Samsung

Drove the complete product design lifecycle—from early discovery and journey mapping to detailed interaction design and post-launch iteration—crafting cohesive experiences through wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity visuals.

Partnered with PMs and engineers to define and evolve product strategy, shaping roadmaps, prioritization, and launch sequencing to maximize impact and align with company vision.

Synthesized qualitative and quantitative research findings into design opportunities, using insights to guide product direction and validate key design hypotheses.

Shipped continuous design iterations based on analytics and user feedback, driving measurable improvements in engagement, retention, and conversion metrics.

My Role

Team Composition:

4 iOS, Android & Web Developers • 2 Designers • 2 PMs • 2 QA Engineers • 1 UX Researcher • 1 Data Analyst

Worked collaboratively across PM, engineering, and research teams to deliver consistent, high-quality product experiences at scale.

Hosted weekly design critiques to align direction, foster collaboration, and maintain design excellence across multiple initiatives.

Facilitated collaborative workshops with stakeholders to clarify objectives, align priorities, and define the scope for new initiatives and feature launches.

User Journey Mapping

Challenge

At launch, Samsung Food provided robust utility features—saving, discovering, and organizing recipes—but lacked meaningful social interaction, which limited organic growth and community building.

I identified a core opportunity: Transform recipe sharing into a social experience that drives daily engagement and habit formation.

• Low interaction between users.

• No clear pathways for community participation.

• Limited discoverability of user-generated content.

Key design challenges:

UX Diagrams

User Story Mapping & Ideation

Community Posts

Objective

• Introduce core social capabilities that enable users to interact with each other for the first time.

Solutions

• Community Feed: Aggregated posts from all communities in a single tab.

• Create a Post: Added a flow to create a message, choose a community to post into, attach recipes, and upload photos.

• Reply to Posts: Closed the habit loop—browse (trigger), post (action), receive replies (reward).

Insights from Launch

• Private communities drove higher engagement, especially photo posts.

• Public communities had more anonymous Q&A interactions.

• Social habit loops worked, but discoverability and onboarding lagged.

Iteration 2: Enhancing Discoverability & Entry Points

To increase engagement, I lowered friction and integrated posting into existing user flows.

Design Improvements

• Floating Action Button (FAB) on Home Feed & Community Tabs to prompt more post creation.

• Recipe Page Integration – attach recipes directly.

• Recipe Reviews → Posts – convert existing behaviors into social actions.

• External Sharing to drive off-platform engagement.

• Likes & Notifications to reinforce triggers and rewards.

• Centralized Activity Feed to make all content more discoverable.

Results

📈 Significant increase in WAU interacting with posts via the Home Feed.

✨ Recipe reviews became a key low-friction entry point for social activity.

🔔 Notifications successfully closed the engagement loop, driving return visits.

Iteration 3: Deepening Social Interaction

To sustain engagement, I designed deeper interaction patterns:

• User Profiles for managing your shared content and creating follow relationships for increased content customization for consumption, creating a social graph and greater network effects for product growth.

• Reply to Recipe Reviews with text, recipes, or photos.

• Like Recipe Reviews and Replies to reward contributions.

• View Who Liked a post to build social validation.

• Push Notifications for interactions, increasing re-engagement.

These enhancements transformed Samsung Food into a two-way communication platform where posting, replying, liking, and following became core user habits.

Outcomes & Impact

Engagement & Growth

• Communities became a central hub of daily activity, with recipe reviews and posts driving consistent engagement.

• Notifications and likes improved return frequency and session length.

• Seamless entry points boosted content creation rates.

• User Profiles enhanced content relevancy and engagement through more meaningful connections

Future opportunities include:

Strategic Value

• Strengthened integration within the Samsung ecosystem.

• Increased retention through social stickiness and habit loops.

• Enabled deeper engagement with connected kitchen devices like Samsung Smart Refrigerators.

This project was a turning point in evolving Samsung Food from a recipe utility into a social ecosystem for home cooks. By systematically applying habit-building frameworks—trigger, action, reward—I drove meaningful increases in engagement, community growth, and retention.

The kitchen is where people connect. Samsung Food’s design turned that connection digital—making food not just something users cook, but something they share, talk about, and celebrate together.

Reflection

• Enriching social interactions with real-time features (e.g., live cooking groups).

• Deeper personalization via food genome data and appliance integration.

• Expanding community admin tools to seed and sustain engagement.