It all started back in 2018 while working with the Enigma Virtulux. Camios burger house and Piatto dessert studio came to us with the same pain point. They had a tough time selling their respective products to customers because of obvious reasons:
- Different names of food dishes.
- Lack of description.
- Food ideas from different continents.
This was the first design we proposed to the client. To keep UI simple we categorized the menu into 4 main parts such as burgers, pizza, drinks, and desserts. We used the "i" icon for ingredients information and the rotational button to rotate 3D objects of food items.
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For course HCI 440 User-Centered Design I got a chance to work on a food-related application so I chose to work on the same project because I felt that I did not do in-depth user research for that and I wanted to implement this idea on a broad-scale and for the ethnic eatery.
Easy Eatz is a mobile application that acts as an alternative to paper menus in the ethnic eatery. It allows users to have a safe and different experience with the current Covid-19 situation.
1. Augmented Reality
2. Food Description
3. Ingredients
This research study assesses the impact of digital menu implementation at ethnic food restaurants. It will also identify the important features that users will find helpful while making their food decisions in ethnic food restaurants elevating the user experience.
Users dining at ethnic restaurants often struggle with traditional paper menus that lack clarity and context. Our research revealed two key pain points: limited or no descriptions for unfamiliar ingredients and uncertainty around portion sizes. This lack of information leads to confusion, hesitation, and a less confident ordering experience. Easy-Eatz aims to address these issues by delivering a more informative, interactive, and user-friendly digital menu experience.
Easy-Eatz enhances the dining experience by replacing static paper menus with an interactive, mobile-based digital menu. Using Augmented Reality, users can visualize food portions before ordering, helping set clear expectations. The app also provides detailed ingredient descriptions, particularly for unfamiliar or culturally specific items, and includes short videos demonstrating how meals are prepared and plated. This creates a more informative, engaging, and confident ordering experience for users.
EazyEats is a mobile app that enhances the dining experience at ethnic restaurants by replacing paper menus with an interactive digital alternative. Targeting iOS users, it addresses common issues like unclear ingredient descriptions and meal sizing by using AR technology to visualize portions and offering detailed ingredient info and cooking videos. The result is a faster, more informed, and culturally rich dining experience.
The first step was to conduct a survey and understand our users and their potential needs and pain points to craft a solution. The user survey pointed out some key characteristics in the way most people order their food.
We conducted interviews with potential 34 users and 7 restaurant managers. Also, designed questionnaires and received about 200+ responses. This helped us to better understand the users' pain points and needs.
- Faced difficulty in understanding culturally labeled names and foreign ingredients used in the food items.
- Users were unaware of the process of making the food.
- Upset in terms of quantity or size.
- The language barrier between the customers and servers caused miscommunication.
- When customers inquired about the foreign food items or ingredients, servers were unable to explain to customers.
Major findings showed that 60.8% of the participants do not always know what to order in an ethnic food cuisine, followed by 78.4% of the people asking for more clarification about the ingredients to the server at the ethnic food restaurant.
Additionally, the statement about the speed in decision making influenced by visual representations (example: pictures, videos, and Augmented Reality) received a rating of 9 on a scale of 0 to 10.
1. What are the problems that paper-based menus have in ethnic food restaurants?
2. What type of menu elements influence the user's decision-making process in choosing a food item in an ethnic food restaurant?
3. What are the barriers that people face in making decisions about which ethnic foods to order?
The target audience for this project are people who have access to smartphones, and who dine at ethnic food restaurants. Also, secondary users are the people who are concerned about food ingredients and nutritional values for the food they are served.
The next step in the design process was to organize everything and give a structure to the app. This is known as Information architecture. I started by defining the minimum requirements or deliverables for the app by drafting the User Stories.
I made User Flows and Sitemap to define the app Navigation and its structure followed by Wire frames and Low-fi mock-ups.
After analyzing the user research data and defining the problems we had brainstorming sessions and discussed ideas to come up with a solution. We designed rough sketches and discussed some ideas that could solve our defined problems. One of the interesting ideas was to use Augmented Reality while ordering food!
Storyboarding
The diagram shows an emotional perspective storyboard
Great designs don't just appear overnight they take time to get right. Prototyping can be a quick and effective way of bringing your ideas to life. A sample of your intended users or evaluators can then be observed and tested, and their opinions can be used in order to make improvements during an iterative design process.
This is the most exciting part of the design process. This is also the most comprehensive and crucial project stage as it involves designing detailed mockups of the app, designing the logo, choosing an appropriate color scheme, and setting up the style guide to position the brand's presence.
High-Fidelity Mockups
Following the framework established in the low-fidelity mockups, I made the High-Fidelity mockups which presented a detailed view of all the possible screens in the app. It was the most time-consuming task as it involved choosing the appropriate colors, icons, typefaces, font weights, and designing the graphs. Besides, the whole app is consistent with the Google Material Design guidelines.
Since this is a food app, it consists of a lot of data elements. Hence, a deep color palette was necessary to convey important actions & information by associating them with color hierarchy.
We decided to go with these colors because yellow and orange are colors that make people feel hungry. These colors are associated with emotion and passion.
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1) Need for server assistance button on all the application screens.
2) There was a navigational flaw with the app, the ‘back button’ was missing on the screens, so users had difficulty navigating to different screens.
3) Remove button was missing to clear items in the cart.
4) No prompts when users performed actions.
5) The use of technical terms in the UX writing. (3D, Augmented Reality)
1. Navigation must be intuitive. The navigational flow should not make users feel lost while interacting with the app.
2. The app should be designed to keep the user's needs as a central theme. Learn what users are trying to achieve and eliminate any barriers that will get in the way of them accomplishing their goals.
3. Reducing the number of taps while navigating from Point A to Point B.
4. It's wise to use common design patterns and principles which are proven successful.
