Epicurious iOS App

Renowned food websites BonAppetit.com and Epicurious.com relaunched their combined library of 70,000 recipes in the form of a mobile app in November  2022.

My Role:

I was part of the team of 2 designers who created the wireframing, UX, and visual designs, and adapted all designs to be responsive across iOS devices.

Developed the design system, color palette, and type styles, and collaborated closely with editorial, product, engineering, and marketing on the design of the homepage, search, video, recipe saving, community features, and overall creative direction.

Project Goals

The relaunched iOS app brought together over 70,000 recipes from the Condé Nast food brands: Epicurious, Bon Appétit, and Gourmet. The app aggregates recipes from other Condé Nast brands to grow a central recipe library. This relaunch also marked a move to a subscription product with enhanced capabilities.

Personalization and Preferences

 
Users can set dietary preferences during onboarding which will drive their recipe discovery experience. Whether Vegan or Keto, users’ dietary needs can power their daily home screen and search experience. This type of personalization is a Condé Nast first.

Increased Engagement and Exploration

Visual storytelling using galleries on the home screen to incorporate moving images and more impactful use of Epicurious’ beautiful food photography. This was part of our OKR to improve time spent on the app.

Utility and Search


With improved engagement tools to help users discover recipes that are perfect for them, the app has a focus on utility. Advanced filters (by diets, meal type, seasons, etc.) are elevated for users who know what they're looking for and tag pages are surfaced on the search screen for a more passive experience.

Year 2 improvements:

Visual Galleries Experience

Design and UI update - bigger, full bleed, moving images vs thumbnail view
Improved User Experience for Galleries

Year 2 improvements:

Vertical Video Integration

Implemented a new feature that didn't previously exist on the app: integrating with the third-party API Firework to deliver native vertical video.
Evolved our premium and utility experience by adding videos to our app to provide an engaging way for users to explore our recipe archive and get inspired to cook.
Videos are strategically mobile-native, vertical, short, snackable how-to type videos, and instructional food videos that are understandable without sound.

Goals and Key Results

Monthly engaged minutes grew 21% (significantly exceeding 10% target - 3:46 to 4:09)

Video users spent 3x more time in app than typical users

Year 2 improvements:

Subscription Flow Streamline

Along with Content Design, MarTech, and Product, we designed a standardized approach to the in-app subscription flow, free trial, and paywall screens.

Goals and Key Results

The average session duration of users viewing galleries in the app is 7 minutes and 16 seconds.

By improving the visual treatment and immersive experience for galleries, we hoped to get more users into galleries from the home screen, and this will help us increase our overall app session duration.

Year 2 Overall Goals and Key Results

Increased our overall numbers in Audience & Engagement: We reached a sizable audience of over 600K users while generating meaningful engagement (Sessions: 3M+ Screen Views: 17M+ Recipe Saves: 1M+, ultimately driving consumer revenue over $1.4M.

Behind the Scenes

Design System

I designed the components for this app from scratch, as it did not fall into the existing Verso design system used by the rest of Conde Nast’s websites.

Building reusable, scalable, responsive components was key to keeping the image-laden app light on load time.

I created specifications (before AI specs existed on Figma) for the entire app and adapted them across iOS device sizes. I also took part in the visual QA towards the end of the development process.