Greener
October 2025–January 2026
Minimizing negative perceptions about sustainable eating with flexible and budget friendly grocery suggestions.
Scope:
Concept Development
UX research
Design
Prototyping
Vibecoding
Context:
Mobile app
Nutrition
Sustainability
Problem
Sustainability and nutrition are seen as expensive, time consuming, and overwhelming.
91% of users report feeling guilt around their food habits.
Making better choices feels like a luxury when budgets and schedules are already at their limit, and navigating conversations around food habits often demands too much from people who are already stretched thin.
Goal Statement
Give people a way to do just a little better within their real circumstances, and make that feel worth celebrating.
Outcome
A mobile app that helps users make small, budget-conscious swaps in their grocery choices, showing the compounded impact of those swaps over time without pressure, guilt, or the need to be perfect.
72% of users stated interest following initial demo, with 85% stating special interest in personalized product suggestions.
Discover
Gotta eat to live, gotta live to eat
Research shows that above all else, people are doing what they know to be the best they can.
They're tired, and the framing of these conversations treat socioeconomic realities and cultural perception as a choice or personal shortcoming.
Literature review
A comprehensive literature review on nutrition and food sustainability revealed three consistent themes.
These would serve as the foundation of all design decisions moving forward.
Research Findings
Cost
Consumer culture has made expensive synonymous with better, causing the assumption that you have to spend more to eat better.
Labor
When you already assume the better option costs more, researching it feels like an additional problem and adds mental and emotional labor.
Perception
The rhetoric surrounding sustainability is commonly built around sacrifice and failure, prematurely shutting people down.
Expert interviews surfaced this consistently. Guilt tripping has a boomerang effect, producing no change or actively negative outcomes.
"Sustainability is a need proven by science. The public dispute is all about communication."
"Consider the lens of 'Ok, you failed, now what?' Maybe the target audience is people who feel ashamed and don't know how to come back."
— Expert in Organization and Environmental Rhetoric
User validation
How does the average person think about sustainable eating?
I ran two surveys across 92 total respondents.
Alongside this were four in-depth expert interviews with academics, nutritionists, and community sustainability organizations.
said they think about sustainability sometimes, and act when there's an obvious opportunity.
~90% think about it at least occasionally
listed price as the single biggest factor in their food choices
said convenience shapes their diet more than anything else.
reported feeling some level of guilt, shame, or judgment about their food choices.
believe that sustainable eating is expensive.
believe it requires sacrificing time and convenience.
Core pain points
The research revealed my core goals for the product.
Most sustainability messaging assumes ideal circumstances. without providing alternative options .
Convenience is often the only realistic option, but nothing helps users make the best of it.
Pass/fail goal frameworks make progress feel binary and failure feel inevitable.
Defining the user
The user persona placed what I'd discovered into context and define the core goals moving into ideation.
Sam, 26
Full-time student + full-time job
"I know I should eat better and be more conscious about it. But by the time I'm done with everything, I just grab whatever's there."
I don't have the time or energy to figure out what the 'right' choice even is."
Goals
Convenient meals that don't require major sacrifice
Sustainable habit that make sense for him
Save money without giving up time
Choose the best options when access is limited
Celebrate small wins
Pain Points
Strict budget makes sustainable options feel inaccessible.
Guilt when convenience wins.
Juggling multiple apps that each only solve a singular need
Generic tips that don't account for his budget or schedule
No way to compare options quickly when he's out
People already want to do better, I need to make it easy
How might we help users make small, meaningful improvements without adding to their cognitive load?
Define
Why current apps don't solve it
Nutrition apps alone can only solve part of the problem. Many of these tools only address one part of the problem, or just add more tracking, more judgment, and more opportunity to fail.
market sentiments
40% of users who had previously used a nutrition app stopped due to loss of interest or relevance.
Competitive analysis to identify target market gaps
Design principles
Based on the research, I set 3 principles for every layer of the design.
Flexibility
Features need to adapt to real life circumstances without requiring perfection.
Simplicity
Only information that directly pertains to the user should be shown, anything else is visual clutter.
Balance
Everything should prioritize the balance of cost and convenience without inherently requiring sacrifice.
Key features
A prioritization grid determined my MVP features.
Scan and compare
Barcode scanner for quick, in the moment decisions.
Smart lists
List building that can be optimized for cost, sustainability, or a customizable balance.
Suggest and swap
Product swaps compare similar products that vary in price and sustainability.
Interaction Flows
Design
Not perfect, just greener
A system of features designed around real life, not ideal conditions
Greener addresses the most common barriers within users' lives. Real-time comparisons, one-tap swaps, and a tone that treats any improvement as progress.
Low stakes, high impact
Onboarding
A short onboarding quiz collecting dietary preferences, monthly budget, and sustainability goals to power the personalization engine right off the bat.
Options to continue as guest keep the experience low pressure and ensure that convenient features such as "scan and compare" are accessible right off the bat.
Progress isn't linear
See your progress compound
A simple chart on the home screen frames every choice as movement toward being Greener.
Any swap improves your baseline. There's no floor to fail through.
Pass/fail goal frameworks make progress feel binary and failure feel inevitable, so users need evidence that small choices have momentum that's adding up over time.
76.6% said they value insight visualization in apps they frequent.
flexibility and balance
Lists built for flexibility
Smart lists suggest swaps and alternatives, ranking similar product along a dynamic scale that balances users' budget and sustainability.
No option is wrong, you just pick what works best for you,
Users didn't have a quick way to evaluate their options against cost and sustainability at the same time.
In early feedback sessions, 85.1% stated personalized grocery suggestions had the most positive impact on their sustainability habits.
Conevenience is crucial
Compromise doesn't mean giving up.
Scan and compare measures any two products side by side across sustainability, nutrition, and cost in order to help users still know their best options in limited selections.
Convenience stops like gas stations, vending machines, unplanned bites, etc. are where users feel the most guilt and have the fewest tools to help them.
Vibecoding
I was interested in testing the capabilities of AI tools that would allow me to make a more developed prototype and better understand the technical limitations of my goals.
I used Figma's MCP integration with Cursor to test how the scanner, list logic, and goal balancing would potentially function.
Impact
Outcome
Small choices compound
The product swaps and progress visualizations empower users to reach their goals while allowing for socioeconomic fluctuations and day to day inconsistencies. see real impact through small changes.
Outcome
72%
interest from users following initial demo
Adoption
85%
preference for personalized suggestions over other proposed features
Engagement
Moving forward
01
Usability testing
Validate the core interactions for the scanner and list building before expanding scope.
02
Refine prototype
Replace mock data with a stable API integration and run initial user testing.
03
Build out V2 features
Personalized recipes, pantry inventory, and community accountability.