About:

Crave is a concept app that looks at the indecision in choosing a restaurant. It helps the user find exactly what they are craving, based on atmosphere and food. Craving deep fried pickles? Crave can help. A small coffee shop? A loud bar? A new drink menu? A market? Crave helps find anything and everything the user is looking for, a tailored dining experience. 

Process:

The biggest aspect I struggled with in this app was sorting and filtering all of the options for restaurants: cuisines, atmospheres, distance, price, allergies, etc., allowing the user to filter down their options as much as possible, without making it a chore. I started sketching, and then moved into card sorting, and paper prototyping with a varied user group.

Personas definitely helped lead me through the use cases of this app. I tried to look at a breadth of users, from the norm to the extreme. This helped develop the app for any user, not just myself. 

I sketched and prototyped many options and then started creating wireframes in low, medium and high fidelity, looking at details and interactions, as well as the over all appearance. 

I used proto.io to test the task flows and interactions with a multitude of users. I then moved onto visuals, starting with the homepage. I wanted this app to be as welcoming as possible. My biggest challenge was creating the family of pages, and applying the graphic style to every page I had, whether it was all texts, pictures, or a mix of both.  

Looking at the task flow of one of my user's (Xan) and how she would go about using "Smart Mode". This mode suggest restaurants for you based on your preferences, past choices and location. This task flow shows her opening the app, examining the suggestions, and reading restaurant reviews. 

What I would change:

Unfortunately the photography used is not mine. I would love to spend some time taking pictures for the backgrounds of Crave, and will do so in the coming weeks. For now, credit for the photography goes to: http://www.kaleandcaramel.com/.