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
Bariatric Rewrite • Rewrite Lifestyle
My role
End-to-end YX & UI Design
Also delivered
Store assets, launch video, landing page
Collaboration
Fully remote - Zoom & Slack across time zones
Platforms
IOS & Android
Designed for
Free users, clients, premium members & coaches
Timeline
3 weeks to first UX, 2 weeks refining
Rollout
US, Canada & Australia — UK next
Status
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.
The process
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.
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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.
An intuitive, all-in-one bariatric app that never feels overwhelming
Food logging with live feedback
Log a meal and get instant, plain-English coaching on it — protein first, no ultra-processed foods, no shakes — just the way Shenelle coaches.
A diary for the whole day
Every metric for the day in one place, with a dashboard that reads at a glance.
Chat with Lucille
A bariatric-trained AI coach in your pocket for questions, ideas and real-time choices.
Snap the menu, get a pick
Photograph a restaurant menu and Lucille recommends the best choice for you.
Recipes, made and fixed
Generate recipes with AI, or hand it what's in the fridge and it makes it work.
Quick-add everything
Food, movement, water, mood, vitamins, weight, measurements and progress photos in a couple of taps.
Weight & measurements
Track the numbers that matter with a calm, readable history over time.
Badges & consistency
Gentle streaks and badges that reward showing up — not perfection.
The 'More' hub
Goals, custom meal names, a customisable quick-add, vitamin preferences, subscription and support — all yours to shape.
The result after 2 months
The Rewrite Lifestyle App launched in April 2026 — and people felt the difference straight away.
It rolled out across the US, then Canada and Australia, with the UK next. Not just strong numbers, but the kind of reviews you hope for: people saying an app finally gets them.
4.9★
App Store rating
5500+
Active users
1000+
Paid subscribers
150+
App reviews
1000+
Google Play downloads
5★
Rating on Trustpilot
The aim
The design's real job was to keep people logging — and it’s working.
Every logging flow was built to be effortless, because engagement is what actually drives results — and early data from the client's team bears that out.
88% of measured clients lost weight in their first ~2 months
~3.5% was the average body weight lost over the period
100% of consistent food-loggers lost weight
Based on 362 Rewrite app clients with sufficient logged data, first ~2 months post-launch (n≈210). Reflects in-app progress.
Real reviews from the App Store
Designed in phases — and still going.
Phase 1
Launched
The core app — food logging with live feedback, meal planning, the daily diary and dashboard, AI recipes and menu-photo suggestions, chats with Lucille, quick-add and the More hub. Plus every App Store and Play Store asset, the launch video, and the landing page.
Phase 2
Launched
Community recipes, the Journey timeline that gathers your milestones (and pulls in photos from the day automatically), in-app coaching with coach–client messaging and food reviews, groups, and integrations with Google Health, wearables, smart scales and glucose monitors — plus PDF health reports, sleep, activity and daily readiness.
Phase 3
In testing
The most-requested additions — a digestion tracker and, yes, a poop tracker — wired into quick-add, alongside a round of UX improvements. Launching soon.
Phase 4
In design
A social, profile-led side to the app — your recipes, voting and messaging — and a coach dashboard that triages clients using AI across their wearable and app data, with a calendar of calls, workshops and sessions. Tailored views for every audience.
Beyond the app
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App Store & Play Store screenshots
The full set of store creative — built to sell the app's five biggest ideas in a scroll.
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![Social ads]()
Social ads
Launch ads in Shenelle's no-BS voice - two of the concepts that ran at launch.
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App icon
The pen-nib mark, adapted for the App Store and Google Play.
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Landing page
The marketing site at rewritelifestyle.ai, designed to match the app.
