Feastly
Planning shared meals with housemates made easier
My Role
UX Design, UX Research
Timeline
3 Weeks
Tools
Figma
Context
Feastly aims to help young adults living in shared homes easily plan and decide on communal dinners. In many cultures, dinner is more than just food — it’s a moment of connection that helps build a sense of home. Living with housemates can be fun, but many young adults struggle to coordinate shared meals due to busy schedules. As a result, shared meals occur less often, diminishing the sense of belonging and togetherness that makes co-living meaningful.
How might we design a dinner planning experience that simplifies scheduling and decision-making among housemates?
Research
Method: Surveyed 54 young adults living in shared homes across the U.S to explore habits, pain points, and emotional needs around communal meals.
Group chat stress: 72% users relied on group chats to coordinate meals, but found it frustrating to keep track of plans as conversations often shifted topics before any decisions were finalized.
Defining the problem
Housemates experience decision fatigue and coordination breakdown when planning shared meals.
Ideation
Focusing on a poll experience for planning
Many respondents relied on group chats, yet described them as overwhelming and unproductive. This revealed that young adults may engage more consistently with lightweight, time-bound prompts than with open-ended coordination. The concept of Feastly became a daily-poll that everyone in the house/group takes and by a certain time-limit, the results are revealed and a choice is made for everyone! The idea is that by limiting the decision window and reducing steps, the experience of planning can skip the inefficient group-chat mess altogether.
I drew inspiration from apps like BeReal, which encourages once-a-day participation through a simple, predictable interaction. Its popularity suggests that many young adults are already comfortable engaging with lightweight daily prompts --especially when the interaction is low=pressure and socially relevant.
Introducing Feastly, your dinner planning companion that makes it easier for housemates to decide what’s for dinner and who’s joining.
Daily DInner Poll
The daily dinner poll replaces messy group chat back-and-forth with a single, centralized space where housemates can quickly share their availability and meal preferences.
Confirmation and Autonomy
To keep planning flexible and low-pressure, Feastly gives users one final chance to confirm their participation after the poll results are finalized. Once confirmed, they’re taken to a shared dinner details page where they can choose or update the location and leave comments to coordinate last-minute details.
Personalization
Because differing food preferences were a key barrier to shared meals, I designed a lightweight preference system that lets users easily tailor the poll options they receive.
Key Design Decisions
Prioritized action over optimization
Limited steps to reduce cognitive load
Introduced randomness to prevent decision paralysis
Less focus on negotiation features to maintain momentum
Reflection
This project focused on quickly transforming insights into a functional prototype, so formal user testing was not included in this phase. Future testing with real housemates would help validate the flow, measure engagement, and uncover opportunities to make Feastly feel even more natural and collaborative.
Next Steps
It would be beneficial to conduct usability testing with small groups of housemates to observe how they engage with the daily poll and decision-making flow. In addition, there is value in adding lightweight social features, such as linking with social media and image sharing.
Thank you for reading!