Bronze Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design · 2022
Foodie Restaurant Recommendation Service
by Tianyi Qi
- A' Design Award 2022 Bronze Winner in Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Tianyi Qi
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 14,971
- Verification code 17A2AB59C7 · Verify this award
About Foodie Restaurant Recommendation Service
Foodie is a mobile application designed to help people find restaurants through recommendations from friends. Sharing food preferences usually happens in offline conversations, and Foodie moves the exchange onto a digital platform for use at any time and in any place. The Friends screen shows updates and lists created by friends. The My Lists screen allows users to manage saved restaurants and to filter them by type. The Map screen supports searching for restaurants nearby or around a chosen location. Foodie is built for iOS devices.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Foodie is a mobile app that aims to leverage the action of sharing personal preference with one's social circle, which happens mostly in offline settings, to a digital platform. This transformation allows this information-sharing process to expand beyond limited scenarios so users can create content and access information whenever and wherever they need it.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The app is designed for iOS systems.
- Tags
- Social, Restaurant, Food, Application, Recommendation
- Production Technology
- The app requires a strong search engine, map and navigation service, and restaurant database to be functional.
- Design Challenge
- Why do users use this service when there are already other popular information sources/services existing around? Which was the major challenge I was facing at the beginning stage of the project. The research was designed and planned to answer this question.
- Project Duration
- The project started in August 2019 and finished in January 2020, in New York City.
- Operation Flow
- On the "Friends" screen, a user will see new updates from their friends, for example, a friend added a new restaurant to their list. They can also explore all the lists created by their friends. To manage restaurants on their own lists, a user can easily navigate to the "My Lists" screen. They can use the filters to easily find the specific types of restaurants on their lists. On the "Map" screen, a user can search for restaurants nearby or around a certain location.
- Research
- I interviewed 10 participants between 20–40, all of them are Yelp or Google users. Participants were asked to arrange the cards with information sources to show how frequently they use and how much they trust each of them. The 3 major research questions are:
1. How and when do people use each information source to find restaurants?
2. What do people trust about each information source?
3. How do people recommend restaurants to their social circle?
The results showed that social circle is the most trusted and the 2nd most used information source when participants are looking for restaurant recommendations. This insight validated the foundation of the project: even though modern technologies have played an important role in helping people find restaurants, people still get recommendations from their friends. From the research, I also learned the requirements participants have on a restaurant's recommendation service and the data gathered from the research was used in persona creation. - Inspiration
- As a foodie living in New York City, I have been enjoying using apps like Yelp and Google to find restaurants, especially those that provide ethnic food that I have never tried before. However, I noticed that even though those apps are backed with big data, I trust my friends more in terms of finding restaurants. This experience makes me curious about this totally different mechanism of trust: How might we help people find restaurants from their friends' recommendations?
- Image Credits
- Image #1-5: Tianyi Qi
Colors of Foodie Restaurant Recommendation Service
Design Interview about Foodie Restaurant Recommendation Service
Leveraging an existing way people use to find good restaurants and services to a digital platform. Social media was a rocketing trend, but very few products were able to keep users engaged. Their failure was the result of designing based on assumptive user needs. The design of Foodie is grounded in solid user demands, and technology is used to solve problems that the current ways of interaction have, instead of merely creating a new way for people to interact.
My main focus has been identifying user pain points and using design to solve these problems. I talked to a lot of target users, listening to how they currently find restaurants and what they are frustrated about. For example, one insight I learned was that they trust recommendations from their friends, but they can't always get these recommendations when they need them, like, on the street. As a solution to the problem, I designed the map function to let users find restaurants anytime, anywhere. Ultimately, my goal was to design an application that really solves user problems.
I am planning to keep exploring the socialization aspect of the app. The app is aimed to achieve two goals: helping users find good restaurants and building more connections with other people. The former has been addressed pretty well by the current design, but the latter still needs more effort. In my future plans, the app will allow users to explore more people to connect based on their tastes, as well as reward new connections they make.
4 months, from planning to finishing the design work. Although I first got the inspiration 2 years ago before I started the design. I first had the idea when I first came to the US but wasn't able to make it real until I had some free time. I never forgot this hunch over that 2 years.
For this particular design, given it's my own side hustle, I pursued my inspiration. When I first came to New York City from China, I was very excited about the diverse food scene here but very ignorant about ethnic food. I didn't know how to order ethnic food, and found apps like Google or Yelp were not that helpful - the popular food on those apps didn't look authentic, they were more like "what Americans like", instead of "what people from that culture would order". I ended up asking my friends from different cultures for food recommendations, it not only helped me find amazing food but made me closer to my friends. This experience inspired me to design an app that allows everyone to have this amazing experience. Ultimately, I wish users can get to know more friends from other cultures because of using this app.
Good question. I believe the answer is rooted in the design philosophy I started to be aware of very recently. I want to use technology to help people build meaningful connections, and design is my approach to achieving this goal. The pandemic has enhanced my desire of pursuing more work like this, as we were more separated from each other. This experience forced us to redefine what connections we need, and how to build those connections.
I identified 3 types of target users for my design, they are "foodies", "friends of foodies", and "ethnic food experts". "Foodies" will be the major content generator for the app, as they like exploring restaurants and documenting restaurants they like. "Friends of foodies" like exploring restaurants but they are not that good at it. So they will ask their foodie friends for suggestions. "Ethic food experts" are people like me, they are very knowledgeable about food from their culture, and can provide good suggestions, however, they might not know much about food from some other cultures. They will be both content generators and consumers of the app.
Mechanism of trust and the focus on socialization. When a person uses other products, like Google and Yelp, they evaluate the quality of a restaurant base on the number of reviews and the overall score. A restaurant needs a lot of good reviews to establish its reputation. People might not go to a new restaurant merely because it doesn't have enough reviews. However, recommendations from friends are a more qualitative way of building trust. One piece of recommendation is good enough for someone to trust and potentially visit a restaurant. Another differentiator for my design is the focus on socialization. The goal of using Foodie is not only to find good food, bu connecting with friends. And the more connections you build, the more food recommendations you get. They are mutually benefiting each other.
I named my design "Foodie" as I think it's an app designed for real foodies. I wanted my target users to be attracted by the name immediately.
I conducted user research and competitive analysis and used the data from this research to inform my design decisions. In the user research sessions, I mainly asked questions about their current user behaviors on restaurant hunting and their opinions about receiving and providing recommendations.
I wanted to share my design with a broader audience, and hopefully, it can inspire other designers in their work. As a designer, I understand how important it is to always get exposed to fresh inspirations. I have benefited a lot from other designers' amazing work and it's time for me to give back to the community.