Revive — Food match revolution!
This project was tasked at creating a mobile app for my client ‘Adrian’ which will help him to solve a problem he is facing in his daily life.
Adrian is definitely in the category of ‘fussy eater’, he goes through different emotions, stress, anxiety and moods when it is time for him to choose where he will eat his next meal. It is so important for Adrian to choose the right meal for satisfaction, that he would rather choose something which he has eaten multiple times before than to risk trying something new.
I started exploring different ways that I could help Adrian with this issue, and I tried to come up with different possible solutions, through sketching small doodles.
The idea that stuck out to me the most was a ‘tinder style app’, where instead of being matched to potential partners, he could be matched with different meals.
I went on to explore this idea further, and started looking at what kind of journey or experience this would like like as illustrated below.
Adrian’s interaction with the app would start when he begins to get hungry, the app would show him high quality images of potential dishes to activate his taste buds, and he would very easily be matched with a dish that doesn’t contain any ingredients which he doesn’t like, and caters for any dietary requirements. In a few easy steps, the app can tell him exactly where he can find his chosen dish and he would also have the option to book a table directly from the app, without needed to find their phone number.
I worked closely with Adrian while working on this project and I did an experience map with him to really try to understand his thoughts and feelings and to get a better feel for his emotional state during this time of hunger and thinking about options.
What was really interesting for me though looking at the 2 hour process from ‘hunger’ to ‘food on table’ was Adrian’s stress levels. As he gets hungry, the stress increases; it increases again when he is going to a restaurant because he needs to satisfy his hunger, but doesn’t know if it will be fulfilled.
Happiest point — once he has food in front of him and he is happy with how it looks.
Some Quotes from Adrian
“I’m happy when I eat well”
“if I can see how it looks, then I will know if I’ll like it”
“we eat with our eyes…”
This Experience map allowed me to really get a feel for the different emotional states Adrian experiences, I discovered that he can very easily get sad, but we can eliminate that if we he knows what to expect.
Next it was time to do some testing, through paper prototyping, to see whether the flow of this app would work and test the usability of some of the features.
This was really useful, and I learnt so much from testing at this low fidelity stage, of how the app could already be improved, and also how to improve the flow. I also tested with 5 other potential users, who all provided valuable insight around navigation, features, and ease of use.
I then went on to do my mid-fidelity prototype and mock up
I was also able to actually test and use protyping with Invision and this gave me more insight into the finer details of my copy, whether I am able to read it on a phone screen. Do I need bigger icons and also test the gestures and whether they work well for this app.
Once I was happy and ready with all functionality and navigation issues, only then did I start to think about hi fidelity, but starting with creating a mood board, then a style guide, and then onto actually adding the visuals to the prototype.
I really like the colours and textures in this board, bright vivid food images, and dark sexy backgrounds, which represents a strong, exclusive and modern feel. I also produced a style guide so I could identify the main colours I wanted to use and also the font I would use for this app.
You are able to go through the whole clickable prototype here
On the left is just an example of what I was going for. Texture and darkness in the background, bright vivid images, highlighting the food, and clear easy contact information for the restaurants, just to make the process as easy as possible.
Finally, I wanted to give my app a name. In the end I chose Revive — Revive has some interesting origins, originally being a french word and it made its way into the English language, however, what was more interesting for me is its meaning. Revive means bringing back to life, and this is exactly what I wanted to do with food for Adrian: bring his eating experiences alive, to the way they once were, when he was excited about food.
