Groowe
Aka Yelp’s little sister
My role: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer, Client facing
Duration: 2 Weeks | Status: Complete
Problem Space
It’s not that hard to find a vegetarian restaurant, or a Kosher or Halal restaurant. There’s plenty around and there’s plenty of apps that can get you there. But try to drag a group of friends that regard your salads — a food for rabbits, to one of your vegan restaurants. Or once at a regular restaurant, try to spot that one dish that is for you — THE DISH.
At the very same time many Restaurants are actually trying hard to accommodate guests with specific dietary needs. They may offer more than just a few meals that meet these needs and have plenty of possible ingredient substitutions.
It seems that all that people with dietary restrictions need to do in order to discover new places is turn on their phones, open up a popular app and look up for such restaurants.
Unfortunately, most popular apps that people use to discover new food cater to those whose only need might be to filter out their search by “price” or by “most popular.” Despite having all these apps around, researching new places to eat can be extremely difficult if your diet is an issue.
Finding information on restaurants that are gluten free friendly often leads Yelp users on long searches through reviews, photos and lo-res pictures of menus.
So my team and I designed a solution to these problems. A food app for those with dietary restrictions
And we’re calling it Groowe.
We wanted to build a unique destination where people with dietary restrictions can get comprehensive and reliable information on restaurants that are able to accommodate specific dietary preferences and needs.
And here’s how it happened…
Project Goal
With the aforementioned challenges in mind, our team set out to help bridge the gap between restaurants and those with dietary restrictions, ensuring that we cover the needs for all — vegetarian, gluten-intolerant, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, lactose-intolerant, celiac disease, you name — allowing them to feel included in their journey through the world of food.
We wanted to turn their question from “What can I eat here?” to “What do I want to eat?” That’s the seamless, enjoyable experience that those of us without dietary restrictions have
Research
Research Goal
To validate our initial assumptions and to identify pain points and frustrations of those with dietary restrictions when planning and dining at a restaurant with current applications and platforms on the market.
Methodology
We conducted a multitude of research methodologies to better understand the problem space and the needs of our target users to be better able to solve their problems:
User Interviews / Affinity Mapping / Persona / Journey Map / Competitive Feature Analysis / Business Model Canvas / Usability Testing on Mid Fi / Task Details / Usability Testing on Hi Fi
Takeaways
The main takeaways of what we got from our interviews are:
- users with specific dietary restrictions lack tools to research and plan dining experiences that would meet their food preferences and health needs.
- users are conscious about origins of ingredients when dining out.
- They are losing trust when it comes to apps that serve search results where the first restaurant turns out to be something “friendly” restaurant with one or two underwhelming “friendly” options.
- users love to have all in one simple solutions: map, reviews, star rating, menu, pics, table reservations, delivery… They want all these to be in one place.
- users rely on pictures of food that adhere to their restrictions when researching places to go to
- users would like to know about options for alternatives and substitutions
Persona
She’s a vegan with many a food intolerance including gluten and raw onions. She devotes an extensive amount of effort on Yelp and Google Maps researching restaurants in hope of discovering new options for herself. She wants to be able to arrive at a restaurant feeling confident about the meals she’s about to experience.
Some of Her Needs
- ability to filter her search by dietary restrictions
- transparency about her options for menu items and ingredients that are vegan
- opportunity to see picture of the dishes
And Some of Her Frustrations
- feeling like a nuisance when asking about the menu and requesting substitutions
- discovering a new restaurant with vegan friendly badge that doesn’t seem to mean anything
Journey Map
We were determined to help her shape positive dining experiences through and through!
Persona + Journey Map Takeaways
Lily confirmed that those with dietary restrictions do experience many more pain points and frustrations when planning and researching restaurants to eat at, compared to the average healthy omnivore. We were able to reevaluate and refocus on solving for the specific areas calling for the most attention from our user interviews.
Insights to Features
Prototype
So how did we knew that we succeeded in translating our user’s needs into designs… Well, we didn’t, and because we couldn’t be 100% sure the first time around, we actually designed a mid-fidelity prototype first and took them into usability testing.
Next steps
- Add a tool in the menu for users to click into ingredients for more information
- Conduct more rounds of user testing
- Design login, navigation, collections, and reviews
- Create the second menu experience (for online orders)
- Conduct due diligence on the restaurant side to determine the logistics of information gathering
- Complete the guest side of the app
Thx for reading!!
