Transforming Dining into a Social Experience – Enhancing Connections for New City Explorers and Food Enthusiasts

Project Overview

Project Prompt
End-to-end design
My role
UX / UI designer
Do any of the following situations sound familiar to you?
You want to try this new restaurant down the block, but your friends have a different opinion.
You just moved to a new city, and you want to find friends to go out to eat with during the weekend.
You usually have a busy schedule, and so do your friends. Impromptu lunch or dinner plans are usually less likely to work out.
One work meeting just canceled, and you suddenly have time to walk out and enjoy a lunch break outdoors, but you want company.
You already have a place in mind for lunch but want to know who’s interested in going with you.
Is there anyone nearby who’d care to join me to go to restaurant A together?
Are there casual ways to meet new people over a coffee or a meal?
Restaurant B is very popular, and there is always a line at the door. However, the biggest table looks empty and it’s not reserved. You’re wondering, can I gather a few more people and ask to be seated at the biggest table immediately to cut down the wait time?
Sometimes you want to find lunchmates to go grab food with rather than staying in.
Sometimes you want to go on an impromptu discovery.

What if there’s an app that could meet these needs? Currently, we have apps that focus on restaurant searching and ratings, table reservations, social media that connects people, location-based services, etc. Could this app connect people who share the same interests in going to the same restaurant? 
Background
To provide users with a way to find other individuals who share interests to go to the same restaurant, either on planned or impromptu occasions. It should allow users to share lunch ideas with a proposed time frame and location information, etc., in a public feed space. Other users can view and choose to join. If the pairing is successful, it will prompt you to make a table reservation with the agreed time and headcount.
Design Goal and Objectives
As a foodie and a new graduate who just moved to a new city and doesn’t have any friends here, I want to go to restaurants and try different kinds of food. But I prefer not to go by myself because sometimes eating in a nice restaurant by myself makes me feel lonely.
Problem Statement

DISCOVER

Research Goal
  • Identify the potential user group.
  • Learn about users’ options and concerns on sharing a table with others.
  • Understand users' general needs and habits for choosing restaurants.
  • Evaluate how online presentation can enhance the browsing experience.
  • Understand how users make restaurant booking decisions.
Methodologies
  • Competitive analysis to learn the direct and indirect competing service providers.
  • Comparative research to see what the current similar service offers on the market.
  • User interviews to hear from users about their interests, expectations, and dig out information on their preference of making restaurant reservations and more.
Participants
  • People who are foodies.
  • People who are always up to try new restaurants or food spots.
  • People who prefer not to eat alone.
  • People who are open to sharing a table with others.
Assumptions/Risks
  • The target user group will live or work in cities or places that have plenty of restaurants nearby.
  • One type of potential user group might be introverts. But we will not limit personalities when recruiting users for the interviews, so we can learn about extroverts’ options as well.
I have selected both direct and indirect competitors. It covers a reservations booking platform (OpenTable), a review-sharing platform (Yelp: Food, Delivery & Reviews), an app for discovering local events (Meetup: Local groups & events), and a location-based safety alerts sharing platform (Citizen: Local Safety Alerts).
Competitive Analysis
OpenTable provides restaurant reviews and bookings, while Yelp provides similar information; however, the category of services is much wider than just restaurants: local businesses, hair salons, doctors, massage therapists, movers, and more. Meetup allows people who share the same interests to join live events together, either offline or online. The Citizen app lets users check out what incidents are happening nearby. Users can contribute to the incident by adding photos or live videos to share with others. 
Summary of Findings
The user interviews intended to learn about users’ situations, thoughts, and concerns about sharing a table with others. First, ask about their most recent experience of sharing a table with other people. Then learn about the situations in which the user would be open to sharing a table with others. Followed by questions about what the user expects to see and wants to know in this type of situation, as well as concerns. Below is an affinity map that I observed from the 1-on-1 user interviews. 
User Interview
Key Findings
  • For the suitable situations that users will open to sharing a table:
  • good for people who are single or new to the city.
  • for people who want to meet new friends.
  • when the schedule doesn’t work with friends.
  • when friends have different interests in food ideas.
  • for trying out fancier restaurants.
  • it’s a fun way to try out new restaurants.
  • popular restaurants with long queues.
  • users want to learn a little bit more about the person whom they are going to share a table with, such as dietary preferences, food allergies, health status, interests, etc.
  • for the table reservations, users want to learn about the restaurant information and reviews, available time slots, table capacity, time restrictions, etc.

DEFINE

The site map was developed based on the functions that will be provided to the users. The Home tab is where the user can discover other users’ posts and interact with. The search tab will allow users to explore restaurants by keywords or locations. Notifications and messages keep the user updated about the posts they are involved in. Reservation shows the user’s upcoming table reservations and ongoing table status.
Site Map
Armed with a better understanding of how different users think about sharing a table with others, I felt it was important to define two types of personas I’d be using to drive design decisions moving forward: the introvert and the extrovert.
The introvert wants to explore new restaurants with people who share the same interests in food while the extrovert wants to meet up with new friends over casual meals. 
Persona
A new graduate who just moved to a new city needs to find friends to go to a restaurant together because he/she thinks sharing food is sharing happiness.
POV Statement
How might we provide the users with location-based information that helps them get connected with people who want to go to the same restaurant and share a table?
How might we…
Design Decisions
  • Provide an overall map showing the user’s current location and surrounding restaurants.
  • Enable both post view and map view to allow users to discover other people’s posts.
  • Let users respond and comment on other people’s posts.
  • Provide the user with access to start a shared table and post it.
  • The user can manage the responses and choose to accept or turn down other users’ requests.
  • Build a dashboard of ongoing shared table posts and upcoming shared table reservations.
  • Provide chat function to allow users to get connected when having a shared table.
  • Consider integrating a feature that lets the user share the post with different groups. 

DEVELOPE

The design process focused on two major task flows:
1. Respond to someone’s post and join a shared table.
2. Select a restaurant and start a shared table, choose time slots and table capacity, etc.
Sketching
Low-fidelity Wireframes
High-fidelity Wireframes

DELIVER

Participants were given 2 separate tasks to perform: to respond to someone’s post and join a shared table, and to compose a post of starting a shared table. These tasks were designed to test the accessibility of the feature and the navigation flows. Following the tasks, participants were encouraged to share their thoughts on how they would use this app to discover and share a table with other people.
Usability Test
Through this project, we've identified a crucial need for individuals to connect over shared dining experiences, especially in scenarios where they may be new to a city or seeking companionship while exploring culinary offerings. The app concept of SharedTable addresses this need by providing a platform for users to find like-minded individuals to join them for meals, fostering social connections and reducing the sense of loneliness often associated with dining alone. Moving forward, improvements could focus on refining the user experience to streamline the process of creating and responding to shared table invitations, implementing additional features to facilitate communication and coordination between users, such as integrated messaging, different ways to split the bill, and real-time updates on table availability.
Takeaways and Improvements
Embarking on the journey of conceptualizing and designing SharedTable has been enlightening and rewarding. It was gratifying to delve into the diverse needs and preferences of potential users, as well as to explore the competitive landscape to identify gaps and opportunities in the market. The user research phase, particularly the one-on-one interviews, provided invaluable insights into users' motivations, concerns, and expectations regarding sharing meals with strangers. Developing personas helped crystallize the target audience and guided design decisions to cater to varying user personas. Overall, this project underscored the importance of empathy-driven design and iterative improvement based on user feedback, laying a solid foundation for future endeavors in creating user-centric applications that facilitate meaningful social interactions.
Project Reflection
© Xiang Yu 2024
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