Crave! Restaurant Finder App 

Product Design | UI Design | Branding | Competitive Analysis 

Product Definition Statement 

I wanted to create an app that helps Rochester residents (and eventually other cities) with finding restaurants. Rochester has a booming food and drink scene, with a number of restaurants and breweries. It can be overwhelming to choose a place to eat, and Crave seeks to make this selection process easier. Crave contains ways to search and filter for a restaurant, generate restaurant recommendations based on user preferences, and a social media component where Foodies can post their reviews and find new restaurants.  Users can save their favorite restaurants, as well as interact with posts by liking and commenting.

Product Goals

1. Filter to find new restaurants
2. Pick a place for you and your friends to eat
3. Review and explore new places
4. Keep up with friends
   

Main Screens

What makes Crave different?

While researching and wireframing, I was focusing on how to differentiate Crave from an app such as Yelp. At this time, I had decided to have a more robust filtering system, as well as a more dynamic way to view restaurant reviews as social media posts. I decided I wanted to create a more ‘novel’ feature... and created the ‘Mix It Up!” tab.

This feature picks a restaurant for you or a group of people. All users enter preferences when they initially sign up and make their account. These preferences include allergies, dietary restrictions, favorite foods, and least favorite foods, and they can be edited at any time. Users can add their friends, specify a price range and input any specific cravings, and the app will generate one restaurant that best fits the group to help them choose what to eat.

Product Demo

Research Overview

Comparative Analysis - Yelp

• Has more than just restaurants, can be overwhelming
• Grouping of content & filtering categories are inconsistent and seem to be random
• Kind of have to know what you are looking for in order to search and filter
• Cluttered with sponsored results
• Map is helpful, shows results within your zoomed location
• Reviews are helpful, but could be more interactive

Comparative Analysis - Yummi

• Social media app for food and restaurants
• Not great for searching for restaurants, there are no filters
• Multiple images at a restaurant, showing more than just a cover photo at first glance
• Sorted by ‘Trending’ and ‘Near me’ is a good concept, and could be helpful
• Keeps track of your posts and food near you 
• Can see a history of where you’ve been in calendar form
  

Pattern Collection - Filter Menus

• Filter menus typically limit the number of results, and they show the number when filters are applied. (’Show 61 Places')
• Multiple different filters within the same menu
• Can be above content, next to content, or in a separate menu. There does not appear to be a standard for this.
• Buttons, sliders, checkboxes, are all common input fields

Pattern Collection - Social Media

• Social media posts generally have like, comment, save options. X (Twitter) has reposting capabilities, along with Facebook and Tiktok.
• All platforms have profiles that contain your posts, and you can see a list of liked posts, or saved posts.
• Can see who you are following and who is following you
• Scrollable lists of content, generally based on who the user is following. Some platforms have ‘Trending’ or “For you” tabs.
• Posts contain the username or name of the creator, as well as number of interactions.

Research Overview

Feature Brainstorming / Brain Dump

I brainstormed the features that I wanted to have in my app, and wrote out all my initial ideas to see how I would want it  to function. I did this right after analyzing patterns and conducting comparative analysis on similar apps. 

Sketches and Ideation