FastEats is a web-based application that presents various entrees to hungry users. Being presented with various restaurants on apps/search engines like Yelp and Google can make it hard to find the perfect place to eat. FastEats hopes to eliminate many of the struggles by strictly showing food items so that users can quickly decide what they would like to eat.
UX Designer, Developer
Storyboards, Prototypes, Wireframe, A/B Testing, Published App
Finding the perfect meal when you're hungry can be difficult and tiresome. Between the endless choices, bottomless reviews, and statistics associated with each restaurant, one can easily feel overwhelmed with their options for eaiting out.
First storyboard showcasing the difficulty associated with searching online for places to eat
Second storyboard demonstrating a stakeholder's indecisiveness towards food types
Third storyboard a scenario where choosing a restaurant can become tiresome
Food makes up a large part of people's lives, but can often create stress when deciding.
Users want to be able to quickly find food/restaurant options.
There needs to be a system that is quick for users and helps in decision making.
Options needs to be presented in a way thats not distracting (no reviews, non-food images, and various useless information)
Needs to show relevent food options based on the user's preferences
We wanted to design a system focused heavily on the food while removing many of the tiring side information that would distract the user from their main goal. .
Our first prototype featured a liking system. Users were presented with large images of 1 food item from a nearby restaurant. If the user liked what they saw, they could like it and similar food items would be shown. If they disliked what they were shown, they could dislike and similar food items would be removed. The user was then able to swipe to get to the next food option. Similar to that of Tinder but for food.
The second prototype featured a preference system. Users would be presented with 2 images side-by-side of food and they would then be able to pick their preference by tapping on which they would prefer. Different taps would correspond to different options. 1 tap would select a food that the user preferred over the other. A double tap would present a secondary page with more information such as directions, rating, etc.
Paper Prototype 1: Showcasing a liking feature and a swipeable carousel of food images
Paper Prototype 2 : Displaying 2 differing food options for users to choose between
A Wireframe showcasing a more detailed mashup of both prototypes
The initial designs presented a couple of issues thorugh testing:
Our final solution addressed many of the previous issues by immediately showing food options, showing random food options near the user, and being a very straight forward UI to follow.
We also implemented a save feature where users could save food that they liked.
Final design showing the main page
Final design showcasing the saving system
Improve the UI to be more polished and aesthetically pleasing.
Remove reliance on Yelp API. The goal would be for the app to be an alternative to Yelp, not a branch thereof.
Perform further testing to learn of other areas to improve the app. The results of the few tests that were done were never tested further to determine if they were actually improvements.
Improve information available about each restaurant on the main screen.
Port the phone web-based app to be more accessible on desktops
The main thing we hoped to do was create a web-based app for people that wanted a fast way to find food to eat. We achieved that but in many ways, the app performs similar to that of a simplified version of Yelp. However, the removal of reviews and other distracting information still achieves the fast food-selection goal of ours.
The app is deployed at fasteats.herokuapp.com, however, your mileage may vary as the app is no longer being supported.