User Experience Research Portfolio

Case Studies

The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development came to this research with falling traffic and book sales, with the open question: was the content failing, or was something else.

The read-through rate on Eco Bible told a different story. Seventy-two percent of readers who started the book in 2024 kept going, so the people who found it were staying with it. The trouble was upstream. Eco Bible was acting as a front door that never opened into the room behind it, drawing readers who never learned that ICSD, the organization behind the book, existed at all and a lack of a retention strategy.

Six interviews and a broader survey sorted that audience into three human personas. Elias, a pastoral interpreter, already believes in the mission and just needs material close enough at hand to move from research into a sermon. Marianna, a devotional grounder, wants small, scripturally rooted pieces that fit into a life already full. Blair, a pluralistic seeker, is spiritually active but unaffiliated with any single tradition, and needs a way in that does not ask her to pick one. Three non-human forces, surveillance and censorship, burnout, and disinformation, sit alongside them as design stakeholders whose pressure shapes whether any of this actually gets used.

Each carried a distinct set of frustrations:

Scattered, hard-to-adapt material across too many sources for Elias
Clarity that comes at the cost of the text's sacred weight for Marianna
No welcome mat without picking a single tradition for Blair
Surveillance, profiling, and legal intimidation of advocates from Shadie
Burnout, eco-anxiety, and moral overwhelm eroding practice from the Inner Tempest
Half-truths and manufactured controversy fracturing shared reality from the Whispering Tide

Meet the User Personas

Elias

Pastoral interpreter. Needs proximity, not persuasion.

Faith+Ecology Content serves Elias' sermon and lesson preparation, structured around the holiday calendar

Marianna

Devotional grounder. Wants illumination, not simplification.

Faith+Ecology Content serves Marianna's daily routines as spiritual inspiration

Blair

Pluralistic seeker. Wants a way in without a tradition.

Faith+Ecology Content serves Blair's interests in cross-traditional reading, artistic expression, and the joy of seeing cross-traditional connections in shared wisdom and practice.

*Persona included to understand how to unlock potential users

Shadie

Surveillance and censorship. Watches from inside the platforms meant to carry the message.

Inner Tempest
Burnout and eco-anxiety. Rises from within the very communities doing the work.

Whispering Tide
Disinformation. Doesn't need to win the argument, just make certainty feel naive.

Iconoir-Team-Iconoir-Presentation_edited

Case Study Overview Slides

A downloadable slide version of this case study, built so the ICSD and Eco Bible research can be viewed offline or shared directly with a hiring manager or collaborator who wants the whole story in one file, from the business question through the research phases to the recommendations that came out of them.

Foundational Report

The full foundational UX research report, covering survey and interview findings, the competitive audit of twelve interfaith environmental organizations, persona development, and the design and content recommendations that followed.

Research Plan

The four-phase research plan that carries ICSD from background and competitive analysis through deep-dive survey and interview research into strategy development, laying out the sampling methodology, methods conducted at each phase, and how success was measured.

Full Persona Write-Ups

In-depth profiles for Elias, Marianna, and Blair, alongside the non-human actant personas Shadie, the Inner Tempest of Burnout, and the Whispering Tide of Disinformation, each built from empathy map data, discordant statement analysis, and the systemic forces shaping engagement.

Web Design Actionables

Page-by-page heuristic evaluation findings for ICSD's website, scored against clarity, consistency, accessibility, and cognitive load, with a prioritized remediation agenda carried forward into the site redesign.

Customer Journey Maps

Four-phase journey maps for Elias and Marianna, tracking their path from discovery through engagement to return, built from their roles as the study's primary human personas.

Pictogrammers-Material-Play-protected-content_edited.png

Content Creation Actionables

The content and distribution recommendations sequencing what ICSD should build first, organized around the three practice orientations the interviews surfaced and the discoverability gaps the SEO audit identified.

Research Process

The research moved in four phases.

Phase 1: Background and Initial Insights
This phase built the contextual and competitive ground the rest of the study stood on. Web analytics and Google Trends data established what ICSD's digital footprint already looked like, and a competitive audit placed ICSD against twelve peer interfaith environmental organizations. A heuristic evaluation of the website, a feedback analysis of Amazon reviews and social engagement, an SEO audit, and a trust signals assessment rounded out the picture, alongside a review of Eco Bible's sales and its marketability against comparable titles. The phase closed with a findings briefing delivered to ICSD's stakeholders.

Phase 2: Deep-Dive Research
This is where the primary user research happened. A combined screener and user survey was designed, deployed, and analyzed, returning 44 full respondents. Interview recruitment ran in parallel and proved the most demanding part of the schedule, requiring several rounds of outreach before a viable participant pool came together. Six semi-structured interviews followed, each transcribed and worked through empathy mapping and affinity clustering. The phase closed with a second stakeholder briefing on the survey and behavioral findings.

Phase 3: Strategy Development
Here the qualitative and quantitative findings were brought together into strategic form. Three human personas, Elias the Pastoral Interpreter, Marianna the Devotional Grounder, and Blair the Pluralistic Seeker, were developed alongside three non-human actant personas representing the systemic forces shaping how people actually engage with the material. Journey maps were built for Elias and Marianna, and the findings were translated into two actionable documents, one on website design and interface, one on content strategy.

Phase 4: Reporting
The final phase consolidated everything into the Foundational Research Report and a strategy roadmap, the two deliverables meant to carry ICSD's decisions forward past the engagement itself.

Solution

Eco Bible's declining sales were not a content problem. A 72 percent read-through rate in 2024 shows that readers who find the book stay with it. The trouble sits upstream, at discovery. Paid search brought in 17.4 percent of site traffic over five years but produced the weakest engagement of any channel, a 15.4 second average visit, no recorded key events, and a 5.2 percent return rate. The spend was reaching the wrong audience, not too small an audience. Building persona micro-targeting from the survey and interview data behind Elias, Marianna, and Blair gives that spend a better chance of reaching people whose behavior already signals real interest.

The SEO audit surfaced the same discovery problem from the technical side. Pages fell under Google's 800-word threshold for thin content, landing page headings did not match the words the body text actually used, alt attributes were applied inconsistently, and the site's tag structure was largely absent. Internal linking showed a deeper gap: 226 pages carried links with no anchor text, 152 pages received fewer than ten internal backlinks, and 94 pages had incoming links that told neither users nor search engines what they pointed to. For a site spanning as many traditions, topics, and geographies as ICSD's, a disciplined internal linking structure is what makes that depth findable, not a technical afterthought. The Hebrew and Arabic pages carried their own version of the problem, with translation inconsistencies, missing metadata, and poor hreflang usage that could serve English-language visitors non-English results or the reverse. Correcting these is inexpensive relative to paid acquisition, and it addresses the same discoverability gap that is suppressing organic reach.

Content should follow how people actually practice their faith and ecology, not a generic audience. The interviews surfaced three distinct relationships to the material: vocational, personal and devotional, and cross-traditional. Clergy and educators need a searchable archive organized by scripture and season, something that moves quickly from research to delivery. Devotional users need something that fits an existing rhythm, a monthly printable aligned to the liturgical calendar with one concrete local action attached. Cross-traditional users need entry points that assume no denominational membership, an anthology, a working papers series, an interactive map of related projects.

The blog needs strengthening before it needs expanding. It is already ICSD's strongest engagement channel, and improving its metadata, internal linking, and tagging comes before adding more posts. Content published into an unoptimized structure reaches only the audience already there, not the people searching for what the blog already offers.

Design should account for the connectivity reality the interviews documented. A meaningful share of ICSD's audience relies on mobile access under poor bandwidth. Mobile-first, low-bandwidth design follows directly from that.

Field Notes

Fa-Team-Fontawesome-FontAwesome-Hourglass-Half.512.png

Meal planning apps rarely talk to each other

The market has no shortage of meal planning apps, but few work cohesively across functions. A pantry app doesn't inform a recipe browser; a grocery cart doesn't know what a planner already scheduled. Users jump between a recipe site, a notes app, and a store's own ordering app to get through one week of meals. The apps that do combine functions typically fall short on filtering for health conditions, religious restrictions, and lifestyle routines that stack on top of each other.

Goal:

understand the demographics, preferences, and challenges of food-app users well enough to design a comprehensive planner, benchmark it against a direct competitor (Cooklist), and meet the needs of users whose meal planning requirements are more layered than a single filter can address.

Five recurring frustrations

Meal planning is a time sink. Users spend 20–32% of their free time each week on prep and planning, complicated by diverse family health needs and schedules.
No accountability in food quality. Grocery pickup and delivery often skip transparency on ingredient quality, additives, or certifications.
Pantry tracking is unmanageable. Users want an efficient way to avoid running out of essentials without checking inventory by hand.
Meal rotation stalls out. Adding new meals within budget, using ingredients on hand, takes more effort than it should.
Inter-app navigation is a hassle. Users default to notes and photos over apps they find confusing, and distrust auto-dictation accuracy.

Meet the User Personas

Jessica

Working mom of three. Food is time and money.

Spends 32% of her free time involved in meal planning to cooking activities each week.

Lisa

Empty nester. Food is medicine, memory.

Spends 24% of her free time involved in meal planning to cooking activities each week.

Robert

Budget professional. Food is security.

Spends 20% of his free time involved in meal planning to cooking activities each week.

Mirage Lake

Non-human stakeholder. Bears the runoff.

Case Study Slides

A condensed, visual walkthrough of the Meal Maven project built for quick review, moving from the problem space through the research process to the design recommendations that came out of it.

Open

Exploratory Research Report

The full exploratory and generative UX research report, covering survey and interview findings, the competitor audit of Jow and Cooklist, persona development, and the design principles and feature priorities that followed.

Open

Usability Research Report

The preliminary usability research report, containing so far the lo-fi analysis.

Open

Icons8-Ios7-Maps-Define-Location.512.png

Exploratory Research Design

It scoped a 15-response survey and ten interviews rather than assuming the shape of the problem, and the report that followed carried those findings forward into the personas and the assumptions the structural work later had to answer to.

Open

Usability Testing Research Design

The usability testing research plan that carries Meal Maven from exploratory research into evaluative testing, laying out the moderated low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototype studies, the competitor benchmark against Cooklist, and how success will be measured.

Open

Full Persona Write-Ups

In-depth profiles for Jessica, Lisa, Robert, and the non-human stakeholder Mirage Lake, each built out with habits, frustrations, problem and hypothesis statements, and Meal Maven's value proposition for them.

Open

Pictogrammers-Material-Sign-direction.512.png

Task Map

Flow diagrams for the five core task journeys tested in the app: adding to the shopping list, updating the planner, browsing recipes, assessing what's on hand, and cooking, each marked with its counted opportunities for user error.

Open

Journey Map

A four-phase map of Jessica's week, tracking staples, planning and searching recipes, picking up groceries, and cooking, built from her role as the project's primary user persona.

Open

Research Process

Research ran solo, part-time, on a $330 tooling budget, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods: a screener and attitudinal survey, structured interviews, empathy and affinity mapping, persona synthesis, journey and task mapping, a competitive audit, a moderated open card sort, and two rounds of usability testing.

15 survey respondents screened
10 structured interviews (4 men, 4 women, 1 non-binary)
3 in-person card-sort participants
5 moderated usability-test participants

What the Assumptions Missed

Going in, I assumed
Key user groups would be variations on parents with children at home
Food-app users are motivated mainly by time, health, or affordability, in isolation
Generations would be fairly static in habits, Baby Boomers a marginal, highly structured group
Recipe variety and customizability would be the main way apps differentiate

Consumer relationships to grocery stores were utilitarian in nature.

A more limited view of users and what they wanted and who they were.

The research challenged that
Traveling professionals and younger generations face unique meal-planning challenges and needs of their own, distinct from parents of kids at home, or empty-nesters
A single person moves between user groups over their life as circumstances change
Baby Boomers took a more flexible, reactive approach than expected
Cohesive synergy between functions, not recipe variety alone, drove desirability

Both the place of grocery stores and the act of shopping are social activities, and joined with entanglements with loyalty and values.

Choices in the whole user journey of meal planning to cooking are entangled with indirect users who shape the whole journey from preferences, health needs, preferences, social engagements to creating memories, mutually shaped schedule constraints, etc.

Survey, Interviews, and Competitive Audit

The screener survey (n=15) established who was in the room before the interviews (n=10) asked why. Most respondents already cook most of their own meals and use at least one food app, so the sample skewed toward people with real meal-planning habits to describe, not passive app browsers.

53% already use a cookbook/recipe-keeper app
91% cite health or diet as the top factor in choosing meals
80% cook Americana/American fare most of the week
6/10 interviewees named family as a core personal value

Interview themes: how and when planning happens

Most households split labor: one partner owns shopping and planning, the other assists
Planning philosophies ranged from reactive and minimalist to bulk-prep to creativity-driven
Chalkboards, store apps, and shared lists do the coordinating that a single app doesn't yet
Deals, coupons, and discount-hunting are a recurring, almost sport-like habit
Shopping itself carries social and sensory value: smells, colors, and human contact at checkout
The three identified user groups diverge primarily from their three incompatible relationships to food, not merely life stage or family size demographics. This is why no single feature set serves all three equally.
Interesting workarounds and real barriers exist around each task in the meal planning journey, which are invisible to the grocery stores, meal planners, and other entities involved in the process.
- Neighbor to neighbor coordination of meal plans among seniors/empty-nesters
- Using grocery apps not for placing order but storing a shopping list
- YouTube videos for cooking directions instead of reading, either for company or sight difficulties
- Pinterest boards as cookbooks, but whose trust with users have been betrayed from majority of content is not Ad-based or AI-generated, or forces users to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll down to the relevant bits of a receipe.

Scoping the competitive audit
A 2×2 landscape mapped candidates on focused-vs-multi functionality and social/in-store-vs-remote behavior, then narrowed by search customization against cooking-context awareness (pantry, appliances, location). That narrowed the field from a dozen categories, meal kits, delivery apps, nutrition trackers, cookbook sites, to two direct competitors worth a full deep-dive: Jow and Cooklist.

Card sort, task map, journey map

Structure before screens
A moderated open card sort validated the navigation bar's structure against the primary user journey, and surfaced expectations shaped by tools people already used, like Outlook calendars: a monthly view up front, a plan that doesn't have to start on a Monday, and the ability to add missing pantry ingredients from the recipe page itself, not only from the planner.

Track staples → Check calendar → Search recipes → Assess pantry, order what's missing → Curbside pickup / communicate plan → Prepare and cook

Usability testing, lo-fi round

Where the prototype broke down
Five participants worked a remote, moderated study across five task journeys: Add to List (T1), Updating the Planner (T2), Browsing Recipes (T3), Finalizing the List (T4), and Cooking (T5). System Usability Scale ratings climbed as the session went on, likely from growing familiarity rather than genuinely improving usability, so the study leaned on error and timing data to find where the design actually broke down.

Solution

Design principles

Eight commitments, tested against all three personas

Accessibility
Larger text, high-contrast color, and text-to-speech support Jessica's need for quick navigation and Lisa's reliance on audio and visual cues.

Efficiency
Pantry inventory, recipe suggestions, and grocery lists live in one app instead of four, cutting the time Jessica spends toggling between tools.

Personalization
AI-assisted recipe suggestions tailored to dietary needs, seasonal produce, and available kitchen equipment.

Transparency
Ingredient sourcing and pricing visible at the point of choice, so Jessica, Lisa, and Robert can each decide with confidence.

Adaptability
The app evolves with a user's changing life stage, from Jessica's shifting family schedule to Robert's travel demands.

Inclusivity
A diverse range of recipes, dietary accommodations, and ethically sourced ingredients, addressing needs stated by every persona.

Community & inspiration
Shared recipes, meal plans, and curated cooking videos, for users who want new ideas without gambling on an unknown dish.

Non-human stakeholder
Sourcing filters and reusable-container prompts respond to the watershed impact surfaced by the Mirage Lake persona.

Feature roadmap

Design priorities, scored by value and effort
A 2×2 prioritization matrix scored each design challenge surfaced in research on user value against ease of design, sorting them into three horizons.

Quick wins
Brand loyalty & pantry basics
Save multiple stores by loyalty, convenience, and proximity
Filter for locally sourced, sustainable, or eco-conscious items
Leftover-rescue recipe suggestions and one-pot filter tags
"Report ingredient issue" flag on the shopping list and cart
Photo, barcode, or receipt-based pantry updates

Medium-term
Local sourcing & seasonal cooking
Recipes built around garden, farmers'-market, and seasonal finds
Ingredient amounts that scale to the number of people served
Shared dinners and ingredient-borrowing among neighbors
Reminders to use ingredients before they expire

Long-term innovation
Location-aware, AI-assisted planning
Recipe suggestions built from what's in-stock at nearby stores
An AI assistant that plans around location, calendar, and diet at once
Substitution recommendations when a planned ingredient is unavailable
Addressing food deserts and affordable gluten-free access

Where Meal Maven Closes Competitive Gaps

Possessing all these capabilities:

Search recipes by available kitchen equipment
Search recipes around on-hand pantry ingredients
Shelf-stable and flexible-ingredient reicipes
Family-sharable shopping list
Split ingredient list across multiple grocers' carts
Select stores by values, proximity, or route
Neurodiverse-friendly cook mode, tabbed steps

Jow (review rating 3.7, $) led on cooking-video demos and budget-based menus but couldn't add non-food items to cart or filter by more than one diet at once. Cooklist (4.2, $$$) led on pantry-aware cook mode but wasn't desktop-friendly and wouldn't hold more than one user's goals at a time. Meal Maven's opportunity sat in the seam between them: cohesive functionality with layered filtering.

Core Functionalities of Meal Maven

Recipe browser with cross-filtering for diet, allergy, and religious restrictions
Cookbook and manager, with a neurodiverse-friendly cook mode
Shared calendar of planned meals, synced across a household
Shopping list exportable to multiple grocers' cart apps
Pantry tracker with expiration reminders and preservation advice

Branding

While more of a UXD facet, branding design was informed from personas distinguishing habits and values, shaping color scheme and tagline.

"Connect, Cook, and Thrive Together." The name tested against both personas' values: Jessica's need for a dependable, organized approach; Lisa's appreciation for expertise and sophistication; Robert's preference for an authoritative, efficient tool, and won out over the alternative, "Kitchen Sync," on all three.

Field Notes