Can I Eat This?

UX/UI Design
Project Overview
For those with special dietary needs, eating out can be a real headache. Between the struggle to find something appetizing among the limited options available and the stress of double-checking ingredients, eating out can become a stressful experience. Consequently, those who have dietary restrictions end up relying on not-so-ideal back up plans, such as settling for a simple salad when they go out or bringing their own food on vacation.

The Goal: Can I Eat This? is an app to help those with dietary restrictions easily discover peer-reviewed restaurants and dishes that meet their personalized dietary needs.  
 Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean.
My Contributions
I worked as a user researcher with two other designers. Conducting interviews, administering surveys, developing the user journey, storyboard, sketching & wire-framing.

Time Frame: Three Weeks
In order to learn about other people’s experiences eating out and managing different dietary needs, we sent out surveys across social media to understand common habits and frustrations. Of our 32 respondents, 26% identified as vegan, and 56% as vegetarian. However, despite our users going out to eat 2-3 times a week, 30% found it difficult to find choices that aligned with their dietary restrictions. In-depth user interviews gave us further insight to user frustrations.
 
User Research
     “A lot of fancy places will have only fettuccine alfredo, and everything else looks fantastic, but it's not vegetarian.”
-K (an Ova-Lacto Vegetarian.)

After collecting all our user interviews & survey data, we organized it into an Affinity Diagram.

     "...I had been vegetarian for so long that I can't process animal protein anymore & I [suddenly became very ill]."
-K, describing accidentally being served meat in a restaurant.

User Pain Points

• Struggling to find a restaurant that can accommodate their dietary needs
• Worried that servers/menus will lack or have misleading information
• Traveling increases the stress of finding accommodating restaurants

User Goals

• More transparency about menu ingredients and allergens
• Finding a trustworthy source (suggestions from friends appreciated!)
• To easily find tasty, healthy dishes for their diet

How might we...build an app that increases menu transparency to help users navigate menus and successfully find dishes at local restaurants that fit their diet and tastes?

We brainstormed possible features using the I Like, I Wish, What If? Method, and then decided on key features with dot voting.

Storyboard

1. Gregory and his friends have driven to Napa and are about to enjoy a nice meal.
2. At the restaurant, Gregory spends 10 minutes pouring over the menu, to find that his only option is once again… a salad.
3. Frustrated, he downloads “Can I Eat This” to find a restaurant with vegan pizza.
4. After filtering for vegan-friendly options, he receives a list of matches. He opens one option, and  easily sorts through vegan-friendly menu options.
5. He quickly find the perfect dish!
6. The group tries the restaurant, and for the first time in a while, Gregory leaves feeling satisfied!

Storyboard art by S.Mick

User Journey

User Flow:
1.  Create a user profile: Sign up and create a user profile, containing your dietary needs.
2.  Search for a dish: Search for a dish, and then choose from a list of restaurants that offer diet-friendly versions of that dish. Select a restaurant to view important information and other menu items, or find out more about the dish they searched for.
3.  Use the personalized men-YOU tool to choose the perfect dish: view a condensed menu for a restaurant tailored to the user’s dietary needs.

User Flow show casing three user pathways. Creating a profile, searching for a specific dish, and viewing the personalized menu (men-YOU.)

Prototyping & User Testing:

Low-Fi Prototype

Testing Feedback:
We found two main issues during the second round of user testing:

1.While users understood the ‘search by dish’ function, they often 'came up blank' on what to search for.
To address this we added categories below the search to help in the decision process.

2.Our MenYOU feature was unclear to user; who either didn’t know what it was or thought that it was just the regular menu, rather than a specially curated version catered to their personal dietary needs. In response to this confusion, we added onboarding screens to clarify the menYOU's concept and purpose. We also decided to make the personalized menYou the default for users to see, with an option to view the full menu, rather than the other way around. Doing so highlights the information that is personally relevant to the user while hiding away clutter that otherwise adds to the user’s cognitive load.
 

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