Cuisino is an App that helps busy workers to decide what to eat quickly and wisely in a fun way. It is based on mobile as well as IoT terminals.
Design a meal planning system for working professionals who have difficulty making meal decisions, especially in work.
PRODUCT
Inspired by commercial entertainment systems, we designed the meal decision system Casino-like.
Branding & Style Guide
Inspired by the culture of Las Vegas in the 1950s, we created a design system as well as graphics for the product. The branding shows our effort to make people relaxed and entertained.
Key Features
The product is designed to solve users’ dilemma in food choice. Through a fun way, users will have their ideal food choice like a shot.
The startup animation shows the product identity, and the onboarding process helps users to understand what this product is designed for with simple graphics.
The initial setup process allow users to set their personal goals for eating. From user research, we understand it’s important to allow users to choose allergen and ingredients they don’t like as well.
Users will be provided with 3 options to choose from. For the same dish, there will be choices from different restaurants or providers. The whole order process can be fast and easy.
When users still have no idea what to choose, there will be an option for them to play a blink pick game.
If the user wants to leave the decision to the product, they can play with Cuisino Machine. They will get the only option provided by the app.
This function was inspired by the Japanese capsule vending machine and the “Omakase” culture in sushi restaurants.
TO GET STARTED
We started from where we live. In New York City, there are over 100,000 working professionals. We conducted 100 surveys and interviewed 15 people as a team.
We asked friends and reached out to people on social media to conduct the online survey.
What are the possible reasons for their food choices?
How do they get their food?
How do they think of healthy food?
…
“I need to stay focused at anytime, so I don’t want to get distracted by meal decision.”
“We have a company plan for a food delivery app, so we get used to ordering online.”
“Unless working from home, I don’t cook at all. I haven’t heard about any of my colleagues who cooks.”
Most users order meals online with mobile Apps during working time.
They don’t want to waste much time on selecting when they are busy.
They approve that healthy eating is very important for every meal.
NEXT STEPS
We identified the problem from surveys and interviews that users don’t want to spend too much time in meal decisions. All we need to do is to brainstorm ideas and make a problem-solving framework.
We performed a brainstorming session by manipulating elements from our interviews with sticky notes. The elements include personality, emotions, food type, user behaviors, and so on. In this way, we quickly identified the meal decision problem.
We designed a workflow based on the elements from the brainstorming process. Although it was still at a very early stage, we set up a problem-solving framework for this project. This helps us creating personas and coming up with final solutions.
PERSONA & JOURNEY MAP
Based on our user research, we created two personas. They are different in personality and have different emotional journeys, but they share some same pain points.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We did a conceptual competitive analysis on apps that are focusing on solving dining and health problems for a similar group of the target audience. They gave us great insights to make our product innovative.
We reviewed 3 primary competitors and 2 secondary competitors in 4 aspects: User Reviews, (what to review) Main Focus, Decision Making, and Key Feature. We want to see what they are doing good, and we can possibly transform to our product.
The Affect Grid reflects the emotional representation of competitors. It gives us a great opportunity to think about what emotion our product will bring to customers.
We pay more attention to competitors that are close to our intentional emotion, and differentiate from other products.
Thinking & Solution
We sometimes get stuck in making a decision, and it might become painful. In the business context, people don’t really want to spend too much time making the meal decision, since the work is always intense. All they need is relaxing themselves, since having meal is supposed to be joyful.
Step 1
It reminds us of casino slot machines. People get relieved when playing with slot machines because they may get new surprises when they hit the button. This simple function brings a large surprise to people. We think this kind of game mode might be a great inspiration for us.
A typical casino slot game interface. App name: Double Down
Step 2
If decision-making is so problematic, how about just skipping it? Cuisino got your back.
The process reminds us of “Omakase” (I will leave it up to you) in sushi restaurants. The sushi chef will decide what kinds of sushi depending on guests. We are inspired by this dining culture, and we are trying to adapt it to our product. Cuisino provides a tailored menu for you, meeting goals of health and the taste bud.
A sushi chef providing “Omakase.” https://www.thrillist.com/eat/new-york/best-omakase-sushi-nyc-price-cheap
Step 3
Help making a decision doesn’t mean giving a random choice. We want our users to be healthy in eating. So we referenced the Healthy Eating Pyramid to understand the nutrition balance and try to add it to the gamification process.
Source: https://www.nextlevelurgentcare.com/blog/is-the-food-pyramid-still-relevant
Summary
The team went with a creative approach to design a product. We believe that digital products should not only focus on problem-solving but also show our personality and convey our message. That’s how we invented Cuisino, a gamification experiment for meal selection.
Although we did some iterations on the interface design, the project is still in need of a lot of usability tests and user feedback. As a next step, we will design the accounting system that can make users feel accomplishment. Our plan for this project includes developing dedicated physical IoT (Internet of Things) terminals in restaurants/offices that bring a more immersive and fun experience.
