Project Role
UX and Product Designer
Date Completed
May 2019
Skills Used
Design Thinking, Research, Visual Design
One in ten Americans is estimated to have a food allergy. Reactions to food allergens ranges from mild rashes to life-threatening emergencies that require hospitalization. There is no known cure for food allergies, and once they develop, most people have to avoid the trigger food for the rest of their lives.
While common food allergens are required to be labeled by the FDA on products sold in stores, there is no equivalent regulation for food sold in restaurants. While some restaurants voluntarily offer menus that inform people of food allergens and dietary preferences, these are the exception rather than the rule. This means that when people with food allergies go to a restaurant, they must carefully evaluate the menu and ask questions to ensure they don't trigger a dangerous reaction.
To better understand the problems and habits someone with dietary restrictions faces, I conducted a survey with six people I knew who either had food allergies or some kind of food restriction. The survey consisted of a few simple questions.
Five of the six people answered yes to the first part of the first question. Their answers to the second half included "exciting" and "eye-opening", but also "annoying" and "coin-flip".
All six said they've done research on restaurants before going to them.
The first two questions were validate my assumptions that people with food allergies want to try new foods, and almost certainly have to do research about new places they want to eat.
The participants' answers to the third question were dominated by "Googling it" but also included "asking [the restaurant staff]" and "reading the nutrition facts" when available.
Along with these answers, I used one statement starter to ideate around how to help people find out what's in food they're eating, and another to figure out how to recommend new restaurants to people.
For "how might we make it easier to know what's in food?", I decided to use "encyclopedia", "ingredient lists" and "accessible menus" to help guide my designs. I thought these would be the easiest to control on my end of things and build a product around. For "how might we make it easier to find places to eat", I decided to use with "by preference" as it directly addressed the needs of someone who has a food restriction.
My initial solution started with building an encyclopedia of all of foods, listing the restrictions, possible substitutions, and then suggesting restaurants based on someone's dietary preferences/restrictions. However, after conducting simple usability tests with people I had surveyed, I found that while the encyclopedia feature was useful, the suggested restaurants feature was what really drew their attention.
I decided to pivot to a restaurant finder that suggested restaurants based on one's preferences. I wanted to include the educational aspect of the encyclopedia idea, which listed why you may not be able eat a certain food so I made the decision to incorporate the ingredient information about each menu item. This not only helps to alert people about potential allergens, but also help users plan out what they can eat before getting to the restaurant.
During this pivot, I realized that another target user group are those who willing restrict their diet, for health, ethical, or religious reasons. For the most part, these are also underserved populations when it comes to knowing if they can eat something at a restaurant and could benefit from a new way to discover things to eat.
I focused on creating a mobile application due to the prevalance of mobile devices as well as the most likely circumstances of use cases (at a restaurant to browse the menu, or looking up a new restaurant after being invited).
Because no popular restaurant finding application focuses heavily on users who can't necessarily eat everything, I decided to create an onboarding process for Menyou.
I opted to keep it very short, as most users can grasp what the dietary labels mean (left), and are familiar with search functionality (middle). The third page (right) of the onboarding process introduces users to the customization aspect of the application. The options presented begin with the most common food allergies in the United States. Afterwards, some common dietary preferences which include specialty and religious diets. The final section allows for customization and complete catering to a users tastes, allowing them to restrict foods they might be allergic to but weren't previously covered, or simply foods they don't like to eat.
My design limits the initial customization options as I feel that the options presented cover the majority of food allergies as well as self imposed dietary restrictions. I want to ensure the process is as streamlined as possible in order to get users to complete it.
After the initial set up, a user normally open up the application to the home screen. The search functionality is located at the top for easy access, and informs users of the different things they can search for. Underneath are suggested restaurants which periodically refreshes based on the personalization options a user selected during onboarding. Each card displays a prominent image of the restaurant to get attention as well as important details about a restaurant. In order to view an interesting restaurant again later, a user can tap the heart icon in the bottom right corner, and add it to their saved restaurants list.
Upon tapping on a restaurant (left), all the details on the card are shown in the top section of the page. The order and navigate buttons fulfill different needs depending on the user's preference of dining in or out. These options act as a natural complement to restaurant finding - after finding where you want to eat, the next step is getting the food. Neither functionality is built in, and the buttons would open separate applications. Upon scrolling (middle), the UI changes and the user is able to swipe side to side to jump between sections of the menu. Much like a real menu, if a user isn't interested in a certain category of food, they can jump around section to section easily.
Each menu has already been filtered down for an individual, saving them the time and effort of checking for dietary restrictions. However, there is an option of enabling the full menu, and this can be used to either orient themselves to the actual menu in the restaurant or to share with their friends who may not share the same restrictions.
Although I've done research into dietary restrictions and drawn upon my own experiences, there's a likelihood I'm still missing chunks of the population. In addition, there is a large and growing group of people who sometimes choose to adhere to restrictive diets. Adding ways for them to reap the benefits of personalized menus, but allowing them to easily adjust their preferences as necessary would expand the target audience of this application greatly.
Because allergic reactions can be deadly, it's important that things are accurately labeled and can be corrected if there are mistakes. A future iteration of this application would include a community style review system that can help guide individuals with the most sensitive dietary restrictions and help protect them.
While the application satisfies core use cases, there aren't many features in the application beyond the personalized menus that keep users from supplementing their experience with other restaurant review and finding applications. Features in later releases would include reviews and user profiles that are built in to the application. In addition, I would add ways to share restaurants and plan group trips based on a group-wide dietary preferences including sending out invites, voting on dishes to share, etc.