How do people decide what to eat?

We first decided on the type of user’s we wanted to interview — for this we mapped the characteristics for user’s we wanted to interview and for user’s we did not want to interview. We created a screener survey with questions on a Likert scale so user’s could indicate levels of agreement with certain statements. We gathered demographic information in the same questionnaire to see if user’s qualified for an interview. After we had created the survey we shared them within our networks and amongst the GA community. We had an incentive of $10 gift card for any person who qualifies for the survey. The survey took 2–3 minutes to complete and the user’s had the choice of opting out of providing their information. From the 40 users who took the survey- 5 users qualified . The results from our screener surveys led to interviews with users who helped us understand how they made food choices— by asking open ended ambiguous questions like “How do you decide what you’re in the mood for?” Or “ tell me about a time when you found something unexpectedly delicious to eat” — these gave us a clear insight into the thinking process of the user when it comes to food.

Through the interviews we saw a pattern in what users were trying to communicate about food. Although all the insights were powerful, there were a few key takeaways that stood out.

USER JOURNEY

Our persona Advol, has a choice based dietary restriction and struggled to make decisions about picking what to eat. We realized that when users are presented with many offerings it leads to decision making fatigue which makes them resort to reliable options or trusted sources of food. Our persona Advol, is trying to lead a healthier lifestyle but finds himself confined by his limited knowledge of the options available to him. How might we support Advol in reducing this fatigue when it comes to making decisions about picking a place to eat?

KEY FEATURES

As we entered the second phase of our project, we were ready with solutions for a larger idea of how users decided what to eat. However, the features and the scope of problem area led to too many options on the screen. The team through the process of feature prioritization and design studio narrowed down on features we would like to explore and started building flows for what it would look like keeping in mind our persona, Advol. We recognized that the primary features we wanted to focus on were the following:

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• User’s will be able to find food based on type or keyword so that they can explore new food options - 'EXPLORE '
• The webpage will support user’s find what they are looking for through a guessing game. 'HELP ME DECIDE'

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Using the feedback from our users, we reiterated on our mid-fi design to make our Higher fidelity prototype desktop interface for testing. we began to discuss and settled on what colors and visual assets we needed for our higher fidelity wireframes.We conducted another round of usability tests and collected additional feedback on how users think and feel when interacting with our website.

LEARNING

The feedback we received from our users was that at the end of the ‘help me decide’ feature, they would like to see more than one choice of restaurant at the end of the search. We started with an assumption that users did not know what to eat. But through the process of creating this website we realized that users do know what they want to eat- they just want opportunities to recognize it. Through ‘What’s the menu’ we tried to create that opportunity — where food options are not too overwhelming and is defined differently.

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