Zomatalk — VUI concept for ordering food online
Can you conveniently order food without a visual interface?
The concept of Voice User Interface for Zomato is mainly intended to make the Zomato (and similar food ordering apps) accessible to visually impaired people. This aids the visually impaired by eliminating the need for the visual interface. The users can converse with the VUI and place an order on Zomato. Additionally, this may also aid to people who are temporarily disabled or ordering food while multitasking. The process is much faster in the case of VUI (Voice User Interface) compared to the GUI (Graphical User Interface).
The beginning
An intriguing conversation inspired me to take up this project. I met a woman on one of the city buses who was visually impaired, our conversation started with how can the ticket collectors not carry change and went through talking about food (trust me I don’t know how). I talked about how all these food ordering apps are convenient (am practically depended on them) and to my surprise that woman said, “I have never ordered food online because of its inconvenient for me without visual aid”. The woman got down on the next stop, we smiled but I kept thinking about what she said.
285 million people in the world are visually impaired
For my upcoming project, I took up to research in this domain and my primary target audience visually impaired people.
Understanding the audience
Insights from contextual inquiry & building a user persona
I conducted a contextual inquiry with various visually impaired people, understanding their day to day problems especially in this segment (food ordering). Following were my findings:
- Visually impaired can access smartphones with the help of accessibility features
- They can call, text, search, even book a cab via voice assistants ( google assistant, Alexa, Siri)
- They are even comfortable with texting via voice to text feature.

Why is Ordering food inconvenient for them?
Insights from the scenario and task analysis
Scenario and task analysis process helped me learning about the user by observing them in action to understand in detail how they perform their tasks and achieve their intended goals.


In the above task flow, the red dots represent the number of times a user clicks when he orders through Zomato. This is purely a visual task and cannot be done by a visually impaired user.
While google searched the nearby restaurants and could easily place a call to them,
- They might find out that the restaurant doesn’t deliver to their location.
- They’ll have to ask Google to search restaurants again and try calling one of them.
- They would have to narrate their address as the restaurant won’t be able to directly track it.
- The restaurant managers might not have the patience to narrate the menu and their respective prices for placing the order.
- They couldn’t call the restaurant so many times to ask the status of their delivery, hence waiting clueless and hungry was the only option.
- While paying, it is a security concern for them to transfer money digitally in front of the delivery boy.
Problem Statement
Online food ordering apps are based on visual interfaces and have tasks based on the graphical user interface (GUI), hence leave out visually impaired people.
What can be done to improve the experience?
Mind-mapping was done to explore the aspects of VUI(voice user interface)
Introducing Zomatalk
Zomatalk is an integration of a voice user interface to the food ordering app, Zomato so that the visually impaired can use it independent of the GUI.

User-Product Goals

How to execute a voice user interface?
Secondary research about voice user interface
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) is the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices.

UX flow for VUI
Trigger
Active
Leading cue
Real-time feedback
Ending cue
Processing the command
Action was taken
A few dialogue guidelines that I followed while designing for the voice user interface:
- People expect more from voice because unlike the graphical user interface, people have been communicating through voice since their birth
- Do not teach voice commands to the users because speech is intuitive
- There should be a minimum number of steps so that it’s easy and quick for the user with voice
- Always be brief and follow the principle of progressive disclosure so the user won’t be confused or overwhelmed
- VUI always leverage the context from the previous experiences of the same user
Information Architecture
Charting out IA diagram and decision making for the prototype


Defining the style guide and navigation
Charting out IA diagram and decision making for the prototype
Personality & Characteristics
The VUI has a very young and bold personality. She/he is very friendly and helpful in choosing the exact food for the users. Her guiding personality makes users comfortable.
Tone
The tone of the VUI is enthusiastic but mature, guiding and appreciative.
(due to Adobe XD constraints the voice of the prototype is chosen from the nearest suiting available voices).
Choices of phrases- What will the VUI sound like?
Yes, Sure!
Just a sec,
Done!
Ok great!
Cool! Your order is placed! Sit back and relax.
“Hello, Alisha! Hungry? What can I get you? Are you craving anything specific?”
“Heyo! here to serve you, with delicious dinner. What can I get ya?”
Main Navigation
The main navigation is global and in the case of VUI, it is very much broad as the user may ask or need anything at any point in time (there is no visual guidance).
Progressive Disclosure
The VUI has to communicate information in an as short and intuitive way as possible. Progressive disclosing information is very important as this reduces the load on users and helps them understand the VUI.
The Prototype of voice and visual design
Dialogue and script were written for voice to prototype on Adobe XD
Zomatalk: Heyo Tom, welcome to Zomatalk. What can I get you? Today’s offers? Any specific cuisines or dishes?
Tom: I would like a burger
Zomatalk: Well great! Would you like it through specific restaurants? or should I filter some restaurants out for you?
Tom: Emm McDonald’s?
Zomatalk: That’s a good choice! What kind of burger would you like to have?
Tom: I would like to have a McSpicy meal
Zomatalk: Ok, Should I make it regular? medium? or large?
Tom: Make it regular
Zomatalk: Done! Do I make the drink Coco-cola like the last time?
Tom: Yes. Do I have any discount coupons?
Zomatalk: em, let me check. Sure! you do have a flat 50% discount coupons available. Should I apply that?
Tom: Yes
Zomatalk: Ok great! You will have to pay Rupees 250 for this order. Would you like me to proceed?
Tom: Yes, please
Zomatalk: You’d like to pay via Cash? Card? Online Wallet?
Tom: I’ll pay with cash
Zomatalk: Okay I suppose you are at your house in Viman Nagar?
Tom: Yes correct
Zomatalk: Cool! your order is placed! It will reach you in about 25 to 30 minutes. I’ll keep track of it!


Thanks a lot for reading!
