Tendr
Making recipe discovery faster, playful, and easier to act on.
Background & Mission
TENDR was a quarter-long team project focused on redesigning a dormant recipe discovery app concept. We built on its swipe-based discovery mechanic to help users decide what to cook based on their ingredients, time, budget, and personal needs.
Our research found that while many users want to cook more or improve their skills, the process of choosing recipes, shopping for groceries, and gathering ingredients can quickly become overwhelming. We reframed Tendr around reducing this decision fatigue and making it so that users can use it as a tool to start cooking.
Role
UX Research & Designer
• Analyzed competitive market
• Conducted usability testing
• Built hi-fi AI prototype
Timeline
Sep. 2025 - Dec. 2025
My Contributions
In short, we found that users often experience a unwillingness to actually cook due to multitude of factors, such as grocery shopping, assembling ingredients, and other obstacles, showing that taking action into actually cooking can quickly become overwhelming. We then framed the challenge around one question:
Impact
After prototyping and testing our reimagined features, this project helped me validate how research can help turn an existing concept into a clearer product direction. While the original idea had potential, it was limited by a lack of user research, testing, and design refinement and commitment to it's functionality.
After redesigning and testing for validation, I could tell that these new features foster a path to turn the idea of cooking into a platform that can help plan, save, and actually cook.