01

Building a food truck app for social impact

CLIENT

Graduate-Level Coursework

My role(S)

UX/UI Designer

TIMELINE

8 Weeks

Year

Mid-2020
Vitals

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Goal

Our mandate from the client was to "Do the food truck business faster, better, and have a good story that plays well on social media."

team

Shira K. / Shea R. / Li Y.

DISCOVERY and research

AN OVERVIEW OF OUR RESEARCH PROCESS

Research Toolkit

Google Forms / Google Sheets / Zoom / CashApp

THE USERS WE INTERVIEWED

1. Bought food from a food truck in the past year
2. Have posted about food to their social media channels in the last 6 months
3. Care about social causes

RESEARCH INSIGHTS

After populating an affinity diagram for each user, we consolidated the data down into three insights. Keeping in mind what statements and sentiments we heard more than once, and what all users had in common.

WHY INSIGHTS ARE IMPORTANT?
OUR RESEARCH INSIGHTS equipped us
with a clear understanding Of
WHAT TO BUILD AND HOW TO BUILD IT.
USER AFFINITY MAPS / User Journey Map / Jobs-to-be Done

NEW OR UNUSUAL FOODS

Users are more likely to try new or unusual foods at trucks than at restaurants, and also more likely to post novel food to social media.

AUTHENTICITY

Users perceive food trucks as more authentic than restaurants. Potential to extend the authenticity of the truck's food to its social media activities.

ACTIONS OVER WORDS

Users value actions over words, meaning support for social causes must be tangible and authentic.

Research Recap

Our user journey, affinity map, and jobs-to-be-done were at the core of how we landed on the concept of the application and the key features we would be building out over the rest of the duration of the project. The above was our focus as we ended our discovery/research phase.

design

OUR APPROACH TO DESIGN

WIREFLOWS

After creating two user scenarios based on “Grabbing lunch then eating at my desk at work” and “Hanging out near food trucks with friends” we dove into creating wireflows.

As a team we divided the design work into one key feature per person. Shira was in charge of the Voting feature, Li took lead on the Sharing feature, and I was lead on the Homepage + Rewards feature.

WIREFRAMES

After completing the wireflows and getting feedback we moved into our wireframes with confidence and also including a home page. Below is a combination of feedback + our notes.

WIREFLOW

ITERATIVE PROTOTYPING

At this phase we took all our learnings from the wireframes and applied them to a high fidelity prototype.

Testing based on Ordering Food, Engaging with Social Causes, Engaging with Rewards & Social Media were completed before we finalized the prototype for delivery to the client.

Each of these features started very bare bones in early phases and really blossomed as we received feedback.

The rewards feature did not start with the ability to receive measurable figures of how their donations are helping social causes but with feedback we found that was something users desired.

LIVE DEMO
Growth

learnings and outcomes

REFLECTION

This project spanned an 8-week period where I feel I pushed myself to new limits as a UX Designer.

If I could go back and do anything different with this project it would be to interview experts in the food truck industry. I feel we may have missed an opportunity to utilize the knowledge of someone who has found success with food trucking.