LIWEI JIANG
From 2021 - Now
UX Design
Instructor: Rahaf Alharbi
Pratt Institute, 2025
Allrecipes is a long-established recipe platform built around user generated content and community contribution. Beyond serving as a recipe database, it functions as a social knowledge space where home cooks share experiences, adaptations, and personal techniques through reviews and comments. While this community driven model has been a key strength of the platform, its scale and organic growth over time have also introduced challenges around navigation clarity, content hierarchy, and discoverability, particularly for users attempting to move between inspiration, instruction, and community interaction.
When we re-evaluated the core value of the website itself, we discovered that Allrecipes—as the largest user generated content recipe platform—had placed its community at a lower priority. The current site fails to showcase its most valuable asset, and the scope of this project will be to redesign the website while restoring it as a social space for cooks to connect.
Understanding user expectations around navigation.
We took 25 representative and commonly used subcategories from the original site's local navigation bar, broke them up and gave them to the testers, who were allowed to categorize and name the cards according to their own habits. The results of the test were indeed suprising, with no two of our six testers grouping or naming the cards in the same way.
This may mean that for users, Allrecipes's current navigation system is disconnected from users perceptions. The weak correlation between the subcategories prevents users from finding the right option on the navigation bar as they would like it to be. This test result led us to conclude that we need to rename the existing options and introduce a new tier system. As a result of these tests my team and I moved on to the next step of the project, which was to create a new information architecture from which a new low-fi prototype could be built.
Low fidelity prototyle based on user experience.
I redesigned the existing local navigation by reducing nine competing primary options to three core categories, grouping secondary items into a clearer three-tier structure based on user priority and frequency of use. This approach reduced cognitive load at the entry point and created a more predictable navigation path. By aligning the hierarchy with users’ mental models observed during testing, the new navigation helps users orient themselves more quickly and move between related content with greater confidence.
Most of the original navigation options were different ways of getting to recipes, rather than entirely different kinds of content. Treating them as secondary items helped simplify the top level without removing access. Ingredients was elevated to a primary category because it consistently came up as a starting point in how users think about cooking. We also introduced Community to bring together interactions that were previously scattered across comments and reviews, giving users a clearer place to share tips, follow discussions, and see what others in the community are engaging with.
Community emerged as a response to our original goal of reinforcing connection on Allrecipes. Previously, meaningful interactions—such as commenting, exchanging cooking tips, following contributors, and accessing magazine content—were spread across the site. Consolidating these touchpoints into a dedicated Community page gives users a clearer place to engage when they’re looking for more than just a recipe, making it easier to stay involved with the broader cooking community.
Validating the Revised Navigation Structure.
1. The lack of consistency in design language may cause confusion.
During tree testing, users expected consistent interaction patterns across the primary navigation. While both “Recipes” and “Ingredients” revealed three-tier dropdown menus, “Community” redirected to a separate page. The presence of an arrow indicator suggested a similar dropdown behavior, leading users to hesitate or attempt interactions that were not supported. This inconsistency highlighted the need for a more unified navigation system.
2. The sectioning on the Community page could be hard to understand.
Users scrolled through the Community page and paused at sections of interest, but often attempted to click on profile images without receiving feedback. Because the visual structure of the Community page closely mirrors the homepage, users did not immediately recognize that section titles were interactive. This revealed a discoverability issue, suggesting the need for clearer affordances, such as a “More” entry point, to help users navigate between sections.
Together, these insights highlighted the need to refine both structural consistency and interaction affordances across the experience. With a clearer understanding of where users hesitated and why, we moved into high-fidelity design to resolve these issues and explore how visual hierarchy, interaction cues, and component behavior could better support navigation and engagement.
Designing for Clarity and Engagement.
To address the confusion around inconsistent navigation behavior identified during tree testing, we redesigned the interaction logic of the local navigation. Instead of immediately redirecting users to the Community page, selecting “Community” now reveals a dropdown menu consistent with the other primary navigation items. Users can then intentionally navigate to the Community page through the “Community Hub” entry, reinforcing a unified interaction pattern and reducing uncertainty at the top level.
In response to the second issue identified during testing, we revisited the overall layout of the Community page. Instead of presenting Featured Cooks as a gallery, we shifted the focus to highlighting a single, recently popular contributor. By celebrating individual contributions, this approach aims to encourage participation and creativity within the community.
To further improve discoverability, we also introduced clear “Explore more” entry points wherever content could be expanded or lead to additional pages, making it more apparent to users that deeper exploration is available.
Reflection and next steps.
If we have the opportunity to further pursue this project, I believe we might explore converting community contributions into a visual reward system or adding personalized cooking course plans for individual users.