AMPL — A Health & Nutrition App, from Magazine to Prototype

Context

A magazine wanted to become a habit

Print launches once a month. An app can be part of someone's day. The client saw their new nutrition magazine not as the end product but as the seed of an ongoing relationship — and they wanted to know, before committing, whether a companion app could carry that content into a daily routine subscribers would actually keep.

The brief had two halves. First, surface the magazine's food content inside the app, available through the reader's subscription. Second, make it useful every day: let people log what they eat, follow an exercise routine matched to their goals and current state, and — crucially — feel like the content was chosen for them, not pulled from a generic database.

Because this was a proof of concept for their executives, the output wasn't a spec — it was a working prototype plus a concept deck laying out the approaches, so leadership could react to something real before funding the build.

Benchmark

Start by studying the apps people already trust with this

Health tracking is a crowded, mature category — which is a gift for a POC. I benchmarked existing food- and fitness-tracking apps to separate the table stakes (logging, search, streaks) from the openings where a curated, magazine-backed experience could feel different.

Table stakes

Fast meal logging, search, and progress tracking — if these aren't effortless, nothing else matters.

The common trap

Most trackers feel like data entry: calorie math that turns eating into accounting and burns people out.

The opening

Nobody was pairing tracking with genuinely curated, editorial content. The magazine was the differentiator — if the app could make it feel personal.

Information Architecture

A sitemap organized around what the user needs, not what the app has

In the first stage I built the full sitemap for the core mobile experience. Rather than grouping screens by feature, I grouped them by the user's intent in the moment — five experience zones, each framed as something the user is asking the product for.

The complete core-experience sitemap. Five zones, each anchored to a user need rather than a feature set.

Zone

Keep me moving forward

Onboarding, dashboard, my program — the tools and structure to hit a goal.

Zone

Track my progress

Exercises, commitments and achievements that show momentum over time.

Zone

Something new & exciting daily

A daily refresh — recipe, activity and challenge of the day — to build the habit.

Zone

Show me what I want, when I need it

Discover and curated content: eat right, meal plans, workouts for every situation.

Zone

Reflect, share & connect

Community, sharing and support — a sense of belonging and motivation.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Resolve the structure in grayscale first

Before any visual design, the key flows were wireframed in low fidelity — onboarding, dashboard, the daily refresh, discovery, meal plans and recipes — so structure and navigation could be pressure-tested cheaply and agreed on early.

Wireframe — onboarding question — Onboarding question

Wireframe — landing dashboard — Landing / dashboard

Wireframe — daily refresh — Daily refresh

Onboarding

Personalization starts by lowering the stakes

The first thing the app says is that this isn't a diet. Onboarding gathers what it needs to curate — protein intake, foods to avoid, goals — while actively reassuring the user that nothing is off-limits. It's a 10-step flow that feels like a conversation, not an intake form.

Onboarding intro — No diet, no restrictions — 01
No diet, no restrictions
Sets the tone before asking for anything: components of real meals, not rules.

Onboarding — how much protein do you eat daily — 02
Protein intake
Big tappable ranges, a clear progress bar — Step 2 of 10.

Onboarding — select foods you dislike or avoid — 03
Foods to avoid
Struck-through choices feed the curation engine what to exclude.

Onboarding — did you know educational card — 04
Did you know?
Editorial voice woven into onboarding — the magazine, showing up early.

Logging & the Smart Camera

Make logging a meal feel like taking a photo

The category's biggest friction is logging. The concept's answer was an AR "smart camera": point it at a plate, let it identify the ingredients, confirm, and log — turning the most tedious task in every tracker into a single gesture.

Select your meal — breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks — 01
Select your meal
Start tracking with a single, friendly choice.

Today's lunch — search and recently logged — 02
Log a meal
Search, recently-logged shortcuts, or the smart camera.

AR smart camera scanning a plate of food — 03
Smart camera
Point at the plate — AR framing does the work.

Ingredients identified — lemon, parsley, shrimp, lime — 04
Ingredients identified
Confirm the detected ingredients and log in one tap.

Curated Discovery

Answer the real question: "what should I eat instead?"

Tracking tells you what you ate. The Protein Finder helps you decide what to eat next — search a food, then swipe to compare options side by side on protein, calories, fat and fiber, with recipes one tap away. This is where tracking turns into guidance.

Protein Finder — search results for chicken — 01
Protein Finder
Search a food; every result offers a direct comparison.

Grilled chicken card — swipe to compare — 02
Swipe to compare
Card-based options with the key macros surfaced.

Comparison — grilled chicken sandwich vs wrap — 03
Side-by-side
Two choices, four metrics, a clear winner — then recipes.

Outcome

A concept the executives could actually try

A functional prototype

Not a slideshow — a working prototype leadership could tap through, which is what a proof of concept has to be to earn a real decision.

Approaches, laid out

A concept deck presenting the different directions considered, so the decision was made with the alternatives visible, not hidden.

Magazine → product

A clear model for turning editorial content into a daily, personalized subscriber experience across food and fitness.

An IA that scales

The five-zone sitemap gave the concept a structure to grow into — beyond the screens built for the POC.

Reflection

What I took from it

A proof of concept has a different job than a product: it has to make an idea feel inevitable. The tracking features were table stakes — what sold the concept was the feeling that the app knew you, from the "no restrictions" welcome to the curated comparisons. I learned to design the demo around the one moment that makes a stakeholder lean in, and to build everything else in service of getting them there.

The highlighted line is a placeholder in your voice — replace it with the lesson that feels most true to you.

Selected work

WinItAll — an app redesigned in four weeks

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Selected work

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