Meetfood - An AI-Assisted Food Streaming and Ordering App

From Frustrated Cravings to a Revenue-Generating Platform

For foodies who discover food through social media apps, the process of ordering the showcased dishes involves multiple steps and demands both time and effort. An opportunity exists to make the food videos shoppable, streamlining the journey from food videos to delightful dishes.

ROLE

Lead product designer

TIMELINE

Feb. 2021 - Aug. 2021

DELIVERABLES

Strategy, User research report, Persona, Information architecture, User flows, Wireframes, Design system, High fidelity UI, Prototypes, Final specs

When finding food through social media apps, foodies often get frustrated using multiple tools to order the showcased food.

To delve into foodies' pain points and desires regarding online food discovery and ordering, I conducted surveys and interviews with our target audience.

To synthesize key points extracted from interviews, an affinity map was utilized. The resulting insights revealed the existing gap and confirmed the opportunity.

Strategy: Combine food videos with ordering, use AI for video recommendations, and make sharing tasting experiences easy

Based on research findings, I held working sessions with the CEO and CTO to define design strategy. This strategy serves as a structured framework for addressing design challenges and aligns our vision.

Using the user journey to identify opportunities. Building on these opportunities, we formulated the design strategy.

Validating idea with low-fidelity prototype

Based on the design strategy, I created low fidelity wireframes for users to test and establish the overall direction.


The onboarding process helps us understand user preferences. Using this data and location information, the algorithm suggests personalized video recommendations. Users can buy directly from the video screen through third-party apps.

Getting the idea validated with a low-fi prototype. Now we can dive into details of user interaction and interface design.

Making onboarding easy

After users create an account, they can set their food preferences. I iterated design based on user testing feedback to discover the most effective way of allowing users to set their food preferences.

Learning from user testing: Users prefer images over text, want a stepper to denote the process, and appreciate a clear distinction between selected and unselected options.

Optimizing home screen video layout

When designing home screen video layout, I explored four options for displaying vary amounts of videos. My goal is to create an intuitive layout that promotes user engagement.


I conducted user testing to find out the optimal choice.

Testing showed users prefer viewing more videos at once, making it easier to quickly browse through various food videos and discover new dishes.

Refining search results

When I initially designed the search features, the results displayed only videos. After user testing, it became clear that users wanted to see restaurants and influencers as well.

Iterating the design based on user feedback. I categorized the search results into videos, restaurants, and influencers.

Simplifying same restaurant video exploration and return to main feed

When users select a video from the home screen or search results, they enter the video screen, where they can swipe up and down to view the next recommended video.

One important question emerged: when users are on video screen, how can they seamlessly discover more dishes from the same restaurant while easily returning to the main video feed?

I began with a design that guided users to the restaurant profile screen through the 'Explore restaurant' button, allowing them to view all videos related to a specific restaurant. Once a video is selected, users can swipe up and down to see the next video related to the same restaurant. However, user testing revealed that having to use the back button twice to return to the main video feed was inconvenient.

I went back to the drawing board to explore other options to simplify this process, aiming to solve the problem without requiring users to leave the video screen.

Exploration 1: A toggle button allows users to activate or deactivate the 'view videos related to the same restaurant' mode.

Exploration 2: Swipe left to access videos related to the same restaurant, swipe up and down to go back to main feed.

User testing showed that users prefer swiping left or right to view same restaurant videos because of its simplicity and straightforwardness.

Eliminating wait time during video uploading

Since all videos on our app are user-generated, uploading a video is a very important feature.

I began with a design that directs users to the home screen after a video was successfully uploaded, with a reminder about the posting status.

After engineers implemented this design, we encountered a challenge: slow upload speeds. Having users wait on the video upload screen was not ideal. While our tech team worked on improving upload speed, I had to find a more user-friendly solution.

Proposing a solution enables users to browse videos while uploads happen in the background and keeps users informed about the posting status.

The launch

We launched the product in Q3 of 2021.

Within 3 months of the product launch, data reveals:

  • Over 20,000 users have onboarded and actively used our app.

  • A CTR (Click-Through Rate ) of 10% and a conversion rate of 8%.

  • User retention rate of 50%.

  • Partnered with 20 restaurants for an influencer review marketing strategy, generating revenue for our business.