Pepper Case Studies
Pepper is a social cooking app where users share recipes, discover new dishes, and connect with a community of home cooks and creators. Fellows partnered with Pepper on two projects focused on improving Premium monetization and designing gamification features to drive stronger user engagement.
Project 1: Pepper Premium
Industry: Consumer / Social / Food Technology
Engagement: Product Strategy, User Research, UI/UX Design
Team: Noah Yoon (Team Lead), Alex Lin, Shaurya Jindal, Wasimah Zara (Advisor)
Pepper struggled to convert users from its free tier to its Premium subscription. While Premium users showed strong retention, most free users failed to see enough value to upgrade.
Conversion funnel of free users to paid users. Pepper has a low conversion rate, with only 2% of non-paying users ultimately converting to paid.
Conducted user research to understand why users weren’t converting
Identified key behavioral and motivational gaps between free, trial, and Premium users
Explored multiple solution directions and prioritized based on impact vs. effort
Pie chart of premium plan distribution. High retention rate of existing premium users due to perceived value. Meanwhile, non-paying users struggle to see the value of Pepper Premium compared to the free version.
We proposed and designed a Health Score feature that adds tangible, ongoing value to Premium by helping users evaluate recipes based on nutritional metrics (protein, fiber, sodium, etc.). This feature:
Encourages deeper engagement with recipes
Aligns with health-conscious user motivations
Creates long-term retention incentives for Premium subscribers
Mockups highlighting monetization strategy within UI/UX design. The health score is locked for non-paying users. When users click on the lock, they are directed to a paywall.
Mockups of advanced health scores for premium users. Score rings provide more granular health data (left) and advanced health filters provide more personalized search results (middle and right).
Defined clear success metrics across conversion, engagement, and retention
Delivered high-fidelity product designs ready for experimentation and rollout
Provided a structured rollout plan (beta → soft launch → full launch)
Key Deliverables
User personas and conversion funnel analysis
Feature prioritization framework
High-fidelity mobile designs
Metrics and experimentation plan
Project 2: Gamification Design
Industry: Consumer / Social / Food Technology
Engagement: UI/UX Design, Product Strategy
Team: Vince Lin (Team Lead), Juliette Lipari, Jayden Park, Janice Chung (Advisor)
Pepper wanted to increase daily active users, retention, and recipe sharing in a competitive social environment.
Designed a suite of gamification features, including:
Streaks and challenges to encourage daily engagement
Collectible and “mythical” items to reward participation
Community-driven challenges and social validation mechanics
Mockups of redesigned home screen pages. We designed improvements for the explore page and profile page, and we designed a new board page and shop page.
Mockups of an in-app trivia game with cooking-related questions. Answering questions correctly within the time limit rewards the user with in-app currency.
Mockups for item collection and combination concepts. Users can collect items throughout the app and combine them to create new items. Rare items can also be obtained by chance.
Mockups for item trading concept. Users can trade different items with their friends on Pepper.
Mockups for streaks concepts. Users can start and keep a streak by engaging with the app every day, and longer streaks can reward users.
Delivered a prioritized feature roadmap
Created end-to-end UI flows demonstrating how gamification fits into the core app experience
Outlined rollout and post-launch metrics for validation
Feature prioritization matrix informing Pepper which features are the most impactful and require the least effort. Our fellows recommended building streaks as the most impactful feature requiring the least amount of effort to implement.
