Designing a trusted way to share recommendations with friends
Surelist
Overview
Surelist is a mobile app I co-founded and designed that helps people discover and share restaurant recommendations from people they trust. The idea came from my background as a food influencer and from noticing how broken the current review ecosystem is. Yelp and Google are full of bots and picky reviewers, and it’s hard to find authentic opinions or track places your friends actually love. Surelist makes it easy to find and curate lists of the best spots for any dish, from tacos to beef noodle soup, through people you already trust.
Challenge
The way people find places to eat is noisy and unreliable. Platforms like Yelp prioritize algorithms and advertising, not authenticity. As a result, incredible local restaurants often get buried under reviews that favor hype over quality. I wanted to design a space where people could share and discover great food from a trusted network, not strangers online.
The challenge was to design a product that captured the joy of discovery and community while staying simple enough for anyone to use.
Approach
I focused on designing an experience that felt social, personal, and effortless:
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Created an onboarding flow that immediately invites users to follow friends or food creators they trust.
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Designed list-building tools that make it easy to create, remix, and rank “best of” lists.
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Introduced public profiles so users can explore lists from their circle and save them for later adventures.
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Developed a visual identity and product prototype that reflects warmth, taste, and trust—balancing playful food exploration with utility.
With my cofounder Jacob, we explored using React Native and Django/Postgres for scalability, with plans to use AI later for list recommendations once we reach a critical mass of users.
Reflection
This project brought together everything I love about design: community, trust, and creativity. Surelist reminded me that design can shape how people connect over shared experiences, even something as everyday as food. It’s about turning recommendations into relationships and helping people spend less time scrolling and more time enjoying great meals with people they care about.
2025 - Present
2020 - 2024
2020 - 2016
2016 - 2014
2014 - 2009
= Side Project
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