Bake Buddy

BakeBuddy is a personal UX project built to help a single home baker streamline how they showcase their menu, receive custom order requests, and manage customer communication. Many small bakers rely heavily on Instagram DMs, which leads to slow replies, unclear pricing, and missed orders. This project explores how thoughtful, inclusive design can turn a home business into a reliable, approachable digital experience.

To understand what was really breaking for both sides, I interviewed 17 people: regular dessert buyers, event planners, accessibility users, and home bakers across India, the US, Brazil, Canada, and Ireland. I wanted to hear where they hesitate, what stresses them, and what makes them trust a baker enough to pay and wait.

To complement the interviews, I ran a short survey with 40 respondents, including frequent dessert buyers and small home bakers. The goal was to see if the patterns I heard in conversations also showed up at scale.

To understand what was really breaking inside DM-based ordering, I spoke with customers and home bakers from different places and backgrounds. Their stories helped me see the small frustrations, the emotional load, and the little moments that make ordering either smooth or stressful. From these conversations, I shaped four personas that represent the people I was designing for. They kept the project grounded and helped me make decisions that actually reflect real behavior.

Before sketching any screens, I mapped how each person actually tries to place an order today, from the first tap on Instagram to the moment they pick up the cake. Seeing their journeys side by side made the breakdowns impossible to ignore: unclear pricing, scattered messages, slow replies, and a lot of emotional uncertainty.

These maps helped me understand where clarity, structure, and reassurance were most needed.

Seeing all four journeys side by side made the real problems impossible to ignore.

Everyone, whether a busy customer, an overwhelmed baker, an allergen-focused specialist, or an accessibility user, was getting stuck for the same reasons: unclear details, scattered messages, and no reliable way to confirm an order.

These patterns helped me shape the core problems BakeBuddy needed to solve.

In the ideation phase for BakeBuddy, I focused on the pivotal features that would solve the communication breakdown identified by my personas. For Priya, this meant introducing transparent "base prices" and clear visual menus. For Arjun, the priority was a structured intake system that could capture complex details like cake weight, flavors, and reference photos without a single DM exchange.

I charted a journey that balances freedom with structure. Central to the design is a "Customization Wizard" that guides users through essential decisions one step at a time, reducing the cognitive load for accessibility users like Sarah. Crucially, I integrated allergen-safety checks directly into this flow, ensuring users like Hannah can filter and select dietary options with confidence before they reach the cart.

From there, I sketched preliminary wireframes to visualize this linear path. I prioritized a "Guest Checkout" model to lower entry barriers, allowing users to build their perfect cake before being asked to sign up. These low-fidelity screens evolved into an interactive prototype, serving as the blueprint to test if a structured form could truly replace the warmth and flexibility of a conversation.

Bringing together the research, personas, and user journeys, BakeBuddy took shape as a clear, linear ordering experience that replaces scattered conversations with structure and reassurance. The flow prioritizes clarity early on, guiding customers from discovery to customization while capturing essential details without repeated back-and-forth.

Seeing the full journey end to end made it clear how a structured flow could still preserve the personal feel of ordering from a home baker, while reducing uncertainty on both sides. The final user flow reflects this balance, familiar and approachable, yet intentional enough to build trust, confidence, and reliability throughout the experience.