Feastly
Helping friends create concrete dinner plans
My Role
UX Design, UX Research
Timeline
4 Weeks
Context
"We should get dinner soon" is a familiar promise among friends — and one that rarely becomes a plan. Coordinating a single dinner means aligning busy schedules, picking a spot that works, accommodating different budgets and dietary needs, and holding it together in a group chat where the important details scroll away. The effort usually outlives the intention and the result is a group of people who genuinely want to see each other, and don't.
Design challenge
How might we help a group of friends turn the intention to eat together into a decision with concrete plans?
Research
I started with housemates. Co-living groups already share a kitchen, a location, and constant opportunities to eat together. I surveyed 28 young adults living in shared homes across the U.S. to explore habits, pain points, and emotional needs around communal meals.
68%
said they rarely eat with housemates due to timing conflicts.
29%
said differing food preferences stop them from eating together.
82%
wish they had more shared meals as a house.
71%
of 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.
25%
noted that planning tended to fall on one person, and doing it every time got tiring.
Key insights
Group chats create conversation and not commitment
Most users already had a place to talk, but not a clear system for deciding. Meal plans often became scattered across messages, making it hard to know who was joining, what was chosen, or whether the plan was final.
Users wanted connection, but not more coordination work
Many respondents valued the idea of shared meals, but the effort of planning often outweighed the benefit. This revealed an opportunity to reduce the planning burden while preserving the social value of eating together.
Differing preferences needed to be handled without turning dinner into a debate
Food preferences were a barrier, but adding more negotiation tools could make planning feel heavier. The solution needed to support preferences without creating endless back-and-forth discussion.
The planner burns out
When group meals happened, it was usually because one person took them on: picking a time, chasing replies, finding a place that worked for everyone. Eight respondents brought this up on their own, describing the role as tiring enough that they’d stopped doing it. The group didn’t lack interest. It relied on one person’s energy, and that energy ran out.
Ideation
Replacing the group chat
My first concept borrowed a behavior from BeReal: one low-pressure prompt, sent at the same time every day to everyone in the house. Answers landed in one place instead of scattering across a chat, and Feastly turned them into a proposed plan, so no one had to be the planner. Each person only had to engage once a day, and their timing and food preferences would not get lost in conversation.
Ending the meal with a photo
To help the night turn into a positive shared memory, I decided to prompt the group to take a photo at the end of their dinner. Choosing to photograph a positive experience increases people’s engagement with it and their enjoyment of it (Diehl, Zauberman & Barasch, 2016). The photos are saved to a shared space where the group can look back on past dinners together.
Expanding the scope from housemates to friends anywhere
Since I identified coordination was the main point of friction, I realized that this is an app that even people who don’t live together could use. Friends scattered throughout the city may have the same desire to connect, and face the same barriers I identified among housemates. This reframed the audience for Feastly. Instead of designing around one type of group, I expanded the scope so each group could decide how often they wanted to eat together.
Introducing Feastly
Feastly does the planning so the group doesn't have to. It asks on the group's own schedule, collects a few quick answers, and proposes one plan that shows its reasoning. Everyone still decides for themselves. The video showcases the full flow, followed by a breakdown of each screen in the sections below.
Feastly initiates the plan
Someone usually has to be the one who asks. In Feastly, the cadence the group chose does the asking. On the agreed night, everyone gets the same question at once: Dinner together? Nobody has to start it, and the intention becomes an invitation everyone can answer with one tap.
Four quick questions replace the back-and-forth of a group chat
Instead of a long thread, each person answers four questions (time, place, budget, cuisine), one per screen. The inputs keep preferences quiet so they don't become a debate. Time is multi-select to maximize overlap. Budget works as a ceiling (Feastly won't suggest anything above the group's lowest budget), so nobody has to explain what they can afford.
Feastly chases the replies and proposes one plan
The home card shows who's in and who hasn't answered, and Feastly sends the nudges. Once everyone has answered, Feastly finds the overlap and proposes a single plan so no one else has to, showing the tradeoff (Maya can't make 7:00 PM). Saying yes stays a separate, deliberate tap.
The plan holds, and it lives in one place
Anyone can suggest a different time or spot, but nothing changes unless the group agrees, so a disagreement adjusts the plan instead of reopening it. The confirmed plan (time, spot, cost, who's coming, directions) sits on one screen, so nobody has to scroll back through the chat.
Shared dinner photos give the group a reason to say yes next time
After dinner, a photo goes into the group's Memories on the home screen. A record of dinners that actually happened makes the next invitation easier to accept.
