Shortlist
Designing a mobile app for travellers to get curated local dinning experiences by experts.
Understand
Context
There are hundreds of restaurants to try lists all over the internet, but the credibility of those lists are always questionable. Our team of UX Researchers set out to ease people travelling to unfamiliar places, discover more authentic and culturally rich food experiences.
The research team set out to understand the behavior of travelers and the challenges they commonly face looking for new dining experiences while travelling. Our guiding hypothesis is that conscious travelers want a curated list of authentic food experiences, created by reputable sources.
Proposed Partner
Airbnb
We thought of several travel companies as our product partner to accelerate our reach and Airbnb’s mission to help create a world where travelers can belong anywhere allowing them to experience living in a place, rather than just traveling to it aligned with our vision of providing non traditional and authentic experiences.
Research
Insights
We carried out user interviews from our screened target users to drill into aspects of the frustations and struggles of travellers planning their trips, following the structured discussion guide to capture the insights needed to understand the “meaning of authenticity” to travellers. Interviews were held in-person or over Zoom, and auto-transcribed in the Otter app.
We then synthesized these insights from interviews through affinity mapping — to illuminate key themes.
Local Recs Tourists trust that locals know their area best
Customs Travelers care about being respectful in a new environment
Tourism “Off the beaten path” spots for food and drink are often preferred
Research Travelers are apprehensive to take crowdsourced recommendation like Yelp and Google at face value
Culture When storytelling is a part of the serving of food, it builds ones appreciation of what they are eating
Cost Value is calculated not just in cost, but in quality of experience
Our research validated our initial hypothesis that conscious travelers desire a curated list of culturally authentic food experiences, recommended by reputable source.
Product Principles
We wanted to agree on a set group of principles to guide our product’s design. This process assisted us with identifying our true north.
Food destinations are selectively curated
Diverse expert panel that allows for inclusive suggestions
Experience centered content
Advised by local stakeholders
Careful consideration of local social etiquette and food culture
Design System
We decided on branding elements and created a style guide to assist us. We settled on respecting the company color scheme but holding a self identity. To adapt to local cultures we settled on having a location-specific color scheme to give more personality to the country specific pages, along with outlined typography rules and assets.
Here is our style guide for Kyoto, Japan.
Our research validated our initial hypothesis that conscious travelers desire a curated list of culturally authentic food experiences, recommended by reputable source.
Design
Ideating features from insights
User flow through our product.
Validate + Iterate
Testing
After conducting usability testing, we obtained a general task completion rate of 80% for our medium-fidelity prototype. Specifically, the sign-in task achieved a 100% success rate, while finding the experts page had a success rate of 60%. Users expressed a desire for visible menus and food images. Furthermore, we discovered that users anticipate the 'experts' page to be included in the main navigation rather than being hidden in a hamburger menu.
Reflection
Next Steps
In the upcoming sprint, our focus is on incorporating additional core features that were initially lower in priority for the minimum viable product. This includes implementing a map view of the eateries. Moreover, we will explore the development of other platform versions to ensure a diverse range of device experiences.
As we look forward to the release and implementation phase, it is crucial to expand our pool of Airbnb host experts to cover a broader range of locations. Once launched, we will utilize Google's HEART metrics, a user-centric measurement framework encompassing Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. These metrics will help us gauge the reception and success of our product.
Challenge
How might we help conscious travelers find culturally authentic food experiences while helping them respectfully participate in local customs?
My Role
Project Type: Mobile Design
Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Figma
Client: Colaborated with Airbnb
Timeline