Taste

This was a self-initiated project started from October to December 2015. I teamed with Jack Li and Liang Chen to design a “Taste” mobile app, which provided a direct entrance for exploring foods and helped to make dining decisions easy. The project was initiated with my passion for food & design, and the aim to practice and reflect on my design thinking at product level.

INDEX

1. MY ROLE
2. THE PROBLEM
3. THE APPROACH
4. THE DISCOVERY
5. THE VISION
6. USER JOURNEY MAP
7. THE STRUCTURE
8. WIREFRAMING
9. VISUAL DETAILS
10. THE DESIGN

My role

Initiation & Execution

I initiated this project with the aim to practice and reflect on design at product level.

I actively participated in all design activities with our 3-member team, which include planning, user research, ideation, visioning, scope definition, etc.

I was responsible for the execution of final wireframes, visual design, and high-fidelity mockups.

THE PROBLEM

"So...what are we going to eat?"

Currently, millions of people are using tools such as Yelp, Foursquare and Google Maps to discover restaurants and foods. These services provide valuable tips, reviews and photos to help people find their favorites.

However, why do we always have the same problem: What to eat?

THE APPROACH

Lean UX

We opted for a lean approach which emphasized rapid sketching, prototyping, user feedback and design mockups.

This created early team-wide alignment, sparked tons of great ideas and helped us successfully advanced this side project among other academic projects.

The combination of taking three courses and doing multiple design projects in parallel created an intense but exciting environment with many coordination and time challenges.

THE DISCOVERY

Key Findings That Defined Our Product

We conducted user interviews to drive our planning phase.
These are the key findings that defined the initial version of the product.

Varied Needs

People's dining needs varies depending on different scenarios. Such as in the morning or at late night; during work or after workout; solo or with a group of people.

Seeing the Actual Dish

Making dining decisions is not easy without seeing what dishes a restaurant is actually offering. Food photos on Yelp may be seasonal or discontinued by the restaurant. Besides, there was not a clear way to search for a particular dish nor a comprehensive catalogue for foods.

Facilitate Food Ordering

It is hard to order foods without previous experience. Text only (name and ingredients) cannot provide enough cues for choosing the dish people like.

THE VISION

Connecting People with Foods Directly in a Personalized and Contextual Way

Our vision for the design was to build a direct relationship between people and foods. We believe by providing a direct entrance for exploring foods has the potential to better leverage the intrinsic characteristics of foods and cultivate more additional value.

A Direct Entrance for Exploring Foods

Rather than finding the restaurant first, what we provide was a direct entrance for exploring foods. This is how we positioned ourself in this blue ocean market of dining services.

Target Audience - Food Enthusiasts

We only targeted at a very specific user group - food enthusiasts. They care deeply about the cuisine itself, and great food is their core motivation of choosing a restaurant.

Having such a focused user group allowed us to better serve their specific needs, and drive our design process.

Persona and Goals

USER JOURNEY MAP

Mapping Out Essential Features

We created a user journey map to help us identify all specific locations of the pain points, and map out all essential features and prioritize them.

Feature prioritization was based on the core needs of our target audience, the flow of the experience, and constraints of the project.

the structure

Rationalizing the Logic of the Flow

Based on the vision and the flow of the user, we organized the content into four sections: Discover, Menu, Community, and Me.

Creating this high-level structure of the app allowed us to better rationalize the internal logic of the user flow.

The inspiration of the icon was from “Landscape” series designed by
Crucial Details, which represents a conversation between the food and
the plate.

The materiality of the icon invites touch of the user on the digital screen.
A conversation between the user and the app just starts.