Peckish
Feeling peckish? Discover delicious vendors near you.
01 Introduction
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Duration: July 2022
Tools: Figma, Maze, Zoom, Google Docs
Platform: Mobile
Problem:
Information regarding street vendors is difficult to find. Whether it's trying to find personal favorites, or seeking new vendors, there is no easy and enjoyable way to access information.
Solution:
Deliver an application that allows users to easily discover, inquire, and locate street vendors to facilitate the process of finding the necessary information needed.
02 Choosing Our Theme
I initiated the task of choosing our theme. My team and I brainstormed 20 themes to foster the most passion and interest. I deduced that Street Vendors would fit those criteria the most, and finalized that as our theme.
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Summer is a time when street vendors populate the streets to share their delicious cooking and culture with us. From homemade comfort food to desserts that keep us cool, street vendors are a staple in summer culture.
03 User Interviews
With our new topic, I set out to conduct research regarding street vendors.
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I interviewed 5 users who enjoyed eating at street vendors during the summer. The interview script I created left a lot of open-ended questions to allow users to elaborate on issues. I wanted to get discover user pain points, likes & dislikes, and why they frequent food vendors.
04 Affinity Mapping
After sifting through the interviews, I created approximately 200 individual insights. Then, I grouped them into user themes and trends.
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I identified 4 main trends:
1
"I typically find vendors by chance or through social media."
Discovering street vendors requires luck while walking through the city. They reported it being difficult to actually find new vendors.
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If they are able to discover new vendors, its often through social media, specifically Instagram.
3
"The main reasons I eat at street vendors is because they're convenient, affordable, and reliable."
Users enjoy street vendors because they consistently offer quality food near areas they frequent, such as work, home, gym, etc.
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2
"It's very difficult to find street vendor information."
Currently, there is no application in the market that provides all the information users deem important, like current updates, location, menu, prices, and vendor appearance.
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Users are forced to rely on memory and word of mouth, but is oftentimes considered unreliable.
4
When selecting and viewing street vendors, users enjoy a clean area and proof of passing sanitation standards. Users also consider the overall atmosphere of the street vendor.​
"The most important characteristics I note when seeing vendors are sanitation and overall presentation."
05 Narrowing the Scope
Following my affinity mappings and data synthesis, I developed Problem Statements and How Might We Statements.
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These statements would ground my team in the design stage and keep us set on goals.
Users need a way to easily access information to make informed decisions because there is currently no reliable way to stay updated with various street vendors.
Problem Statement:
How Might We Statements:
How Might We allow more accessible information so that users can make more informed decisions regarding where to eat?
HMW #1
How Might We allow street vendors to become more visible to the public?
HMW #2
How Might We encourage consumers to explore street vendors?
HMW #3
06 User Persona
After condensing all of my findings, I created a user persona for my team to understand our general audience’s pain points, behaviors, and needs.
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This is Elle. She loves frequenting street food vendors, but thinks finding their information difficult. She would love a better way to access information and find new vendors.
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Since Elle represents a wide scope of our users, designing for Elle allows us to help a wide scope of our users.
My user persona
07 Researching the Competition
From my user interviews, I identified various apps that users used to access street vendor information. Yelp and Google Reviews were direct competitors mentioned by our users. Through additional research, I discovered the Where's the Foodtruck app and Street Food Finder.
Instagram, Tik-Tok, and YouTube were social media sites users mentioned that helped them find new street vendors.
We also found Madewell: Hometown Heroes, a site similar to Yelp but for furniture. These were the comparators I researched.
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I conducted a feature analysis & plus/delta analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of the market and to see why they weren't
Competitors:
Yelp
Yelp seemed to be our biggest competitor. Their app helps users find restaurants and supply user reviews.
Google Reviews
Google Reviews offer customer reviews on various businesses and restaurants.
Where's the Food Truck?
An app dedicated to helping users find foodtrucks with a map.
Street Food Finder
Another app that helps users find food trucks in select cities. It also offers help for users who run the vendor.
Comparators:
A popular social media app that allows users to upload photos and videos. Instagram offers businesses and street vendors a personalized profile with posts to broadcast information.
TikTok
A popular social media app that is exponentially growing in audience base. TikTok allows users to easily find and share videos. Street vendors can have personalized profiles and advertise through short videos.
YouTube
The original video sharing platform, YouTube is the most established and popular social media site mentioned by our users. Despite this, they're not as useful as Instagram and TikTok to our users, but their search features were worth researching.
Madewell: Hometown Heroes
Madewell is a website that strives to help users find clothes and brands they love. Although neither in the food industry nor social media industry, Madewell utilizes filters and reviews to help users.
Feature Analysis
While familiarizing myself with these apps, I kept in mind my user persona, problem statement, and HMW statements to determine which features could help our users when improved upon.
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Current updates, accurate search features, user feedback, and accessible information were all closely studied.
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My feature analysis displays the many different features our competitors and comparators implemented.
Competitor Feature Analysis:
Comparator Feature Analysis:
Plus/Delta Analysis
After I studied each company and became well-acquainted with its features, I created a plus/delta analysis chart to draw out strengths and weaknesses. This allowed me to relay what each company was doing correctly and incorrectly so that we could make improvements in our designs.
Every competitor and comparator had something that could be improved upon.
Competitor Plus/Delta Analysis:
Comparator Plus/Delta Analysis:
08 Final Result
By this point, I conducted all of the essential research for my team. My final step was to present all of my research to the design team to educate them on our users and market. I defined our users, uncovered their exact issues, created statements to keep us grounded, researched competitors
and comparators to find gaps in the market, and studied their features.
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We brainstormed ideas together and we decided on a direction that would help our users as much as possible. Here's what we came up with:
Discovering Street Vendors
Upon opening the app, users will be introduced to a variety of street vendors. Users can browse the most popular vendors in their location. They will also be recommended vendors according to the users’ tastes. A brief bio is included under every vendor for users to read.
Searching for Street Vendors
When users want a street vendor close in proximity, they can view the map. The map will show the location of nearby vendors. This feature is especially useful for those who prioritize convenience since they can see how far the vendor is.
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If a user wants to search for a known vendor or take a more active approach to find vendors, they can utilize the search feature. Filters, such as taste preferences and distance, are also available to narrow down results.
Finding Essential Information
If a particular vendor interests the user, they can tap on their profile. They will then be taken to the street vendors’ personalized profile page to learn more about their story and business. They can also find all the important information they need, such as the menu, price, location, user reviews, pictures, etc.
Saving Favorite Street Vendors
When users stumble upon street vendors they want to try or have favorites, they can bookmark them. They will be added to their “Bucket List”, which they can view on their profile at any time.
09 Future Steps
Despite delivering and submitting our designs, there are many steps that could help us improve Peckish.
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1. Usability tests to better the overall user experience, complete with A/B tests to firmly decide on certain features would be helpful.
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2. Implement a way for users to participate in “Food Crawls”, as some users were interested in this.
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3. A feature to track crowds at each cart so that users could know how crowded stalls are.
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4. Develop the app from a vendor's view so they can customize and update their pages.
10 Conclusion
Working on this project was an enjoyable and educational experience. I was given the opportunity to work with a design and development team from around the world. I was also given the opportunity to lead research again. Being able to define our users, their pain points, and potential solutions for the team was daunting, yet
rewarding since I believe that we were able to truly help our users. Finally, I managed to present all my findings to the design team so that we could decide on a direction to design towards. I'm very proud of the work we put forth and am happy with the end product.
