PlateRate

Plate Rate is the application that helps you find the food you love, while it matches your dietary needs.

Role: Research | UX/UI Designer

Goal

Rise user base through a better user experience

Contribution

Design, document and deliver wireframes, user flows and interactive prototypes optimized for all devices.
Collaborate with project managers, developers, Q&A Teams, back–end developers to ensure the user experience and interactive features and assets meet all design and functionality requirements.
Provide additional support outside the scope of the UX/UI through image editing, image retouching and art direction.

Impact

Improved the overall user experience using great visual language, use of color, photography and typography.
Tests are showing an increase in user engagement and validating the relevance of our partner’s offers for PlateRate’s users.

PHASE ONE

RESEARCH PLAN: Within my research plan I was able to identify my research objective, who my target audience is and establish a general hypothesis around my target audience.

SURVEYS AND INTERVIEWS: I surveyed more than 50 people and interview 12 end users. Questions were broken down into five categories:

• User Overview
• Experiences eating out as a person with special dietary needs
• User Needs that Platerate could alleviate
• User Internet General Ordering Food Practices

All interviews were in person and voice recorded with their consent. All recordings were recapped and summarized using an empathetic approach (ie. What did they experience? What was important to them?) Insights started to emerge: 55% of our users would like to have some help picking food that match their diets and 72% would use it to get the discounts offered.

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH: I wanted to understand how both direct and indirect competitive brands within the same space were presenting similar content on their apps. The information obtained was documented in a spreadsheet containing brand names and URL's along with notes pertaining to the specific elements, functionality and interaction design features that we could reference to build something better and unique.

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH and FEATURE PRIORITIZATION: Through on–line research I was able to identify existing direct and or indirect competitors. Simultaneously these same apps were highlighted for specific attributes and functionalities that could enhance PlateRate service and business goals (rating systems, deals, etc). I was then able to define those areas that I considered most impactful, suitable to include them along with the proprietory features of PlateRate.

PHASE TWO

PERSONAS: With the information I had from interviews and surveys I was able to create the characters that described our personas.

FEATURES IMPACT AND EXPECTATIONS MATRIX: To help prioritize my features I developed a matrix with an emphasis on user impact and user expectations.

USER FLOW: After our personas and the feature prioritization were outlined I was ready to create the User Flow for ordering a meal for delivery. The user flow was first evaluated with my team, then adjusted and updated. The below diagram is a final representation of the direct and indirect pathways a user would take to complete their task.

PHASE THREE

PAPER PROTOTYPE: Before commiting to a high definition prototype I outlined quickly the functions in a paper prototype to get feedback on early designs and test the personal diet match and restaurant discounts with potential users.
PROTOTYPE: I was now able to create a functional prototype using Sketch and InVision to test on actual users. My goal was to determine if my design is intuitive and easy to use – are the expectations of the user achievable based on my current design? For the high fidelity prototype CLICK HERE

Below you can see the value proposition for the desktop version.