Case Study

LOCABLE
Improving local food experiences for international travelers

UX case studies document the process involved in the design or redesign of a project UX designers have worked.

For this project, I wanted to choose a topic that I love, which is traveling. Another great reason for choosing this topic was that the overall tours and activities segment was predicted to grow to $183 billion before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since I typically encounter some problems while traveling, especially internationally, I was thrilled to discover an area of opportunity from my research and then design an app that could potentially help millions of people who travel.

Role

User research, designing, usability testing, and evaluating all iterations

UX Process for the Project

I used the process above to design this app. Highlights of the project are as follows:

Discovery

After interviewing 6 participants whose travel experiences varied and using their stories as data points to identify areas of opportunity, unexpectedly I discovered that finding local food at their destination turned out to be one thing all participants did and experienced some challenges.

After screening, 6 participants were selected for interviews to discover an area of opportunity and their pain points.

User stories became an affinity diagram to help analyze and synthesize research findings.

Identifying Problems

International travelers are often unfamiliar with local food options and customs. Since current restaurant search tools mostly gear towards locals, all participants stated they used multiple tools, such as Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and FourSquare in addition to other internet sources to decide what and where to eat at their destination. This time consuming process often made a satisfying dining decision and experience in foreign countries more challenging.

The Approach

More than 60% of participants answered that they wished they had more time to learn about local food and culture. Combining all research findings, I designed an app for users to learn about local food and history as well as providing what international travelers need to enhance their dining experience when visiting foreign countries.

Design Execution & Validation

Feedback from Guerilla Usability Testing

Sketching used to create the prototype in POP by Marvel.

A total of 6 people were recruited at a local coffee shop in order to test the early prototype to make sure the design was on track as quickly as possible. Some of that feedback is below:

The app is straightforward and easy to use

Concerns about the pricing for each food
Snippet for food description helpful
2 participants B lined to “Top picks” or “Best...” rather than browsing for each food information

With all valuable feedback considered, wireframes and wireflows were created.

Insight from 1st Round Usability Testing

After exploring some design ideas by creating a mood board, a design system was created to help design a high-fidelity prototype. Once this prototype was completed, 5 people who had traveled internationally in the past 2 years were recruited. The app idea was well received by all of them, and most participants liked the design. However, there were several usability issues, such as:

Only 1 participant found the most popular food from the app
Majority of participants confused a local dish to be a restaurant at first
Bar Menu page was confusing/unexpected
Low discovery rate for location link on homepage
Minor design suggestions (use more colors, rating too hard to scan)

Ironic to discover that participants still felt the app was straightforward when the majority couldn’t find the most popular dish from the app.

Insight from 2nd Round Usability Testing

After witnessing consistent usability test results, not being able to find the most popular dish and confusing local dishes as local restaurants, labelings were changed to become more clear and additional explanation text was added to the app.

As a result, improvements were noted from the 2nd round of usability testing.

Discovery rate for location link on homepage increased to 100%
All participants found the most popular dish
Helpful “Tips” page was well received (“Tips” page replaced Bar Menu page)
Still some participants confused local dishes as restaurants at first

With all critical and some minor usability issues tackled, here’s the latest app design:

Full-screen size prototype available. Click the enlarge icon on the top right corner.

Conclusion

Without asking, the majority of participants expressed they really liked the app and wished this app were available while they were traveling in foreign countries. Beginning with user research　to learn what problems to solve, I ended up with new ideas that were tailor-made to suit their needs, which they seemed to embrace.

It was critical to learn from users during usability testing because they misunderstood what the app was designed to do, even though they said the app was straightforward and easy to use.