SAFEPLATE
AT-A-GLANCE
SafePlate tackles the challenge of finding safe dining options for individuals with dietary restrictions and their companions. SafePlate is a 0->1 project, done over 24 weeks, to make sure everyone can have a fun, stress-free, and inclusive dining experience.
TEAM
Me (Lead UX Designer)
1 UI Designer
1 Project Manager
1 Engineer
SKILLS
0->1 Product Strategy
End-to-end Design
Brand and Visual Design
Pitch Presentation
TIMELINE
24 weeks
(Oct '23 - Mar '24)
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
IMPACTS
🔎
Cutting down the time needed for groups to find most suitable and safe dining experience
🏅
100%
of usability testing participants indicated that they would recommend this app to a friend
🌟
4.4/5
is the average Usability Rating with keywords: "easy to use" or "will save a lot of time"
"It's vibrant and very friendly. I like that it makes restrictions very visible."
For individuals or groups with allergies or dietary restrictions, finding suitable restaurants can be difficult.
This project began out of personal frustration with the time spent searching for places to accommodate different groups of friends, often leading to indecision that negatively impacted group outings.
Learning through 25 surveys with Gen Z and Millennials with experience dining out with dietary restrictions and additional 8 user interviews to understand more deeply their eating-out behaviors, feelings throughout the journey, and common experiences. I identified top 5 most common themes and conclude on their actionable findings.
user journey
Curious about where pain points appear, I asked users to recount their experiences to create a user journey map. This guided me in identifying pain points and opportunities to streamline the process.
THE PROBLEM
For individuals with allergies or other restrictions, finding restaurants that cater to their needs is challenging due to:
Aware that user’s challenges are sensitive and crucial, we define our high level goal.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Before diving into design, we explored existing apps to see if solutions already exist and what we could learn. Since none of our users mentioned using an app to solve this problem, we wanted to understand gaps in the market and why these solutions aren’t widely adopted.
Using the pain points as a guide, I focused my questions on design engagement, clarity, motivational messages, and how comfortable students felt seeing their own or others’ rankings on the leaderboard.
DEFINING THE KEY SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY
Who-What-Where, inspired by Airbnb
When searching for a dining experience, users look for restaurants by:
Name
Location
Dietary restrictions of other group members
Inspired by Airbnb's "Where-When-Who" search, I designed a "Who-What-Where" search to encourage users to think more holistically about their dining experience that also align with their mental model.
Setting out as our competitive edge,
How do we make this experience collaborative? 🤝
By drawing inspiration from social media platforms and brainstorming, I generated three concepts for setting up personal profiles that make shared dining easier. With saved buddies’ dietary profiles, users can explore restaurants together without repeatedly re-entering each friend’s restrictions. Each idea addresses a different collaboration scenario:
Sync Contacts: SafePlate users can find and add friends who already have an account.
Referral Code: Users can invite friends who haven’t downloaded the app yet.
Manual Profile Creation: Users can create a profile on behalf of friends who prefer not to sign up themselves.
All 3 solutions were beneficial and optimized, I merged them into a single version for the most best solution. However, to ensure the fastest and most efficient development path, our engineer advised us to move forward with the Exclusive invite solution, where users can share a link and collaborate on the same order in real-time.
ROADBLOCK 🚧
Unclear dietary restriction labels hinder quick scanning for dining options
Solution: Clarity > Aesthetic
After feedback indicated our system lacked clarity at-a-glance, we brainstormed and narrowed our restriction label options to 3 ideas and quickly tested them through lightweight A/B testing as the deadline approached.
Through A/B user testing, option 2 initially attracted users due to its visual appeal. However, concerns about color contrast and intuitiveness arose, particularly with representing all 13 dietary restrictions effectively.
Option 3 was decided on as the option that was most comprehensible to users. With this solution, users wouldn’t have to memorize our icons while in a rush looking.
BRANDING & TONE OF VOICE
After concluding our research, we recognized the importance of making users feel safe and comfortable sharing their dietary restrictions with the app. Our goal for the design stage is to deliver a branding personality that conveys friendliness, coziness, and trustworthiness.
Early in our research, we found that 95% of participants preferred a vibrant, warm color palette, particularly green and pink. They felt green evoked positivity and trustworthiness, and pink was heartwarming.
To maintain a consistent warm and welcoming tone, we created voice guidelines to balance formality with casualness, seriousness with humor, and professionalism with playfulness.
The Final Prototype
FEATURE 1/
Seamless group searching experience with Who - What - Where
SafePlate quickly identifies restaurants suited to your group's dietary needs through 3 questions:
Who are you dining with? (Select from your saved dining buddies)
What are your and your group's dietary allergies/restrictions? (Autofills from your and your buddies' saved profiles)
Where do you want to dine? (Input location)
FEATURE 2/
Filtered menu with dietary restrictions tag
In search results, SafePlate exclusively displays restaurants that accommodate all members of your party to ensure inclusivity. We provide both a full menu and a filtered menu tailored to your group's dietary restrictions.
FEATURE 3/
Dining Buddies & Accounts
SafePlate enables users to create profiles with up to 13 dietary restrictions. You can add friends to your buddies list and, when dining out, simply select their profiles in the search function to receive restaurant suggestions tailored to everyone's preferences.
FEATURE 4/
Curated Guides
Users have expressed a need for a guide to help those without dietary restrictions understand their dining buddies’ needs and emergency protocols. Curated guides are our lists of helpful knowledge and external sources to address this.
DEVELOPMENT
We initially explored Google and Yelp APIs, but as SafePlate evolved, we needed detailed dish-level data on ingredients and descriptions. To balance impact and dev efficiency, we chose the UberEats API for its structured menu data and quick integration. I partnered with engineers to map the site architecture and data flow, ensuring designs stayed feasible and fast to build.
LESSONS LEARNED
🙋🏻♀️
Deloy more, assume less. Reach out.
In my first research on a sensitive topic-users with dietary restrictions, I learned to actively seek diverse perspectives. Rather than making assumptions, I prioritize thorough user testing to uncover insights that surpass my initial product ideas.
📋
Find focus through
prioritization
In our six-month junior project to build an app from scratch, we managed all product development internally, prioritizing key functionalities for users. This experience enhanced our understanding of MVPs and the iterative nature of product development.
You've reached the end… how about another story?
RIGHTON EDUCATION / 2023
