FOODIE FANTATICS
BACKGROUND
Have you ever been on a trip somewhere exciting, and have no idea where the hottest places to eat are?
Users across the U.S need an app that can show them all of the hidden gem restaurants whether they’re staying local or traveling. Traveling users especially desire an app to discover mom and pop restaurants that are unique to each new and exciting destination.
I solo self-created Foodie Fanatics from the beginning product idea to its high-fidelity prototype.
Prototype Link: Foodie App Prototype
SORTING MADE SIMPLER
Traveling users are frustrated with creating a search on Google or Google Maps for non-chain restaurants and having to sort through common chain restaurants that popup. Adventurous users find it essential to keep the categories of chain and non-chain restaurants separate.
With these following two goals in mind user engagement will grow beautifully: Make it simple for users to find Mom and Pop restaurants. Secondly, get users to utilize the feature to add restaurants to saved lists.
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![UX design work]()
MY ROLE
Conduct UX research (i.e., competitor analysis, survey, customer interviews, and usability testing) on users for creating personas, user stories, user flow, and wireframes. Created a UI design of an app directed towards thousands of adventurous foodies. This included creating wireframe sketches, wireframes, and a medium-fidelity prototype.
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![Two hands shaking]()
RECRUITMENT PLAN
Find local friends/family that travel occasionally or that like to try new foods for research testing.
Reach out to users on the social networking app Slack for added user input.
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RESTRAINTS
There was a lack of time for full development of a high-fidelity prototype as this was a project part of Thinkful’s UX/UI six-month intensive program. Their given timeline and project goal was for a medium-fidelity prototype.
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![People at a coffee shop with their computers]()
RESOURCES
I exercised the tools Google Suite, Figma, Slack, and Notion.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
All competitor apps used the color red and then two used the color orange. I’m suspired that none had used yellow, as that's another known color to trigger hunger based of research. The use of red and yellow to psychologically trigger hunger is a great tactic to get more users to buy from their apps and have added screen time usage. The common black text against a white background was used in all of the apps for great accessibility.
Yelp: It offers the option to save your favorite restaurants. They could take this a step further and have a “playlist” for restaurants that the user wants to try. Example: “Someday List”, “Travel List”, “Local Favorites”.
The “restaurants near me” section is great for local restaurants. It has a bit too much going on for an app meant for quality reviews.
GrubHub: The marker for the different local restaurants is a little dull as it uses a dark grey color. It could be a great opportunity to add in a nice accent color from the mood board.
The adding of the distance by miles is very useful for users.
There are points earned from ordering food on the app. I think that can be a disadvantage as it feels like it takes away from the main purpose of the app. Users likely only care about getting their food delivered as that’s the main purpose of the app.
OpenTable: Even though this app is for making reservations, it has all of the necessary information for choosing a nice place to eat. It shows the cost, review rating, and the distance from the user’s current location. You can also bookmark a place so that you can save restaurants you’re interested in.
I love that it has the TYPE of food labeled too so that you can figure out what you’re in the mood for. I like that users can communicate through message with the restaurants directly to make reservations instead of having to call.
SURVEY
Important:
Even though users rated reviews as the most important, they later voted menus over reviews as being more likely to persuade them to go eat at a restaurant. This is something to dive deeper into during user interviews. This information has changed as of 8/23/23. The original data with less people showed that the menu was the most important to users. Fortunately, I still included reviews on the app during the original iteration.
CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS
Key Findings:
Customers felt that online restaurant star rating reviews have always been accurate. Customers don’t want to go into a place without some idea of the quality of the restaurant. All of them didn’t want to take any chances or have surprises when it came to food. Only one user had stopped at a mom & pop restaurant without searching it online. They are a regular now at the restaurant. When traveling, the majority of users try to eat at Mom & Pop restaurants, because it’s something new.
MPORTANCE: It’s important for mom & pop restaurants to have some sort of online presence and exposure. With how technology is now, it can be difficult to have new customers if there’s a lack of an online presence but not impossible!
Link to customer interview questions: https://forms.gle/vuDbWzNnqGud6SdU9
PERSONAS
Thought Process:
I imagined the main users who search for Mom & Pop restaurants are people who are finding nice local restaurants in their hometown or who are traveling outside of their hometown.
I used the data from the survey and customer interviews to gauge the persona’s behavior and goals/needs. Then I used the user stories as the persona’s pain points/hesitations.
USER STORIES
I imagined what typical users would use an app like this for. I personally would use it whenever I travel or if I’m looking for a nice sit-down restaurant to try out. This app is mainly directed towards major cities as they have endless Mom & Pop / hole-in-the-wall restaurants that are hidden gems. In major cities like LA and NYC, for example, they have an endless amount of non-chain restaurants to choose from. That can be overwhelming if they want to simply just find one-of-a-kind restaurants. This gives an idea to maybe just have the app directed towards an audience in Los Angeles County. I later decided to not do this after iteration. It would be easier for iterations, but insanely limiting for an app to be only available for one city. Generally speaking, every product’s goal is to reach a worldwide audience.
As a user who travels frequently, I want to find unique restaurants to eat at so I can fully experience the places I’m exploring.
As a user, I want to be able to have multiple lists of my desired restaurants for any area so I can always be ready to go out to one of them.
As a user, I want to see the menus for the restaurants as I have dietary restrictions.
As a user, I want to be able to filter through local mom & pop restaurants by their prices.
USER FLOWS
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![User flow sketch # 1]()
For the app I did consider making it similar to apps like GrubHub or DoorDash where there is a checkout/purchasing aspect to it. But decided that it doesn’t build towards achieving any of the MVPs, and to leave it out.
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![User flow sketch # 2]()
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![User flow sketch # 3]()
This food app is intended to help users fulfill a fun task to find tasty new food choices on their adventures around hard to navigate cities.
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![User flow sketches # 4]()
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![User flow sketch # 5]()
I want to give the users an option to add customizable lists just like how they would with music playlists. They have the option to filter by whichever is most important to them (how the food images look, menu, food type, cost, and reviews).
WIREFRAMES
ACCESSIBILITY TESTING
For the color palette I researched colors that evoke hunger. Yellow and red popped up, which makes sense as most food apps on the market utilizes this information. I made sure to add two hues of orange. One that leans more towards the red side, and the other towards yellow. This adds a bit more color, and playfulness to the app. Plus, red and yellow for a positive/confirmation popup won’t feel like a good thing happened for the user. Orange on the other hand still invokes feelings of hunger but has a healthy and fresh feel to it.
From the contrast color testing the light orange color didn’t pass the contrast testing. I used the orange for buttons with white for the text. For the next iteration I will change it to one of the other accent colors that passed.
USABILITY TESTING
Results: Users suggested to add more pictures for the food items. They would like names of the food menu items with a brief description of each item alike on restaurant menus. A user suggested having a “most popular” food item for each restaurant. There was an issue with the “add to list” screen not showing, and then it bringing users to the home screen instead.
Users enjoyed the visuals of the app.
Changes I will make: I’ll add more pictures for each restaurant under the “menu” section. The “most popular” food item for each restaurant is a great suggestion. I’ll think of a possible way to fit it into the app. I might have the description under the restaurant as a summary of the restaurant’s type of food style. I can take that route, but I believe a different method is simpler. Hypothetically—When customers leave ratings/reviews on the restaurants there can be a list of tags (i.e. family friendly, gluten-free, lively, decorative, cocktail, bar, dine-in, takeout, delivery, casual, cafe, retro, sushi, hibachi, etc.) that they can select from that best describe the restaurant instead. I’ll change the orange button color to a passable other accent color. Lastly, I’ll fix the navigation issue with the “successfully added to list” screen.
THE PROTYPE
Link to my prototype in Figma:
THINGS I LEARNED
There was an issue with the pictures of the food not fitting into the black frame outline. It took a lot of trial and error, and persistence to find the way to make it work. Now I know how to fill any space in Figma with an image the easiest way!
Another setback was that less local people were available for this project to do the usability testing. I had to rely on the remote users who completed my survey and customer interview from the app Slack to complete the usability testing as well. I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to speak to other people that are in the tech field and hearing their feedback!