An individual design user experience project in efforts to fill the gaps of current food shopping platforms.
food4YOU allows for a better ability to serve the needs of various diets as well as simplifying all users' experience while shopping for groceries in person and online.
Timeline: September 2020 - January 2021
Applications: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign, Figma
Today, more and more individuals are changing their diets as preventable measures to health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Making diet changes have been shown to improve health outcomes, but problems such as increased prices and lack of accessibility have always come in the way of easing that transition to a new diet. Our popular food sources have not adapted, while the stores that do have the options are often more expensive and often requirement a membership, another additional expense.
How can we facilitate and ease food shopping and grocery experience?
RATIONALE
After my mother was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, she began to implement drastic lifestyle changes - a main one included changing her diet to one that excluded grain/gluten, refined sugar, meat, and dairy. She also made sure to buy organic and NON-GMO items for various options.
With this change, she found herself having to do an immense amount of research on replacement diet foods, viable and reliant food brands/stores, as well as the extra hours spent at grocery stores reading ingredient lists for foods she can't have.
USER RESEARCH
What specific areas can we target to facilitate the food shopping experience?
Interviewed 5 key individuals including my mother about their food shopping experience with strict/unique diets.
Questions
What are some key ways that your current food outlets online or in-person hinder your ability to shop?
What is your diet or food preferences and how do you ensure that the food you buy abide by those restrictions?
Where do you go to understand key ingredients, diets, food types and how long does it take you to find a reliable source?
USER RESPONSES
"my biggest problem is checking off a certain ingredient - for example gluten free - and then looking through the ingredients and seeing whole wheat flour written...i still get confused every time!"
"when i first switched to my new diet, i wanted to learn about it and boy, let me tell you how confused I got looking at website from website! do you know the difference between sucralose and sugar? it took me so long to figure it out and still to this day i often confuse the two..."
"you have no idea how much time i spent confirming ingredient lists on every product i buy...i'm so tired of it - it takes me so long at that point it makes me want to give up my diet..."
SOLUTIONS & KEY TOUCHPOINTS
SEARCH
allows the ability to search by diet, ingredient, store, location, budget, and many more. You can either exclude items or include items. Uses an accurate search engine using restrictions for diets/ingredients according to the FDA.
SCAN
allows user to open the app version while in store or online when a barcode is available. The app will scan the product pull up the ingredients and search and make sure the product is agreeable with your diet that is saved in your very own food4YOU account. app in progress...
BROWSE
allows users to learn about various diets and ingredients and understand certain health benefits or effects on the body. Uses FDA approved as well as medically reliable sources and summarizes the information to be easily digested
INITIAL PROTOTYPING AND DESIGN IDEAS
Focused on creating a simple, intuitive platform that takes away the stresses of shopping indicated by subjects interviewed...
INITIAL WIREFRAMES THROUGH FIGMA
VISUAL DESIGN
Inspired by soft muted tones and rounded serif fonts I conducted numerous font and logo studies to ground food4YOU's brand and experience...
Rough wireframes made through figma to outline users' experience through the site...
STYLE, FONT, ICON FINALIZATIONS
PROTOTYPE JOURNEY
Implemented graphics into layout while adjusting and adding certain aspects needed like the side menu in order to help users to easily navigate from page to page.
Users reported the side menu allowed for easier navigation and exploration of the site overall. The graphics used for each interface allowed recognition and increased efficiency over multiple uses.
The Learn page allows users to understand specific topics easily. Pages of various diets, ingredients, food types, and many more will summarize main points including nutrition facts as well as other alternatives to the ingredient, diet, etc. As the learn aspect is meant to be brief, it will lead to other reliable sources such as the FDA website to learn more.
Users reported how the Learn feature allowed quick understanding of topics that they usually would spend hours searching and browsing. Now that everything is in one place they did not have to go anywhere else but food4YOU.
Sign in page allows users to select their unique diets to allow for searching and shopping throughout the site without having to constantly check off or make sure of the ingredients - it’s saved in their accounts!
Users reported relief in their shopping experience as all their diet and preferences were saved through their accounts. Shopping times as a result decreased by at least 30%.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
