BiteSafe

This was a school project that I took part in when I was studying at Loughborough Design School. We used Lean UX for this project and aimed to create a service for people with food allergies to enhance their dining out experience.

  • Trend analysis

  • Customer Profile

  • Experience mapping

  • Customer journey map

  • Ecosystem map

  • Value Proposition

Project Deliverables

  • Gigamap

  • Vision Statement

  • User Testing

  • Service blueprint

  • Business model canvas

  • Video prototype

Project Specifications

Duration: 7 weeks

Tools: Figma, Miro

  • Lead UX Researcher

  • Service Designer

Roles

Overview

In this project, we are aiming to create a service from 0 to 1. The framework that we have been given is (1) Consider “Is the future of food the future we want”; (2) the service need to be within the 15-minute neighbourhood; and (3) this is a ‘futurestate’ service set in 2028.

Solution

BiteSafe is a dietary identification service that helps those with food allergy to have a safe and worry-free dining out experience. The service will be provided via an application which can be used by both customers and restaurants.

Design opportunity

In the UK, there has been a steady increase in the prevalence of food allergies, with an estimated 2 million people affected

Source: AllergyUK

We look up the already existing service in the market and the research showed:


1. The existing services focus on informing user what food they can/cannot eat and which restaurant they could go
2. The service doesn’t inform the restaurant about the user’s dietary restrictions
3. Some apps are only available in the US

Competitor analysis

  • Browse ethnic menu choices, ingredients, sauces, and food preparation

  • Learn to ask questions in restaurant terms to order allergy-free ethnic meals.

AllergyEats

  • Discover allergy-friendly restaurants, allow access to menu and reservations

  • A community feature for user to write reviews

iEatOut Gluten Free & Allergy Free

Our lack of domain knowledge in dietary restrictions and restaurant operation meant we needed to understand the struggles that our target group are facing and the nature of restaurant service provision thoroughly and quickly.

Primary research

3 Interviews

We interviewed 2 participants who have different food allergies, and 1 restaurant owner to understand how restaurant are currently coping with the needs of our target user group.

Autoethnogrpahy

We also went to a restaurant and ‘assign’ everyone a food allergy to re-enact what people with dietary restrictions need to go through when dining out in a restaurant.

Problems

Based on the research, we have identified 3 primary problems we want to address.

Key Findings + Insights

01

People with food allergy will repeat their conditions to the waiter over and over again to minimise room for error

They spend time searching for restaurants that provide allergy-free options and often end up with little restaurant options

There’s a lack of reassurance for diners to make sure the meal is actually allergy free

Insights from our discovery work indicated that we need to provide a more holistic solution that considered our user’s needs relating to:

  • Providing digital reassurance regarding their meal

  • Minimise the room for error arising from verbal communication

We discovered that what we want to achieve would only work if we are a B-B-C service that the restaurants are also within the ecosystem.

Vision statement

It’s 2028, food allergic reactions have been eradicated in dining-out experiences throughout Loughborough.
Dining out has never been more inclusive.

Our high level goals were to:

  1. Allow people to eat safely and confidently in restaurants.

  2. Provide more restaurant options for those with food allergies.

  3. Expand the consumer base for local restaurant by promoting their allergy-friendly approach with our platform.

We built on the pain points we discovered and ideate with potential solution using What If’s statements. We narrowed down to 2 solutions and decided to went for Exploration #1 as it has higher average score on desirability, feasibility and viability.

Design exploration

Exploration #1

Exploration #2

We used Crazy 8’s to ideate potential features for the service, then used MoSCoW analysis to identify frontend and backend features that are essential to address the pain point of our target users.

Initial MVP

We walked through our service with potential users; (1) people with dietary restrictions, and (2) restaurant owner and received positive feedbacks from both sides.

But we also realise we need to strengthen the benefits that restaurants will get when using this service to improve the service’s stickiness.

User testing

Providing wholesale suppliers network will not help restaurant in providing more allergy-free meal options

Restaurant tend to have a fixed supplier and are reluctant to switch to another supplier

02

Restaurant find it troublesome to check sauce bottle to confirm what allergen it contains

If customers called and ask whether a certain dish contain a certain allergen, what restaurant currently do is to manually check each sauce bottle to confirm, which is very time-consuming and inefficient.

Based on the restaurant’s feedback, we decided to replace the supplier network with the ingredient database, which would better address restaurant's current pain point and would serve as a backstage for the service.

Pivot

Detailing the service

We would be taking 10% commission fee from partnered local restaurants for each order that is being placed via BiteSafe. We worked out this % by comparing other third-party service providers that restaurant typically works with (e.g. Uber and Deliveroo) and decided to set a fee that is lower than market price to attract restaurants to join.

App Journey

Here we mapped out how customers and restaurants would use our service respectively.

Final Solution: Our Video Prototype

In this project, we have been asked to deliver a video prototype, hence the UI design that’s being shown in the video is not the final solution, it was only there to demonstrate how the B2C side of our service works.

Reflections

  • At the moment restaurant don't need to take legal responsibility if customers had an allergic reaction.

    If being given more time, I would address this issue by increasing the intangible cost that the service provider (restaurant) need to bear if something goes wrong (e.g. reputational damage) to encourages them to act in a way that benefits the customers (e.g. rating goes down).

    1. Offer training lesson to restaurant staff so that they are prepared if an emergency arise

    2. Provide delivery service which expand the service beyond the 15 mins neighborhood

    3. Expand our service to provide nutritional values of the meal to attract a wider audience base

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