughout the day, and what are the 2 or 3 apps you open the most?"

• Follow-up: "How often do you use your smartphone specifically for cooking or meal preparation purposes? (e.g., looking up recipes, watching cooking videos, tracking groceries)."

2. Dietary & Hydration Habits (Behavioral Patterns)

Goal: Understand the user’s daily routine, baseline behaviors, and relationships with food/drinks.

• "Walk me through a typical day for you: How often do you eat and drink in a single day, and what types of food and drink do you typically consume?"

• Follow-up: "How do you currently decide what is 'healthy' versus 'unhealthy' when you buy groceries or order out?"

• Follow-up: "How much attention do you pay to the liquid calories or ingredients in the beverages you drink throughout the day?"

3. Pain Points, Challenges, & Desired Changes (The "Why")

Goal: Uncover core frustrations, motivations, and areas where the user actively wants to improve.

• "If you look at your current eating and drinking habits, do you face any specific challenges or frustrations?"

• "Is there anything about your current diet or nutrition that you actively want to change?"

• Follow-up: "What specific changes or improvements do you need to see in your eating and drinking habits to feel like you are living a healthier lifestyle?"

• Follow-up: "What has stopped or blocked you from making those changes in the past?"

4. Competitive Experience & Feature Deep-Dive (Mental Models)

Goal: Gauge familiarity with existing tracking solutions and test reactions to SmartTaste AI’s core pillars.

• "Have you ever used an application that tells you the details of your food and drink, or counts your calories? If yes, which one, and what was your experience like?"

• Follow-up: "What did you like about it, and what made you stop using it or feel frustrated by it?"

• Follow-up: "If you could simply take a photo of your food or drink to instantly get nutritional tips and exercise equivalents, how would that fit into your daily routine?"

• Follow-up: "How important is it for you to have an app like this available in a specific language other than English (for example, Amharic or others) to share with family or use comfortably?"

Understanding the Problem

​

After gathering detailed insights from the business stakeholders, I analyzed the available data, existing documentation, and market research to fully understand the business objectives and identify the most effective solution for the problem.

One of the key challenges was the requirement to deliver the application within a very short timeframe while still creating a high-quality user experience. Conducting competitor analysis provided valuable insight into current market standards, user expectations, and gaps in existing products.

To better understand user behavior and pain points, I conducted usability testing and interviews with 15 participants, supported by analytics and quantitative data analysis. This research helped uncover several important user needs and frustrations.

The findings showed that users value simplicity and ease of use above all else. Many users preferred immediate access to the application without lengthy sign-up processes or unnecessary onboarding steps. Additionally, accessibility emerged as an important opportunity area, particularly for users with disabilities who lacked options to listen to or interact with food and drink information through audio support.

By combining business requirements with user research insights, I gained a clear understanding of both the user pain points and the business goals. This allowed me to define a solution strategy focused on speed, accessibility, simplicity, and user-centered design while ensuring the product could be delivered efficiently within the required timeline.

Challenge

The primary challenge of this project lay in balancing rapid execution with the high precision demanded by an intelligent system. Tasked with designing and deploying a high-traffic application at speed by leveraging advanced AI tools and a new design library, the immediate architectural decisions heavily impacted the final customer experience. The core UX and technical hurdle was achieving extreme accuracy and perfection within the AI's output; this required systematically testing and validating the nutritional results of various foods, drinks, and products against established competitor standards to ensure reliability. Furthermore, maintaining a premium, cohesive design and seamless user flow became a moving target due to continuous feature updates, which forced us to iteratively uncover true user pain points to ensure the AI integration actively drove long-term engagement rather than just novelty.

Strategy and Plan

​

To anchor the project from day one, I established comprehensive frameworks, UX guidelines, and a product strategy that clearly defined our core vision, design principles, content strategy, and development methodologies. A primary focus of this strategy was creating a clear roadmap for translating qualitative research findings—such as user pain points regarding complex nutrition data—directly into functional, intuitive application features. By establishing these frameworks early on, I was able to successfully evangelize design ideas, gain cross-functional alignment, and drive critical product decisions across engineering and stakeholder teams.

Artificial Intelligence serves as the foundational pillar of the SmartTaste AI experience. By leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies, models, and methodologies, we shifted the user paradigm from tedious manual input to intelligent automation. The overarching strategy focused on utilizing advanced computer vision for instant food and drink scanning, paired with large language models to deliver personalized, natural-language dietary coaching. This technical strategy ensured that the AI integration wasn't just a feature, but the core engine driving the application's seamless, minimal UX.

Define

​

Following an intensive phase of qualitative and quantitative research, I transitioned into the Define stage to synthesize our findings into actionable design requirements. By mapping the data gathered from our eight user interviews, usability testing, and numerical data analysis, I pinpointed exactly where user friction existed and what core challenges our audience faced. This careful analysis allowed me to bridge the gap between user pain points—such as the need for accurate, real-time nutritional scanning and holistic guidance—and a highly optimized product strategy.

With a clear problem definition in place, I mapped out the application's overall structure and engineered a robust Information Architecture (IA) to define exactly how users would intuitively navigate and interact with the product. To push the boundaries of what the AI technology could deliver, I then facilitated a "Crazy Eights" ideation session, generating a wide range of rapid, innovative concepts. This gave the team multiple layout and workflow alternatives to critique, compare, and refine, ensuring we collectively landed on the most seamless, high-engagement solution before moving into high-fidelity design.

Sketching

​

Sketching and Paper Prototype

Once the problem space and strategic direction were defined, I began the ideation phase with rapid, low-fidelity sketching. Leveraging my background in fine art and drawing, I explored a wide range of layouts and concepts on paper to map out the application's user flow and information architecture. This creative exploration culminated in a paper prototype of the strongest concept, allowing me to align the design direction with our brand identity, user needs, and business goals before moving into digital wireframes.