PROJECT Focus:
digital product
Client: Mamakoo, a food travel app and digital food guide designed for travelers who value local food experiences. It offers insider recommendations and focuses on authentic, non-tourist-trap dining options, helping users discover real local food cultures and savor their culinary journeys. .
Goal: As Mamakoo prepared to refine its product and explore new membership models, the team sought a research partner to lead a foodie-centered inquiry to understand the behaviors, motivations, and challenges of potential users. .
Role: Lead user researcher responsible for developing and executing a mixed-methods research plan, including user recruitment, qualitative facilitation, survey design, and usability testing across a diverse group of target users.
Questions explored:
❋ How do potential users currently plan their food experiences when traveling, and what challenges do they face?
❋ What are users’ first impressions of Mamakoo’s MVP, and how well does it align with their needs and expectations?
❋ What features, pricing models, and membership structures feel most intuitive and valuable to users—and which ones fall short of their needs or preferences?
Project contributions:
STRATEGIC USER RESEARCH PLANNING & RECRUITMENT
Targeted research strategy grounded in Mamakoo’s business goals and product evolution, building on prior insights while identifying key gaps in understanding their broader user base.
I pushed the team to move beyond their immediate circle of early adopters and engage with a more diverse set of potential users, challenging assumptions that all food-loving travelers behave the same way.
Sharpened the team’s understanding of their actual target audience, helping them define specific user characteristics beyond the vague “food and travel lovers.” This included refining criteria around travel frequency, digital habits, and motivation for seeking curated recommendations.
USER INTERVIEWS, TESTING AND BEHAVIORAL INSIGHT
Sourced participants for follow-up interviews directly from the survey cohort, ensuring continuity and context across methods. Participants were selected based on demographic relevance and richness of survey responses.
Led a series of 20–30 minute in-depth interviews, first impression walkthroughs, and lightweight usability tests, aimed at uncovering user values, mental models, and unmet needs.
Analyzed verbal and behavioral data to identify patterns in user decision-making, such as where they experience hesitation, what features feel intuitive or surprising, and how they distinguish Mamakoo from competing travel tools. Insights from this phase directly shaped product positioning and content hierarchy.
SURVEY DESIGN, RECRUITMENT, AND ANALYSIS
Designed and conducted a custom survey to understand user behaviors, planning habits, and attitudes toward Mamakoo’s value and pricing. Questions were structured to surface key friction points in current travel and dining planning, perceived value of Mamakoo’s offerings, and preferences for potential membership models.
Led recruitment by identifying and embedding in online communities where food-focused travelers organically gather, using social listening and direct outreach to community moderators to expand access beyond the founders’ personal networks. This enabled participation from a more diverse and representative group of users.
Prioritized diversity and real-world relevance in participant selection, targeting international travelers ages 25–45. The final survey cohort yielded robust quantitative and qualitative insights that informed pricing, messaging, and product design decisions.
SYNTHESIS & RECOMMENDATIONS
Synthesized qualitative and quantitative findings to guide product decisions around membership structures, value communication, and UX refinement. Insights were organized to clarify where the product was resonating and where user expectations or understanding broke down.
Created detailed user personas and journey maps to visualize the distinct motivations, behaviors, and emotional touchpoints of different user segments. These tools helped align the product, design, and leadership teams around a shared understanding of core audiences.
Developed a next-step prioritization chart based on user feedback and usability findings, outlining short-, medium-, and long-term opportunities for improving product clarity, ease of use, and alignment with user goals. This strategic roadmap helped the team focus limited resources on the most impactful improvements.
Impact
The research surfaced actionable insights about what travelers value when planning food-focused experiences abroad, how they navigate existing platforms, and where Mamakoo could offer a distinct and compelling alternative. These findings directly informed decisions around product design, pricing structures, and strategic growth—shifting the team’s understanding of their audience from assumptions to evidence. As a result, Mamakoo began evolving from a founder-driven tool to a user-informed platform with clearer value, better alignment with user needs, and a roadmap for scalable expansion.
Feedback
I appreciated how organized she was in sharing the outcome of her research. Not only did she deliver the raw findings in a digestible way but upon identifying some opportunities she also made insightful suggestions on product and marketing improvements.
IRENE KOO
Founder & CEO @ Mamakoo
Why this work lights me up
On a personal level, I love to travel, and I love opportunities to engage with unique gems in a new place. As such, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Mamakoo. Additionally, I loved that the business was at an intriguing point; they had seen success and engaged users before, but were in a moment of redirection. I enjoyed helping them celebrate what was working well, exposing more people to their platform through the user research process, and providing strategy for their future.