Eat How You Want
Convenience without compromise
Role: Project Owner (personal project)
Timeline: 8 Weeks
The Problem
Making choices can be hard, even in the best of times. Making choices when we’re under pressure, low on time, and feeling decision fatigue is even harder. Add hunger to the mix and it’s hard not to blame ourselves for defaulting to convenience.
Diet tends to be one of the first corners we cut—especially when we’re out and about, or in an unfamiliar place—which is terrible, because it has an outsized impact on how we feel. As we get busier, repeatedly defaulting to convenience compounds the impact of a less-than-ideal diet.
How might we…
Make it more convenient for busy people to eat better?
Research and iteration
I conducted personal interviews and did competitive research to test my hypothesis and validate the need for a product of this nature.
Personal interviews focused on convenience, diet, and the role food plays in daily life & well-being. Most answers weren’t terribly shocking, but I was surprised to learn that for some people, a bad meal can impact their emotional state to an even greater degree than their physical state.
Competitive research revealed a common pattern: popular apps like Yelp follow the same hierarchy of information: area > cuisine > restaurants > dishes. While this works well for its intended use case, there is too much noise and friction for someone in a hurry to find the kind of food that meets their needs.
“I get really upset and irritable when I’m forced to eat something bad.”
— Audrey
“I’m going to pay for this, I’m not going to like it, and then I’m going to feel bad afterwards. And that’s the worst.”
— Nicole
“I know that if I don’t take the time to help myself out, I’ll make a lot of food decisions out of convenience.”
— Brian
Solution
Eat How You Want flips that hierarchy by presenting users with a visual feed of dishes that match their dietary preferences. Quick filters make it easy to adjust factors like cost and proximity.
Speed is the priority for our hungry user. With that in mind, there are only three possible actions for a dish: get directions, call the restaurant, or order online. These are surfaced immediately below dish details, and the restaurant’s full menu can be explored further below.
To keep the food selection process simple and fast, we need to help users trust that the app will recommend foods they like and can safely eat. To establish that trust, we ask about allergies, medical needs and preferences during the onboarding flow.
Results and reflections
This is only an academic project, born out of the personal experience of working in downtown Seattle. I would personally love for this app to exist, or at least to test it in the real world.