Restaurant Diet Finder

About Restaurant Diet Finder

A client wanted to see an innovative restaurant food diet app for people who struggle finding meals at restaurants that meet their dietary restrictions. This involved inventing an app that provides ways to find restaurant meals suitable for peoples’ dietary restrictions which was named Restaurant Diet Finder.

Business Challenge & Opportunity


During 2017-2018, according to CDC, more Americans are following a diet to improve their health issues. They tend to struggle finding meals at restaurants that suit their dietary restrictions. This can hurt their social life especially when it comes to social gatherings at a restaurant. Restaurants tend to struggle as well to meet their customers' dietary restrictions. Therefore, the Restaurant Diet Finder app will help customers find meals at restaurants that meet their dietary restrictions. As restaurants showcase their food in each available diet meal on the menu that could lead strong to customer traffic and loyalty.

How can the app provide people a way to find restaurants that serve meals according to their dietary restrictions?

UX Goal


  • Creating a simple and stress-free experience for people to find restaurants that provide meals suitable for their diet restrictions

  • It details restrictions, diet management information, and a networking opportunity for diet followers

  • As for the short duration of the time, there will be brief discovery research, competitor research, wireframe designs, and prototype launching.

Business Impact

  • Increase customer loyalty towards restaurants

  • Increase customer satisfaction rates

  • Increase customer confidence level

My Role


  • UX Designer: Establishing a project plan on Diet Finder, Sketching wireframes

  • UX Research: Brief discovery research from articles. Competitive Research on Food Diet Apps/Websites

  • UI Design: Creating wireframes and an interactive prototype

Collaborators

  • Solo

Methodology

  • Discovery research from articles discussing the current issues users' face on diet restrictions in regards to restaurants and social life

  • Competitive research on food apps that provide diet meals at restaurants

  • Gathering feedback on the prototype

  • Creating sketches, wireframes, interactive prototype

Tools

  • Figma

  • Paper & Pencil


Research

Scope


Due to the short timeline, the research was focused on learning about the current issues people face when finding diet meals at a restaurant. Competitor research was used to identify companies with websites and apps similar to Restaurant Diet Finder.


Results


Discovery Research

  • At least 45 million Americans are on a weight loss diet each year

  • According to CDC in 2015-2018, 17.1% of U.S adults aged 20 and above were on a special diet

  • According to Time, the nightmare issues behind following restrictive diets can be missing the social life in which friends do not follow similar diets

  • The other crucial issue people face is asking waiters and waitresses about the specific meals to meet their diet restrictions

Competitor Analysis

  • The competition would be Healthy Dining Finder and Food Tripping

Healthy Dining Finder Analysis

Pros

  • Allows users to search for nearby restaurants that provide healthy meals to buy.

  • When a user clicks on a restaurant, they can see the list of healthy meals and the nutrition facts. The nutrition facts lists calories, sodium, etc.

Cons

  • Users would have to pay for the app

Food Tripping Analysis

Pros

  • Food Tripping provides healthier options besides fast food while driving on a road trip

Cons

  • Not an intuitive app due to search filter not working

  • Only one diet selection filter which is Vegan & Vegetarian

Healthy Dining Finder and Food Tripping Images

Created on Adobe XD

Recommendations


  • The Healthy Dining Finder could be a useful idea for the Restaurant Diet Finder

  • Provide the list of meals from each Restaurant based on each restrictive diet

  • As for the discovery research, the Restaurant Diet Finder should include a social networking option for people with dietary restrictions


UX Design

  • Provide the sketches of the diet wireframes and gather iterations from the team

  • Create the digital prototype


Results of UX Design

Sketches

  • The goal of the wireframe project on Restaurant Diet Finder is to present a clear structure and the flow on how a new user goes through the app

  • Ensuring the design layout provides familiarity for the user to avoid the extra time going through the menu options

  • Involve a journey of the user discovering the Restaurant Diet Finder app for the first time

Wireframe Sketches

Created with pencil and paper

  • This showcases the user already filled up the profile on preferred diet and researches the restaurants that serve the gluten-free meals

  • 1. Created the restaurant finder design similar to Yelp so the user is familiar with the language and layout that makes it intuitive so it will reduce the time for users to explore.

  • 2. The user decides to click on Zoe’s Kitchen that serves Mediterranean food and it also provides her Gluten Free dishes. Zoe’s Kitchen shows the cuisine ratings, distance, and the hours it opens. I drew icons that presents labels underneath to show the list of diets

See the Report for additional sketches

Digital Prototype


  • Created the diet choices within the user profile

  • Designed a user profile for diet buddies

  • Changed the label from new buddies to diet buddies

Lessons Learned


  • Discovered the emotional impact that users face while going on a restrictive diet at a restaurant and social gatherings

  • Learned unique approaches that competitors provide discovering diets at a restaurant, such as providing healthy meal options along with calorie count for each user