Hackathon: Dining Dash 24hr App Project
UX Vision: Dining Dash is all about “eating like the experts” and helps users to find a curated list of places from trusted sources, including Eater Seattle, The Seattle Times, KEXP, and more, all while rewarding diners for branching out.
ROLES
- Concept development
- Comparative analysis
- Business analysis
- Wireframing
- Paper prototype creation
- Usability testing
- Collaborating with Developers
- Presentation to panel
TOOLS
- Drawing implements
- Whiteboard
- Post-It Notes
- Sketch
- Pop
PROBLEM
There are so many new restaurants opening all the time, it can be hard to keep track of it all, or to pick where you should start.
Whether new to town or stuck in a rut, people need a better way to find new places to eat and need trusted resources to help them find those places.
CURRENT RECOMMENDATION MODELS
TEXTING FRIENDS
SEATTLE MET GASTRONAUT
OPEN TABLE APP
WEBSITE ROUNDUPS
SKETCHING & INTERACTION IDEATION
WHITEBOARDING
SKETCHING
INTERACTION IDEATION
PERSONA & USER FLOW
Abby loves to eat out but needs to know that her money is being spent on the best food when she does get a chance to try something new. So, she reads magazines and websites, looking to experts for recommendations and making lists of the places she'd love to try. She also loves being rewarded for branching out.
CHALLENGES
Working with students in the Web Development program at General Assembly, we only had 24 hours to build out the prototype. We used the Yelp API and the commands needed to filter restaurants to a specific lists were not completed.
In future versions of the Dining Dash prototype, the web developers will need to create manual filters to limit the listing (specific restaurant), plus which features from Yelp to download (ratings, address, phone number, neighborhood, and restaurant type), as well as select the appropriate photos.
For restaurant lists that include more than 9 listings (i.e. the Eater 38), they'll need to download each of those listings, and create a "shuffle" function within the coded list in order to allow for variations drawing from just the filtered listings.
BUSINESS POTENTIAL
NEXT STEPS
- Restaurants: Pay to be loaded first to boards, pay to provide coupons for board completion, pay for ad space, and pay to give incentives to users to go to your restaurant (ie special deals).
- Publications: Pay to include lists, advertise, and offer rewards to users
- Complete building out the site functionality
- Ability for users to save boards they like for future reference
- Allow users to add reviews to Yelp directly from the app
- Addition of social interaction features between users
- Expansion of promotional programs