moBILE APP design & qA

The current version of this app can be seen and downloaded on the Google Play Store and on iOS App Store. The website can be seen at www.foodinow.com

GOAL

Design all aspects of the foodiNow experience, including screens, interactions, features, logo,

font, and website. Research market and test with users throughout. Design marketing materials for chef recruitment.

skills

Competitive analysis, contextual inquiries, heuristic analysis, surveys, information architecture, user interviews, usability testing, A/B testing, site mapping, user flow, wireframing, logo design, color theory, typeface, moodboarding, rapid paper prototyping, medium fidelity sketch prototyping, high-fidelity Adobe Photoshop prototyping.

role

User research, Ideation, testing, marketing, head of design, quality assurance

duration

November 2017 - April 2018

users

foodiNow is a small tech company (<10 people as of April 2018) with the goal of providing a mobile platform for three potential user bases:

1. The Customer

Users can download and register for the mobile app, explore local home-chefs and order authentic, home-cooked food. They have the option of picking up their order from the chef location or getting their order delivered.

2. The Home Chef

Users can register for the mobile app and sign up to become a foodiNow Home Chef. Once approved, Home Chefs can sell up to 3 dishes they cook, customizing which dishes to sell, for what price, and when to go online. Home Chefs may also deliver their own food.

3. The Driver

Users can register for the mobile app and sign up as a driver. Home Chefs determine how much customers may have to pay for delivery using a driver. Drivers therefore accept orders knowing how much they will be paid.

does foodinow solve a problem?

The mobile food-ordering market is currently thriving on restaurant-based apps.

On most restaurant-based apps, users can browse local restaurants and explore large menus via a 3rd party mobile application to purchase food. The company may provide its own delivery service. Partnerships are made between the company and restaurants. The safety, quality and authenticity of the food is up to the restaurant.

foodiNow is unique in this market for a few reasons:

1. Home-Cooked

foodiNow allows customers to order authentic, high-quality food made from the best ingredients the chef can find. A Home Chef can have a maximum of 3 dishes online at once, so each dish can be prepared with care so as to provide the best, most authentic experience. foodiNow thrives in diverse communities.

2. Lack of competition

Currently no food-ordering apps allow users to sign up to sell their own food. Successful food delivery apps thrive on restaurant partnerships, and incorporating home-chefs would put such partnerships at stake as it would introduce competition.

3. Home-cooked food as an ecosystem

What uber did for transportation, and Airbnb did for lodging, foodiNow would do for home-cooked food. Once approved, Home Chefs determine what they cook, how much to sell it for, how they brand themselves, and when to go online. Home Chefs strive on a 5-star rating system.

4. Safety

In traditional food-ordering apps, if a user complains about an order quality or food safety, not much is usually done to ensure the safety of future customers. On foodiNow if enough users complain about unsafe food, the chef gets terminated from the platform. There are multiple safety checks in place encompassing chef signup and live chefs.

branding

The challenge of conveying a high-quality, convenient, home-cooked experience in a logo, website, mobile app, posters, postcards, and business cards was a new challenge for me.

In my first week designing the first iteration of the login screen I was tasked with choosing a logo from four options designed by one of the founders of foodiNow.

The options presented to me were:

After inquiring about the thought processes behind each logo, I decided to explore a few alternatives, as I felt the provided options did not convey a high quality product that would allow users to easily access home-cooked, authentic food.

I designed 4 initial logos to get feedback from the foodiNow founders, before testing with about 20 other users (with varying experience with mobile food-ordering apps):

The decision to design minimalist logos was made to fit the trend of minimal lines depicting a modern, clean, and high quality experience. All four logos included the company name after some research and analysis of food-ordering logos, such as Seamless, GrubHub, and Foodler. Each of these logos were variations of the company name or its abbreviation.

After testing my initial four logos, feedback revealed that the fourth logo depicted a comfortable, high quality experience the best.

The three dashes of different lengths are meant to suggest a swift delivery (as is shown when something speeds up in a comic book, with dashes signifying fast-moving wind). The dish shown in the logo suggests a high quality experience, as would be expected when presented with a closed, silver platter.

color theory

Having done some comparative analysis of mobile food-ordering apps, I noticed that logos and most app colors were shades of red. There are many articles referencing the idea that many fast food brands use the color red in their logos due to it somehow triggering hunger in the brain.

However, upon looking into the referenced studies, I found that color interpretation is mainly contextual. In the context of food-ordering apps, my initial thought process was to default to a red, minimal logo in order to convey a high quality product that would fit in with others (such as DoorDash or GrubHub).

In the later stages of logo design testing, I noticed that most users I showed potential logos to did prefer specifically white logos on a red background.

I therefore settled on this logo:

taglines

Once the base logo was settled, I quickly realized I needed to slightly modify it to insert in the app. Different variations of the logo became the cart icon and blank image icon.

The cart icon with one item added

The default image when a dish does not have an image attached

I was then told that newly recruited home chefs would receive a package of multiple branded containers for their dishes, and that a tagline along with the logo would allow for further branding on any physical assets.

Why doesn't it work?

foodiNow was designed to solve the aforementioned problems with a user-friendly experience, interface, and branding principles. Various research phases involved testing with different populations of users to determine what changes to make for future iterations.

However, when considering the development of my designs, many business decisions lay out of my control. foodiNow outsourced development to Triesten technologies, an IT services company with most software architects in India.

Communication between me and the developers grew sparse; this was not only due to the time difference between Boston and Chennai, but also Triesten decided to change which architects worked on foodiNow once every few months, forcing a systematic on-boarding period wherein all development would stop and have to be reconsidered.

foodiNow executives planned to present the product's iterations at startup fairs in the Harvard business school, Boston College, and Boston University. I therefore designed marketing material and business cards to promote the product. Executives at the fairs promised an initial release within weeks, but due to the developer struggles and a lack of funds, foodiNow was still not live 3 months later mostly due to recurring bugs in the beta version.