Digestable
Personal Honours Project

My Digital Interaction Design honours project, Digestable, was developed through an array of Human Centred Research, culminating in a restaurant review app aimed at food allergy sufferers. 

Brief

For our Personal Honours Project we where given 9 months to develop an idea in an area of our choice. I chose to delve into an area close to my heart, food allergies.

Solution

I created a restaurant review app for people with food allergies. In the home, sufferers are in full control of what they eat, however in restaurants they are putting their health in someone else’s hands. By delivering key information,  “Digestable” aimed to improve the experience of eating out in restaurants for allergy sufferers.

The app would allow users to share reviews with both fellow sufferers and restaurants, meaning they can gain reliable and trustworthy information that is crucial to them. It would not only create a medium for sufferers to gain knowledge, but develop a platform that allows drives progress, giving restaurants the chance to make a positive change.

My Role

To be able to deliver in this area I first had to understand the scale of the problem and lay out the current landscape of the issue.

Next I conducted desk research, encapsulating why food allergies were increasing at such a substantial rate. To gain a full understanding I also married these insights with how restaurants currently deal with customers suffering from food allergies.

After gaining an understanding for this issue I was able to conduct more in depth research with my users, who included sufferers, experts and restaurants themselves.

From this, I was able to highlight the key problem areas and develop a survey that would be sent out to a larger audience via Social Media. 

The survey was a massive success with responses providing a huge push behind my initial insights. The results indicated that an app would be the best outcome.

Once the features and concept were defined I then began to wireframe the app, creating an initial journey to test with my users.

With my journey laid out I was then able to develop my brand and further more how the UI would come together. In order to create a brand I used a key insight that one of my expert users had highlighted. This was that a traffic light system was used within food allergies; green providing sufferers with a safe and trustworthy feeling.

With the brand in place I was able to use Proto.io to transform my wireframes into an attractive, high fidelity experience prototype, developed to a level in which the app appeared to be fully functioning.

Finally I storyboarded, filmed, and edited a one minute video to outline how Digestable works.

Summary

The reception and feedback on my project was hugely positive. With food allergy sufferers encouraging me to take the app a stage further and consider taking it to market. Feedback from lecturers was also great, complimenting both my UX and UI skills. This project resulted in me achieving a First Class Honours Degree in Digital Interaction Design.

The primary aim for me during this project was to create a well-designed and beautiful app that satisfied the needs of my users. Working closely with such passionate users was a highlight and proved to be core to my final outcome.

  • User Research
  • Insight Gathering
  • Project Planning
  • Idea Generation
  • Self-initiated work
  • User Testing
  • Prototyping
  • UX Design
  • UI Design
  • Brand Development
  • Video Editing