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Product Overview
About the Product
DiscoverEats is a mobile app designed to help users find locally-owned eateries. It includes an innovative “chooser” feature to help those who are undecided choose a place to go for a bite.
My Role
UI designer on the DiscoverEats team, responsible for creating wireframes and the low- and high-fidelity prototypes. I also led the team on the brand and visual design for the app. Our team consisted of myself, project manager Jennifer Gardner, developer Humberto Messeguer, and QA engineer Myles Waite.
The Problem
Users needed a way to cut through all the soulless chain restaurants and ghost kitchens, to find a locally-owned restaurant and get reviews, photos, the menu, and more. Users also needed an automated way to help them choose where to go when they can’t decide.
The Goal
Design a locally-focused app with great search features that will showcase relevant information about local restaurants. Design a feature that will automatically help users choose a place to go from a preset list when they’re feeling undecided.
Understanding the User
Janet Jamerson
The Foodie
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Age
36
Education
Master's in Computer Science
Hometown
Lincoln, NE
Family
Fiance, cat, dog, 1 daughter
Occupation
Systems Engineer
"My fiancé and I love to go out to dinner, but it's so hard to choose a place!"
Goals
- Discover new, local restaurants
- Get help choosing a place to eat
Frustrations
- Too many chains, fast food, and ghost kitchens
- Endless choices, but nothing to help make a final decision
Bio
Janet is a hardworking systems engineer for a large tech firm. Her salary allows her to go out to eat with her fiancé and her daughter often. They enjoy supporting locally-owned restaurants and are health-conscious, so they tend to avoid fast food and chain restaurants when they can.
Tim Tomilson
The Traveler
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Age
30
Education
Bachelor's in Education
Hometown
Indianapolis, IN
Family
Single
Occupation
Traveling Teacher
"The first thing I do when I land in a new city is check out the local food scene."
Goals
- Discover new restaurants close to his location
- Vet local restaurants by ratings and reviews to ensure he hits the best spots while he's in town
Frustrations
- Most location-based apps contain ads for restaurants he's not interested in
- Available services are not focused on local culture within cities
Bio
Tim is a traveling English teacher who loves to explore. His favorite thing to do when he lands at his next assignment is to go online and start reading about the local cuisine there. He is well-suited to his semi-nomadic lifestyle, and his penchant for education drives him to learn as much as possible about every new place he encounters.
Starting the Design
I started the design for DiscoverEats with digital wireframes in Adobe XD. The focus for our design was to create ways to easily discover restaurants through search or by browsing. I chose to go with a toolbar-style nav at the bottom for easily reachable access to the app’s main features.
I connected the digital wireframe screens according to our user flow to create a low-fidelity prototype in Adobe XD. We used the prototype in our user tests to evaluate the design for usability.
I created a design system in Adobe XD to make creating mockups and high-fidelity prototypes efficient and scalable. It contains reusable elements that already have the correct colors, fonts and styles. This helped me avoid rework, especially when going through design changes for different iterations of the product.
After user testing with the low-fidelity prototype was complete, it was time to apply the brand colors and fonts, and add realistic text and images to the designs to create these high-fidelity mockups.
Finalizing the Design
The mockup screens were connected to create a high-fidelity prototype. The DiscoverEats prototype is special because it's nonlinear. You can access multiple user flows while you're using it. This gets us as close as possible to a real, native application running on the user's device.
Key Takeaways
DiscoverEats turned out as a fun and elegant way to check out the local cuisine. Users commented that they enjoyed the friendly and colorful design of the app, and that they love the Chooser feature for when they can’t decide what to eat.
While designing DiscoverEats, I discovered a lot of new ways to design interactions in Adobe XD. I had a lot of fun creating animated, interactive UI elements like sliding scales, switches, checkboxes, and buttons.
- Conduct an accessibility-centered usability study to ensure that the unique features of DiscoverEats are usable for individuals with disabilities.
- Conduct more user research to find out if the app can be expanded to other options like delivery.
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