Takeout Sidekick
Chegg Skills Capstone
Takeout Sidekick is an app to make eating out with allergies or special diets easy by creating personalized menus for each person.
Problem: Eating at a restaurant with a food allergy or special diet can be extraordinarily difficult. Allergen menus are often not available easily online or have conflicting information. Given that every three minutes someone is sent to the emergency room due to food allergies, having this information can be of critical importance.
Audience: People with food allergies, sensitivities or who follow a special diet.
Solution: Takeout Sidekick filters menu based on the individual's diet and allergies instead of manually filtering them on a spreadsheet as often seen at restaurants. This reduces cognitive load when eating out and allows for more enjoyable experience.
Ideation
Paper Prototype
The initial Pocketbus flow was developed in these paper sketches. Later changes occurred with the sign up select options to reduce cognitive load and with the placement of the My Order button.
Paper sketching was used for initial ideation. While iterations occurred later in development and with feedback, many core ideas stayed throughout prototyping.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes created in Figma.
For the low-fidelity wireframes, I chose a design that prioritized the search bar as way to quickly find a route based on where you're going in the user flow. Further, since the majority of bus riders take the bus to the same destinations, I chose to put a saved routes drop down by the search bar so commonly used routes can be easily accessed.
High Fidelity Wireframes
High Fidelity Usability Testing: Usability testing was conducted in three phases: Onboarding, search and menu. The onboarding phase was perceived very positively and in particular the yes or no filtering options. This allowed research participants to quickly navigate through signup and was an aspect that received positive feedback in testing.
Iteration
Based on the usability testing from earlier, Takeout Sidekick received some key interaction design and UI iterations. Most notably, icons in addition to color changes were added when a menu item was selected as an accessibility feature.
High-fidelity wireframes that were tested and later iterated upon.
High Fidelity Prototype
High Fidelity Usability Testing: During usability test, design colors and fonts were perceived positively. In particular the blues chosen stood out to participants. Iteration continued to be needed on the live view screen, since confusion on how to read it remained.
High-Fidelity Prototype of Takeout Sidekick done in Figma.
Final Thoughts
Takeout Sidekick shows potential. Given that every three minutes someone is sent to the emergency room due to food allergies and that allergen information can be found at restaurants less than 60% of the time, Takeout Sidekick could be a way to increase that number closer to 95% of the time.