Seasonal - Isabel Mercedes Parini

Seasonal

An app designed to encourage the consumption of seasonal food.

Developed as the final Capstone Project of DesignLab’s UX Design Bootcamp, Seasonal explores how clear information architecture, simple navigation, and a clean visual system can help users discover and select seasonal ingredients throughout the year.

View Redesign Prototype

Context

Role: UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Type: End‑to‑end mobile app — individual project
Duration: 1 month
Skills: Figma, Adobe XD, InVision, Illustrator, Maze / Redesign: Figma
Year: 2020 original design | 2026 redesign

Project Overview

Seasonal is a mobile app concept designed to help users make healthier, more sustainable food choices by highlighting ingredients that are in season throughout the year. The project focuses on clear information architecture, intuitive navigation, and a clean visual system that supports quick, everyday decision‑making.

Brief

Seasonal was developed as a capstone assignment in which students were asked to design a complete mobile app concept, with full freedom to choose its purpose. I chose to focus on seasonal food because of its environmental benefits and growing relevance among younger, eco‑conscious audiences. As noted in the project background, eating locally produced food reduces CO₂ emissions and often results in healthier, tastier ingredients due to fewer pesticides and fertilizers .

The app aims to make seasonal food information more accessible and engaging by allowing users to explore ingredients by season, check whether a food is currently in season, and discover creative recipes based on fresh, locally available produce. The brief also included creating a new brand identity for the app and designing a responsive landing page to present its core features. Seasonal ultimately emerged as a tool that supports ecological eating through clear information design and an intuitive mobile experience.

Process

The design process began with a research ramp‑up to understand how people currently engage with seasonal food and what might motivate them to make more ecological choices. I conducted UX research that included desk research and a remote questionnaire, gathering insights from real users about their habits, challenges, and expectations. These findings led to the creation of a guiding persona that represented the app’s core audience and helped clarify the tasks users needed to accomplish.

Using the persona as a reference point, I first mapped out task flows and user flows to understand how users would move through the app and complete essential actions, such as checking whether a food is seasonal, exploring ingredients by season, or discovering recipes. These flows helped clarify the functional requirements, which I organized into a feature roadmap to distinguish core features from those that could be introduced later. Once the priorities were defined, I created a sitemap to establish the navigation structure and content hierarchy. Only after this foundation was in place did I move on to creating the wireframes, translating the structure into clear, intuitive layouts.

With the structure defined, I moved into ideation and layout exploration. I created wireframes that outlined the placement and hierarchy of content across the main screens, ensuring clarity and simplicity. To shape the visual direction, I developed a moodboard that captured the fresh, ecological tone of the concept. This informed the creation of a brand style tile and a UI kit, which established the app’s core visual elements and ensured consistency across screens.

These foundations guided the transition into high‑fidelity mockups, where the interface took its final form through clean typography, soft color accents, and a modern, minimal aesthetic that supports quick, everyday use.

Prototype

The prototype brings the app’s structure and visual direction together into an interactive, testable experience. I built two separate prototypes in InVision — one for the wireframes and one for the high‑fidelity mockups — allowing me to evaluate usability at each stage of the design process. These prototypes included the core screens defined earlier: seasonal ingredient lists, detailed ingredient pages, and a simple browsing flow that helps users quickly understand what’s fresh and available.

To validate the design and refine the user experience, I tested both prototypes with real users through Maze. The tests focused on clarity, navigation, and task completion, particularly around checking whether a food is seasonal, exploring ingredients by season, and accessing recipe suggestions. The insights gathered from Maze guided targeted adjustments to the flow, layout, and interaction details, ensuring the final experience felt intuitive, efficient, and easy to use.

Clean typography, soft color accents, and consistent spacing support clarity and readability throughout the interface. The prototype demonstrates how users can explore seasonal foods with minimal friction, making everyday ecological choices feel simple and accessible.

Outcome

Seasonal showcases my ability to design clear, purpose‑driven mobile interfaces with a strong focus on information structure and usability. It reflects a user‑centered approach, thoughtful visual design, and the ability to translate research insights into a coherent, accessible digital experience. As a capstone project, it highlights my capability to define a concept from scratch and carry it through research, structure, branding, prototyping, and refinement.

A new iteration of Seasonal is currently in progress, focusing on a complete redesign using Figma for both the mockups and the interactive prototype. This updated version aims to modernize the visual system, streamline interactions, and consolidate the workflow into a single tool for greater consistency and efficiency.

Redesign

The completed redesign of Seasonal modernizes the app’s visual identity and user interface while preserving its original purpose of promoting ecological eating. The updated version features a refreshed color palette, refined typography, and contemporary UI patterns that enhance clarity and usability.

All design and prototyping were executed in Figma, allowing for a cohesive workflow and precise interaction design. The result is a cleaner, more balanced visual system that feels current, intuitive, and consistent across screens — reinforcing the app’s focus on simplicity, accessibility, and sustainable living.