It’s easy to move away but hard to stay connected. Especially when you are focused on trying to find your place in your new life.
“Have you eaten yet?” It’s a phrase commonly heard between loved ones. Everyone needs to eat and what better way to try and spend time with your loved ones from afar by eating together? This app helps with figuring out common times and common places to eat.
Timeline
2 Months
Team
Solo
Role
Lead UX Researcher, Lead UI Designer
Tools
Figma, Google Drive, Google Meets, Miro
I utilized a screener survey in order to find interview candidates by asking for people who have moved away from their loved ones.
I found out that people seemed to reach out to their loved ones equally daily, weekly, and monthly and they connected with their loved ones was through text, phone calls, and video calls.
By interviewing people, I was able to further ask what their experience was about moving away and what methods they used to connect with their loved ones: long distance or in person.
Laying out all the information gave three big groupings which were: Keeping in Touch, Things to Do, and Various Other Thoughts.
A big thing that kept popping out in this step was that a big part of what bonded people was that they enjoyed going out and doing things with their loved ones.
Another big thing was the idea that often parents are always concerned about whether or not their kids have eaten for the day.
I started figuring out my user personas based on my interview notes to better understand their point of view.
My initial thoughts for a solution were to make a calendar sharing style app or a better way to video chat. However both ideas already had many successful solutions as one of my interviews pointed out.
Instead I went back to the research and started to focused on something that a few of the interviews said that I myself had experienced. A phrase that most immigrant parents usually find hard to say is “I love you” instead they often share the sentiment through a different phrase: “Have you eaten yet?”
With this thought in mind, I came up with the solution of figuring out a way to make scheduling meals together easier, even when from a distance. The user would just need to know where their location was, where the other person’s location was and a general time of when they’d like to eat and in theory the app would do the rest for them.
Additional features were that they could just look at different times that they could eat at and they could also find a service to send food to someone else.
The main purpose of the app was to be able to schedule the time and places to eat together in different places. The secondary purposes included being able to figure out time schedules to eat and being able to send someone food.
I started my design with wireframes to best encompass all the features I wanted to put into the app. Doing the wireframes helped me put my thoughts into action. As I started actually putting my layouts onto Figma, I started seeing details that I had missed while sketching that I didn’t think about because my sketches weren’t detailed enough.
The brand attributes that I had chosen for the app are: casual, easy, inviting, playful, and tasty.
While the name of the app represents the food aspect, I ended up deciding that the logo should display the communication/connection aspect with the two people inside the “e” and the talk bubble.
I chose bright colors against a light background to keep it more casual and inviting. Red is a more common color among food-related apps while blue is more common among social apps.
The font is on the more rounded side and definitely looks more playful.
After determining what screens were needed for my red routes, I played around with the color and different formats to make my high fidelity mockups. As I designed each screen for general public use, I started discovering different user experience flaws that I had made.
One example was my menu screen, although my terminology made perfect sense to me, others were confused by where each button would take them so I added captions to each button. I also changed my design completely for inputting time because my thought process before had added an extra step that was unnecessary and I didn’t realize it until I inserted actual times into my design.
I had three tasks I wanted the users to go through as a user coming back to the app:
There were a lot of positive comments about the concept and the product that I had produced.
I wanted to make this pathway easier to go through. After receiving feedback from the first round of testing, I ended up changing a lot. The entire layout was rearranged and the steps were simplified.
There were comments about not having a way to go back on some of the screens, so I went back and made sure all the screens had either an “X” to signify the screen could be closed or a “Go Back” button.
There were comments saying that it’d be nice if there was some sort of confirmation for the user to let them know that the order had been completed. However, the intention of the app is not to order delivery, but it is to show what delivery services are available for that area and to share that a delivery has been ordered.
The terminology of “Exact Match” vs. “Similar Match” was confusing to some of the users. The intention behind the options is to give users the possibility of eating at the same restaurant, just at different locations for as exact of an experience as possible whereas the other option would just have them dining at similar restaurants like two different sushi restaurants.
There was confusion about the share pop-up. Some users thought it was a two-step process rather than different options. The buttons were made bigger to look less like two a two step process to three different options.
The main thing I would change if I were to do another iteration is to add a tutorial to make terminology a little more clear for users because once the users went through the first task, they were able to move through the other tasks quickly.
Let's Eat even when we're apart. You just need to know locations, general hours to eat and the app will do the rest of the planning for you!
When do you want to eat? Just put in what time you're thinking about eating and the app will help you figure out when the other person should be eating too!
Not hungry? Well you can always send food to your loved ones. Parents always worry about kids eating, so now they can still feed their child when they aren't able to in person.
Never plan your solution out before completing your research. I thought I had a vision for a solution before I had started any of my research and with each step of the research I took, the more my solution began to change.
It’s very hard to pick a color scheme without even seeing it on the app and not a lot of bright colors pass the contrast accessibility checker. Moving forward, I think I’ll definitely be more conscious of contrast accessibility before even laying down colors for my designs.
I thought that being more vague when giving tasks would be better for less biased data. However, users do not know what you are thinking or what your intentions are so it is always best to give as many details as possible without telling the user how to do the task you want them to do.
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