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SUSTAINABITE

UX Strategy, Branding, and Persona Development for a Sustainability App

Logo design and brand identity for SustainaBite created by Marceli Jasinski, featuring a stylized face in earthy green tones and a playful logotype combining sustainability and personality.

CASE STUDY

OVERVIEW

 

SustainaBite was born from a simple but urgent mission: reduce household food waste through technology and education.


Our team set out to design a mobile app that would empower everyday consumers—especially busy families and students—to track groceries, plan meals, and embrace sustainability with minimal effort.

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As a key contributor, I led UX research and design initiatives, helping shape the app’s branding, structure, and user flow from early concept to high-fidelity prototypes.

Wireframe sketch of the SustainaBite app homepage, showing sustainability impact tracking, recipe suggestions, and navigation for managing food items.
Early UI sketch of the SustainaBite item input screen, featuring options to scan receipts, enter items manually, or sync with an external app.
Wireframe of the SustainaBite inventory browser, showing categories like pantry, freezer, and spices with editable item entries.
SustainaBite UI concept for camera-based item entry, allowing users to upload photos or scan new products using the mobile app.
Review screen wireframe from the SustainaBite app, where users can edit or confirm scanned food items and add them to their inventory.

Sketches

THE CHALLENGE

 

Food waste is a $218 billion problem annually in the U.S. alone.
While apps existed for meal planning or grocery management, few provided a seamless, sustainability-first solution tailored to diverse household needs.

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Our task was clear:

  • Create an app that feels approachable and easy—not another chore.

  • Encourage users to save money, reduce waste, and adopt sustainable habits.

  • Design intuitive tools that balance practical benefits with emotional rewards.

THE STRATEGY

 

We took a human-centered design approach, anchored in real user insights:

  • User Interviews & Surveys: Revealed common habits (relying on memory, overspending, food spoilage) and key motivators (saving money, sustainability).

  • Competitive Analysis: Identified gaps where SustainaBite could stand out: integrating tracking, recipe suggestions, and eco-impact metrics in one cohesive platform.

  • Personas & Journey Maps: Developed primary personas (Jessica Knight and Mitchell Clark) to drive feature prioritization and empathetic design decisions.

 

Every feature decision; from inventory management to personalized recipe suggestions—was tied directly to user needs, barriers, and aspirations.

User persona for SustainaBite featuring Jessica Knight, a stay-at-home parent focused on sustainability, outlining her demographics, motivations, goals, and brand affinities.
Customer journey map for Jessica Knight in the SustainaBite app experience, illustrating her actions, emotions, touchpoints, and pain points across five stages from awareness to loyalty.

THE IDENTITY

 

Brand development for SustainaBite focused on simplicity, clarity, and empowerment.

  • Logo Design: Refined from early literal concepts to a more abstract, modern mark symbolizing food and waste management in a single glance.

  • Color Palette: Muted greens and earthy tones evoking sustainability, health, and approachability.

  • Brand Voice: Inspired by confident, relatable figures like Zendaya, the tone was motivational, optimistic, and down-to-earth—making users feel part of a positive movement, not guilt-tripped.

Primary logo concept for SustainaBite featuring a stylized leaf-inspired ‘S’ icon and earthy, lowercase wordmark in green tones.
Exploratory set of SustainaBite logo variations showing alternate icons and mark treatments inspired by sustainability and food themes.

Concepts

Typography selection showing DM Sans in both regular and bold weights, chosen for its clean, modern readability in the SustainaBite brand.
Supporting typeface Asap displayed in regular and bold, providing a rounded, friendly complement to DM Sans in the SustainaBite identity.

Typography

SustainaBite brand color palette featuring six circular swatches in natural tones ranging from deep forest green to soft gray, representing sustainability and warmth.

Color Palate

KEY FEATURES DESIGNED

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  • Grocery Tracking: Expiration reminders, barcode scanning, receipt uploads.

  • Personalized Recipes: AI-driven suggestions based on current ingredients.

  • Gamified Progress: Achievement tracking, environmental impact reports (planned for future implementation).

  • Community & Sharing: Features proposed for social engagement and rewards systems.

 

NOTE: As a student project, these were developed at the UX/UI and strategic concept level without final coding.

Mobile login screen for the SustainaBite app, displaying fields for email and password with a clean, minimal design and earthy color tones aligned with the brand’s sustainable theme.
SustainaBite app screen showing categorized pantry inventory with a pop-up confirmation that new items have been added—featuring an intuitive layout and dark green navigation bar.
Recipe screen for “Seared Salmon Sashimi” in the SustainaBite app, showcasing ingredients, prep time, and customizable options with a photo of the dish and eco-friendly UI styling.

IMPACT

 

While SustainaBite remains a concept platform developed through academic collaboration, the project highlights my ability to:

  • Conduct and synthesize user research into actionable design.

  • Lead UX strategy with human-centered insights.

  • Develop branding systems aligned with user psychology and mission-driven storytelling.

  • Collaboratively shape a full product lifecycle from ideation through prototyping.

 

The process reinforced a foundational belief I bring to all real-world projects:
Great brands don't just sell products. They create movements; and they make it easy for people to join.

REFLECTION

 

SustainaBite was a milestone in merging research-based insights with creative storytelling.

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It challenged me to not only design for aesthetics but to ground every decision in user behavior, motivation, and emotional connection.

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While it was a student project, the depth of the research, iteration, and brand-building mirrored real-world development cycles.

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It sharpened my ability to translate user needs into visual language and to build a personality around a product, not just a logo.

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If I revisited this today, with even more experience under my belt, I would push further into user testing prototypes and refining feature prioritization before launch.

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Still, the SustainaBite project remains a proud demonstration of how thoughtful branding and UX strategy can elevate a simple idea into a movement for change.

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Small steps. Big impact.

SERVICES PROVIDED

 

UX Research (Interviews, Surveys, Competitive Analysis)

Persona & Journey Map Development

Branding & Visual Identity Creation

UX Strategy & Feature Prioritization

Wireframes, User Flows, High-Fidelity Prototypes

Future Feature Planning & Scalability Recommendations

© 2008–2025 Marceli Jasinski Creative. StudioMJC.com All rights reserved.

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