UXD Case Study: A Solution For The Age- Old Question: Where the F*** Are We Going to Eat?

This case study examines an app prototype I developed for my UXD course at Red Academy, that helps solve the age-old problem of deciding where the f*** you’re going we eat.

The Opportunity

We’ve all been there, we’ve all suffered the frustration that is deciding where we are going to eat. Relationships no longer need to suffer, friendships can be reconciled, and families will continue to flourish, because I have created an app to help solve this problem. This app was designed for the groups of people who often find themselves frustrated when they want to go out and eat, but can’t collectively come to a decision, resulting in in everyone being #HANGRY.

Research

My research began by conducting an informal one-to-one interview with my user. I executed this by asking a set of generalized questions, and recording my findings as written notes. After carefully examining this data, I visualized it into the affinity diagram below.

I followed up with subsequent interviews, asking more contextual questions to better understand the finer details surrounding the issue I wanted to solve for my user. From here, I created the user persona profile below which I would refer to as the basis for the rest of my project.

My next step was to think of different solutions of how I could help solve this problem. I decided to research some competitor solutions (apps/websites) online and recorded what I could adapt into my app, or what I could improve on.

Planning

Based on my interviews, I knew my user enjoyed variety. So instead of adopting some sort of group voting system or electing a leader figure to make decisions, I decided the best method was to randomize the results. This allows for a better chance of a different restaurant to be chosen each time. Additionally, I discovered through my interviews that part of the indecisiveness in his group was caused because no one wanted to be accountable if their choice ended up being bad. By making the voting anonymous, this issue could also be solved.

Now that I had a general sense of how the restaurant was going to be chosen, I sketched out a storyboard depicting a key path scenario below:

The key path scenario: It’s Friday, and Dan decides he wants to eat out with his friends for dinner that night. He logs on to the app, and creates an event. Those that are interested accept the invitation, and fill out their what restaurant they would like to go to, and wait for the draw to occur. Once the draw has been made, they all receive the details of their plan. The app worked successfully, and Dan and his friends and happy they didn’t have to go to bed hangry that night.

Based on the key path scenario I then created a user flowchart to outline the detailed steps leading to the solution. I frequently referred back to my research to ensure all elements of the solution were included and to refine any details along the way.

Since I knew my user was socially active, but would sometimes miss out 0n opportunities because he rarely logged them, I decided a calendar feature with push notifications was one that would benefit him. Another feature I added was the ability to invite friends after the draw. They wouldn’t be able to edit the current plans in place, so if that stubborn friend wanted to tag along, this was the set plan and he could decide whether he wanted to come or not.

Design

My initial designs consisted of pencil to paper lo-fi prototypes. I then then transformed them into a clickable paper prototype using the POP app. Once I was satisfied with the user test results, I created a clickable vectorized prototype.

Pencil to paper clickable prototype

Vectorized clickable prototype

Prototype

Once I was satisfied with the results of my usability testing report, I finally created a mid-fidelity vectorized prototype using the Invision app.

See the prototype here.

Usability Testing

For my initial lo-fi paper prototype, I found that that my test subjects had positive emotional responses after completing the test scenarios I had given them. One recurring issue, however, was that I had to provide basic hints before they could successfully navigate through the app. I had two hypothesis’. First, my paper prototype was too low-fi. Users needed better visual prompts (i.e. a house icon instead of the square placeholder) to tell them where to go. And second, having too many/unnecessary options, giving them too much to think about. I solved this by bringing more detail into the design, and removing and condensing any unnecessary options.

After conducting a secondary set of tests based on a my vectorized version, I found users were successfully able to navigate and complete the test scenario with no cues.

Summary

For my first week into the course, and my first project, I definitely established more of a sense of why I had to complete certain tasks. Why the order of these tasks were important, And why it’s important to document everything in a meticulous and organized fashion. I’m excited to further develop the positive practices I’ve gained from this project and implement into my following project.