CASE STUDY • JULY 2026 • APP & UX DESIGN
Rewrite Lifestyle
A health & wellness app for bariatric patients that brings food logging, an AI coach, recipes, mood, measurements and community into one calm, considered place. I designed the whole experience, end to end.
★ 4.9 on the App Store • iOS & Android • 1,000+ Play Store downloads
The brief
Shenelle runs Bariatric Rewrite, a coaching programme for bariatric patients, built on a food-addiction model: protein first, no ultra-processed foods, no shakes, lifestyle and habit changes. Her clients adored the coaching — but the app to carry it simply didn't exist.
Most food and meal trackers just count calories, and bariatric eating doesn't work that way. The handful of bariatric apps out there stop at logging. None of them bring nutrition, real insight, recipes, mood tracking, community and real coaching in one place.
Shenelle wanted an app that felt like her: upfront, honest and genuinely useful. It also had to be free and welcoming for anyone tracking their food before or after surgery, or on GLP-1s.
At a glance
Client
My role
Rollout
Bariatric Rewrite • Rewrite Lifestyle
End-to-end YX & UI Design
Also delivered
Store assets, launch video, landing page
Collaboration
Fully remote - Zoom & Slack across time zones
Platforms
Timeline
IOS & Android
Designed for
Free users, clients, premium members & coaches
3 weeks to first UX, 2 weeks refining
Status
US, Canada & Australia — UK next
Live on the App Store since April 2026
Designing one app to work for four audiences
The same app needed to serve free users tracking food, paying clients whose coaches review their logs inside it, premium paying members, and coaches who need a rounded view of how someone's really doing — food, mood, movement and all.
Free users
Anyone tracking food after surgery, on GLP-1s, or working through food addiction.
Clients
Coached members whose food logs and check-ins happen right inside the app.
Premium members
Full access to AI tools, recipes and the deeper tracking features.
Coaches
A rounded view of each client — food, mood, movement — to coach from.
How I worked
Fast, but never rushed. The whole first phase took five weeks.
Three weeks to design the full UX, two more to refine it. I designed the entire app — shaped by research, real client testing, and close loops with the directors and dev team.
01
02
03
04
05
Scope it honestly
The client had a tight deadline and an app bigger than it looked. Before anything else, I set realistic timeframes for design, dev, testing and rollout — so expectations matched reality.
Listen & research
I looked hard at the trackers people already use, then asked Rewrite clients what they genuinely needed — and what kept letting them down.
Prototype it
I designed and prototyped the entire experience end to end, so we could feel how it flowed before a line of code was written.
Test & refine
Clients put early versions to work through their day. Tight loops with Shenelle, the coaching team and the US dev team over Zoom and Slack refined it until it felt like her coaching.
Hand-off to dev team
The dev team built the app with AI-assisted tooling, so my designs had to be clean, consistent and unambiguous — developer-ready, and shipped fast, phase after phase.