TravelFind

Improving Meal Discovery for
People with Selective Dietary Preferences

Duration

12 Weeks

Responsibilities

Feature Scoping, Research, IA, Design, Prototyping

Tools

Figma, Miro, Adobe Suite

Background

For those with selective food preferences, travelling can be a source of anxiety and stress. They worry about finding food that meets their dietary needs and feel frustrated when they are unable to communicate their preferences. This can lead to feelings of restriction and dissatisfaction, making it difficult for them to fully enjoy their travel experience.

Problem

individuals with restrictive diets due to food allergies or personal preferences are often anxious and stressful while finding suitable food while travelling.

problems with present slutions

People struggle to find amidst the limited information, misunderstood preferences, and lack of specified filtering options.

Users relying on apps like DoorDash, OpenTable, HappyCow, and Uber Eats often encounter frustration as they face the hurdles of finding food that matches their specific preferences.

Lack of supporting information regarding review sources and categories in the restaurant accomodations, menu items.

These apps, while convenient, often lack comprehensive information about ingredients, risk, making it difficult for users to determine if a dish aligns with their dietary restrictions or preferences. Additionally, misunderstandings regarding terms like and lack of specification is leading to ordering mistakes, leaving users disappointed or even consuming non-preferred ingredients.

There's either too little or too many options to choose which takes a lot of effort and time to discover meals leading to frustation or confusion.

Furthermore, the absence of personalization to accommodate various dietary needs limits users' ability to quickly find suitable options, resulting in time-consuming searches and potential disappointment.

"I'm usually hesitant to call up restaurants directly to know whether they have anything that works with my dietary preferences. "

from user interviews

"I'm scared to try out new food options as sometimes I don't know whether the ingredients are actually good for me."

from user interviews

Vision

A solution that could help users communicate their dietary needs in a better way and make an informed decision while finding restaurants and meals.

Solution goal: give multiple options to the users

Core experience

TravelFind aims to create a personalized experience to help users discover meals that fit their needs, communicate their preferences effectively, and find options that are right for them.

goal: help users find what's right for them

Experience tailored just for you

Instead of having to search for dishes or restaurants that match their dietary preferences, users can create a dietary profile during onboarding to receive personalized suggestions tailored to their profile.

goal: help users make an informed decision

Better Validation - Less Anxiety

Added signifiers to let the users know if the food matches their dietary preferences for a clear understanding of which food items are suitable for them.

goal: provide flexibility

Convenience at your fingertips.

Users can choose to cook a recipe Instead of ordering an Item, Communicate their preferences to the restaurant, or shop groceries just by scanning them.

Research

How I got to the solution

I conducted generative research where I started with a screener survey to find people who were having selective dietary preferences and conducted interviews to gain insights into the challenges and pain points of people with selective dietary needs and asked how they deal with them currently to uncover the common issues faced by individuals with dietary restrictions and preferences.

Comparing existing solutions

I took the solutions I found and solutions suggested during research and performed a quick competitive analysis based on their Unique Value, Personalization, Meal Discoverability, convenience, and Market penetration to find opportunities for improvement.

Synthesis

Finding key themes and opportunities.

In order to design a solution that addresses the needs and frustrations of our target personas, I analyzed the data collected through interviews, surveys, and desk research to identify common themes and areas of opportunity.

Opportunity #1

Personalization

People felt that their dietary needs are not being considered by restaurants or meal delivery services. They also felt like they have to compromise their preferences and needs.

Opportunity #2

Meal discoverability

People were struggling to find meals that fit their dietary restrictions and preferences, and they often had to rely on trial and error or lengthy searches.

Opportunity #3

Choice validation

People felt that they do not have enough information to validate their dietary choices, which led to uncertainty and frustration.

Synthesizing insights into Archetypes.

I have used personas to get a sense of the user and define cases and refer for different scenarios.

Archetype
Vegetarian
frequent traveler
A frequent traveler who makes short trips and has a dietary preference.
Archetype
Anxious traveller
with nut allergy
An anxious and concerend traveler who has allergies.
Archetype
The cooking fanatic
A person who makes long trips for work and loves cooking and discovering new recipies.

Exploration

Ideating for IA and flows.

I compiled a list of 'How Might We...' questions to assist us in better aligning our users' tasks and goals. After gathering the ideas in the brainstorming session, I prioritized them to determine which ideas are feasible based on constraints, Impact, and effort and time to get a sense of the IA and flows for the solution.

A visualized sitemap to understand the struture and flows
between different potential actions.

Iterations, Iterations, and Iterations

I explored different ways to tackle the challenge of trying to incorporate three ways of navigation into the mobile home screen and iterated on ways to validate the user’s dietary choices and designed information architecture accordingly.

wireflows to visualize and iterated on struture and layout and ideation on different flows.

Validation

Optimizing the experience through testing.

After gathering feedback from the qualitative user testing, I have made changes by adding some additional Improvements which involved adding profile match signifiers to the cards, making the buttons more prominent, and providing a way for the user to select between dishes and restaurants from the home screen.

Solution

Final design with revisions

Reflection

Pivotal Insights.

More options increased the time it took for the users to make a decision and too many steps increased the cognitive load for the users. Hence, I went with a more tailored feature set to ensure the problem is solved effectively.
From testing, I found that unfamiliar interactions led to confusion among users. Hence, I focused on the user's familiarity with the interactions and placement of buttons in the expected places.
During the initial testing, Some of the users were scanning through the content while others were looking at each and every detail on the page. This meant I needed to make sure that the signifiers are prioritized in such a way that the users can discover them easily.
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Next Steps.

Since I was constrained around time, I wasn't able to explore the problems from the restaurant's perspective. I would love to conduct ethnographic research with restaurants to uncover insights and build a more cohesive experience between the Customers and the Restaurants.

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