YUM

Brand Strategist

UX Designer

UI Designer

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Figma

Yum is a restaurant curation app that leverages a users social network to recommend dining options for every occasion

A social network for foodies

YUM was created for true foodies, those who love to try new restaurants and keep a close eye on the local food scene. The die hards who organize and categorize their favorite places and love to share recommendations and experiences with friends. YUM curates, personalizes, and streamlines the restaurant finding experience while connecting users to a network of fellow foodies.

Problem

Millennial foodies are frustrated with the current products they use to find restaurants that fit their preferences. While there are multiple apps to solve this problem, none successfully provide users with all the features they want to make a confident decision in one seamless experience. Instead, they flip between multiple apps to search and cross check what they find on the others, which makes for a very clunky and time consuming task.

Solution

YUM integrates and improves upon the most used features of competing products to solve user pain points. Simplifying the process of finding reputable and desirable restaurant options, saving those new finds for future reference, and sharing them with friends.

My Role/Responsibilities

UX research, UI design, brand identity

Process

Restaurant finding essentials

Initial research focused on better understanding user’s needs related to finding and saving restaurants as well as measuring the extent to which these needs are held among their peers.

Focus Areas

What products exist to find, save and share restaurants?

How do users interact with existing products?

What are users current pain points with existing products?

Which features are essential to find restaurants?

Survey

A survey was conducted on 20 participants to identify which products and features people are currently using and determine which feature are essential to find a new restaurant.

User Interviews

A series of in-depth interviews were then conducted on 5 participants to further identify pain points, frustrations, needs, and desires with existing products to determine how YUM could improve this experience.

Competitive & Comparative Analysis

Competitive analysis was conducted to identify competitor's strengths and weaknesses to inform YUM's features and information structure.

Carving out a niche in a saturated market

After conducting user interviews, all the participants responses were synthesized to identity themes, opportunities, and features that YUM could focus and improve upon.

Affinity Map

An affinity map was created to identify high level themes and group similar insights gained from the user interviews.

Interview Synthesis

Using the four hues of the SimpleStage identity as a starting point, I expanded the color palette to accommodate the needs of the platform’s complex dashboard system.

Persona

A persona was built based on the data collected to help drive decision making and keep the product focused on solving users pain points, frustrations, and goals.

Cooking up a better experience

To kick-off the design process, quick sketches helped me get ideas on paper to establish which elements were necessary for each screen. A low fidelity prototype was then created for initial user testing.

User Flow

The primary user flow is the process of searching, saving and sharing with friends.

Site Map

YUM's simple information structure makes it easy to navigate and move through tasks.

Sketches

Rough sketches were done to get my initial thoughts on paper and brainstorm new ideas for specific UI elements.

Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Using the feedback and insights gained from research, analysis and sketching, a how-fidelity prototype was created to begin user testing.

Usability Study

A usability study was conducted to determine where improvements could be made and identify new ideas to satisfy user expectations, needs, and desires.

Pain Points

Source of restaurant review was unclear

Quick save option not available, had to specify which list to save to

Emphasis on photos made it difficult to find type of food and restaurant ratings

New Ideas

Use color to differentiate YUM's suggestions from a users saved restaurants

Remove multi-step process to find social icons and make immediately visible

Add a moment of delight to let the user know a restaurant was saved

A focus on simplicity

Inspiration was drawn from fine dining restaurants with a focus on minimal yet functional simplicity. The UI design reflects the user's desire to have a clutter free, curated look and feel.

Logos

Typography & Color

Solution:A highly curated experience

YUM makes the process of finding a restaurant, saving it for later, and sharing it with friends simple and engaging. It connects people to a social network of fellow foodies and only suggests restaurants that match up with each user's preferences and positively reviewed and rated dining experiences.