Yumkin
How do you make something as complex and serious as food allergies feel approachable, safe — even joyful?
How do you make something as complex and serious as food allergies feel approachable, safe — even joyful? That was the design challenge behind Yumkin, a SaaS platform that personalizes recipes based on users’ allergies, intolerances, and preferences.
The founder Sybilla contacted me to suppert her shapubg the user experience and brand from the ground up, creating a product that people can both trust and fall in love with.
Challenges
People with allergies spend hours checking ingredients, second-guessing substitutions, and worrying about hidden risks. The UX challenge was to turn this stressful, high-cognitive-load task into a seamless flow:
- Help users define their personal dietary boundaries without overwhelm
- Instantly filter and adapt recipes without breaking their trust
- Wrap it all in a brand that feels warm, human, and empowering — not clinical
Process & Approach
Discovery & Strategy
- Interviewed people with allergies and food intolerances to understand their daily struggles and emotional triggers.
- Defined experience principles: clarity, confidence, and delight — guiding every UX and branding decision.
UX & Brand Design
- Created a friendly character mascot (“Yummy”) to personify the brand and reduce the emotional weight of dietary restrictions.
- Designed a visual language of soft shapes, vibrant color accents, and warm typography to signal safety and positivity.
- Crafted a frictionless onboarding flow that translates complex dietary data into a simple, visual “profile”.
- Developed modular design patterns and components in Figma to scale across recipe views, filters, and grocery lists.
- Added transparent ingredient labeling and smart substitutions that explain their reasoning — building credibility.
- Used subtle animations and progress cues to keep users engaged while the system processes personalization logic.
Results & Impact
- Created a cohesive brand and design system that makes Yumkin feel both reliable and delightful.
- Early testers described the experience as “liberating” — shifting their mindset from fear of mistakes to excitement about new meals.
- The distinct brand voice and visual system positioned Yumkin as a standout in a crowded recipe-app landscape, attracting an early beta community.
Key Takeaways
- Emotion matters — especially when dealing with health-related topics. A friendly brand can lower fear and build trust.
- UX isn’t just usability — it’s also how safe, confident, and empowered people feel using your product.
- A clear brand story unifies design decisions and accelerates building loveable, trustworthy products.