The home page serves as the user’s central hub, offering quick access to products, restaurants, learning resources, and the community. It highlights personalized recommendations and provides a calm, organized starting point for navigating gluten-free living with confidence.
Celi is a web-based companion designed to reduce the confusion and emotional burden people face when adapting to a gluten-free lifestyle. Many newly diagnosed users encounter unreliable information, unclear food options, and a lack of social support.
We address these gaps by providing trustworthy guidance, easy-to-navigate tools for finding safe gluten-free options, and a community that understands their lived experience. The goal is simple to empower users with clarity, confidence, and connection during a major lifestyle transition.
Scope
- UX/UI
- Branding
- Design
Application
- Adobe Illustrator
- Figma Make
- FigmaJam
- Figma
Understanding the Problem Space
Why people diagnosed with celiac disease need more than scattered information
The Challenge
People newly diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten intolerance often feel overwhelmed, isolated, and unsure where to find safe food options.
Online information is inconsistent, restaurant reviews rarely address cross-contamination, and product labels can be confusing. Many users spend hours researching only to end up anxious, uncertain, or afraid to eat outside their home.
Design Goal
Create a clear, supportive, and trustworthy digital experience that helps users confidently navigate gluten-free living. The design should:
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Reduce confusion by providing reliable, easily digestible information
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Support decision-making with verified product and restaurant safety details
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Build emotional comfort through community connection
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Offer quick, accessible guidance through an AI chat tool
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Empower users to feel safe, understood, and informed
The Solution
The platform delivers verified restaurant safety information, clear product guidance, a combined Learn and Community hub for support, an AI assistant for quick answers, and personalized saved lists.
Everything is designed to help users make safe food decisions with confidence and feel less alone in their gluten-free journey.
Persona
Empathy Map
Users living with celiac disease often rely on online resources to make daily food decisions, but the information they find is frequently unclear or inconsistent.
By examining their behaviors, frustrations, and decision-making patterns, we identified key gaps in the current ecosystem and opportunities to create a clearer, more supportive web experience.
Business Model
Creating the Business Model Canvas allowed me to connect user needs with strategic business decisions. It highlighted where Celi delivers value, what partnerships are essential, and which features support both user outcomes and long-term viability.
Problem Statement
People newly diagnosed with celiac disease lack a clear, reliable way to identify safe foods and restaurants. The information available online is fragmented and inconsistent, leaving users overwhelmed, uncertain, and at risk of making harmful decisions
Research Methods
A mixed-approach to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points
01
User Interviews
Conducted one-on-one interviews with 16 people newly diagnosed with celiac disease. These conversations uncovered emotional challenges and daily pain points. Since this was a personal project, more interviews would be needed for broader validation.
02
Behavior Analysis
An exploration of how users search for gluten-free information online, including their reliance on blogs, social platforms, review sites, and community forums. This helped identify why existing tools fail to provide clarity, where misinformation spreads, and what digital touchpoints create frustration or confusion.
03
Survey
Distributed a short survey to 20 participants to collect quantitative data on habits and frustrations. Results highlighted what users find most confusing and what features they value most. A larger sample would strengthen these insights.
04
Comparative Analysis
Explored existing gluten-free apps, restaurant review platforms, and food-safety tools. This method highlighted common gaps, including unclear safety information, a lack of celiac-specific reviews, and limited educational support. The findings helped position Celi as a differentiated, value-driven solution.
Understanding the User
The user flow outlines the core paths users take when navigating Celi, ensuring each step is intuitive and aligned with their needs. It helped clarify how users move through key features and informed decisions about structure, hierarchy, and interaction patterns.
Low-fidelity wireframe
The low-fidelity wireframes helped establish the core structure of the website and validate early ideas before moving into visual design. These sketches focused on layout, hierarchy, and user flow, allowing quick iteration and feedback without getting distracted by visual details. This stage ensured that the fundamental experience was clear, intuitive, and aligned with user needs before investing time in high-fidelity design.
03.
Products Page
The products page gives users a clear and organized space to explore gluten-free items with confidence. It includes a dedicated search area to quickly find products, a curated “Our Favourites” section showcasing trusted Celi-approved picks, and a “Your Favourites” area where users can easily revisit the items they’ve saved. The layout keeps everything simple and approachable, helping users discover safe products without feeling overwhelmed.
04.
Restaurants Page
The restaurants page helps users quickly find safe places to eat by letting them search by name or cuisine. A filter panel on the side allows them to narrow results by safety level, location, or dietary preferences, making the search experience more focused and trustworthy. At the bottom of the page, a “Your Favourite Spots” section gives users easy access to restaurants they’ve saved, creating a personalized list of places they can rely on for gluten-safe dining.
05.
Learn Page
The learn page brings together educational content, community support, and real-time guidance in one accessible space. Users can explore clear, beginner-friendly articles and tips, connect with others through the community forum, and interact with the built-in AI chat bot for quick answers or help interpreting product and restaurant information. The page is designed to feel supportive and easy to navigate, giving users everything they need to learn, ask questions, and grow more confident in their gluten-free journey.
