This case study explores how a digital solution can improve access to international groceries in Australia while preserving cultural and emotional value. It emerged from a design challenge focused on user-centered research, prototyping, and iterative testing.
How might we conveniently discover and access international food and drink while preserving their cultural and emotional value?
Travellers, immigrants, international students, home cooks, and cultural explorers looking for authentic food experiences.
Food connects us to memory and identity. For many, it represents home, health, and joy. These products are difficult to find and often expensive or unavailable in mainstream outlets.
Users want authenticity, but face limited availability, high shipping costs, customs delays, and poor substitutes.
Reconnecting with culture through familiar ingredients.
Loves recreating meals from her travels for friends and family.
Influenced by online trends and interested in international food culture.
How might we create a digital platform that helps people in Australia access international grocery items more easily—while also addressing barriers like pricing, availability, language, and discoverability?
Improve accessibility to international food, maintain authenticity, simplify product discovery, and support small local businesses.
Map-based search, item saving, product pages, reviews, barcode scanning, recipe forums, and a simple backend for business listings.
Google Maps, Uber Eats, Woolworths filters, and vitamin stores informed feature design and usability patterns.
Shops can select products from a database to appear on the customer map without needing inventory syncing.
Figma
HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Firebase
GSAP
Illustrator
Five participants with varied cultural and dietary needs completed tasks including language switching, product search, and sign-up flow.
Users preferred list view at the bottom, clearer log in/sign up buttons, and product info directly from search results.
We moved log-in buttons, added a shopping list, improved product visibility, and clarified GPS/map interaction patterns.
User feedback led to impactful changes. The final prototype now better aligns with mental models and real-world shopping behavior.
Explore expanded retailer participation, local events, cultural storytelling, and better real-time inventory tracking.