Meredith / Cozi · Cross-platform product design

One family organizer.
A shared foundation.

Unifying Cozi across devices, improving everyday workflows, and giving the team a more practical way to build what came next.

Role: Product Designer & Process Consultant
Focus: Cross-platform UX, design system, team collaboration
Period: 2020–2021
At departure: System in use; redesign in development

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Recipes across devices: a consistent product experience, with layouts that make use of the available space.

01 · The starting point

The same task felt different on every device.

Cozi helps families coordinate calendars, meals, and lists. But its web, iOS, Android, and tablet experiences had grown apart. Familiar tasks had different layouts, controls, and behavior depending on where you opened the app.

I was brought in to assess the experience and help unify it under a tight relaunch timeline. The work needed to improve the product while respecting the existing components, data, and team’s capacity to implement changes.

Existing Cozi calendar screens across five platform layouts above a row of updated, more consistent designs — Original calendar comparisons. The existing experiences are shown above; the proposed updates below reuse common patterns across platforms.

02 · The foundation

Make the common decisions once.

I audited the application and consolidated its styling and components into a shared design system based on Material Design. We chose the Android system so we could reuse some of Cozi’s existing code and build quickly on a proven foundation for a consistent interface across native and web apps. Reusable Sketch symbols, an icon library, and wireframe components made it easier to explore new features without rebuilding familiar UI.

The guide covered more than appearance: component usage, states, motion, layouts, and variations across platforms and free and paid accounts. The goal was to make the next design decision easier for everyone who touched the product.

Cozi design guide showing recipe flows and a series of tooltip and onboarding states — The guide connected reusable elements with complete flows and interaction states, so the team could see how the pieces worked together.

Shared components

Consolidated buttons, cards, icons, and recurring patterns.

Documented behavior

States, motion, and usage guidance alongside the visual design.

Flexible layouts

A common grid and patterns that could adapt across devices.

03 · Usability in the details

Keep the familiarity. Improve the fundamentals.

Cozi’s identity mattered, especially the colors families used to recognize one another. I explored palette options that improved contrast while staying close to the brand. Where contrast made colors too similar, I also proposed different hues.

I documented which text and icon treatments could be paired with each swatch, and streamlined button styles with explicit states on different backgrounds.

I walked stakeholders through accessibility requirements and the tradeoffs behind the options. That gave the team a concrete basis for choosing improvements they could prioritize immediately.

These decisions were carried into the component guide, turning individual fixes into guidance the team could reuse.

A useful system explains how to make the next decision.

04 · Putting the system to work

Connect the recipe to the plan.

Recipes & Meals made the cross-platform problem tangible. A family needed to find a recipe, bring one in from the web, and add it to a meal without learning a different product on each device.

I worked through competitive analysis, existing and proposed flows, paper sketches, and digital wireframes. The scope included creating meals, importing recipes, and the details people needed while planning and cooking.

Original and revised Cozi task-flow diagrams with connected screens and annotations — Mapping existing and proposed flows before committing to individual screens.

Hand-drawn Cozi recipe and meal-planning concepts beside a phone — Paper explorations made the structure and sequence easier to work through early.

Four Cozi mobile designs: calendar, new meal, web recipe import, and breakfast details — The proposed experience connects calendar planning, meal creation, recipe import, and meal details through a shared visual language.

05 · Designing around real constraints

Consistency had to survive the content.

The presentation captured problems that a clean component library alone could not resolve: ad placement, responsive breakpoints, and inconsistent recipe data. Some recipes had missing imagery. Imported content used different labels for directions and instructions.

I explored image placeholders, content carousels, clearer content treatment, and a new ad location. These were product decisions as much as visual ones: the shared UI had to work with the material Cozi actually received.

Behavior belongs in the system, too.

The original prototypes show how details and settings respond as people interact with them. Documenting those transitions helped the team understand the intended experience beyond a static screen.

Original design prototypes · Press play to explore

Meal details and editing

Individual calendar sharing settings

06 · Making the work usable for the team

The handoff needed a shared process.

I served as Meredith’s design representative, working with Cozi’s product, engineering, marketing, and leadership teams. Progress depended on building trust with people who knew the product well and making the reasoning behind changes explicit.

Weekly reviews kept stakeholders and developers involved. I introduced Zeplin for specifications and assets, helped product shape requirements that supported design and development, and coached the existing designer on the tools and system.

Cozi desktop recipe design in Zeplin alongside component measurements and implementation specifications — A shared reference for implementation: screens, specifications, and downloadable assets in Zeplin.

07 · Outcome & reflection

A clearer product. A more capable team.

The design system was actively used, substantial designs were built, and cross-platform consolidation was underway when I left. Components and views had been reduced, workflows streamlined, and the team had a shared reference for design and implementation.

Meredith’s ambition was for this foundation to inform future native applications. The outcome I can speak to is the Cozi work itself; the full redesign was still in development at my departure.

Product coherence

Shared patterns across platforms, with layouts adapted to each device.

Reusable decisions

Components, states, and usage guidance the team could carry into new features.

Better collaboration

Regular reviews and clearer specifications brought design and development closer together.

The lasting value was in the decisions and working habits the team could carry forward.