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Overview

There are hundreds of restaurants to try lists all over the internet, but the credibility of those lists are always questionable. Our team of UX Researchers set out to ease people travelling to unfamiliar places, discover more authentic and culturally rich food experiences.

The research team set out to understand the behavior of travelers and the challenges they commonly face looking for new dining experiences while travelling. Our guiding hypothesis is that conscious travelers want a curated list of authentic food experiences, created by reputable sources.

There are hundreds of restaurants to try lists all over the internet, but the credibility of those lists are always questionable. Our team of UX Researchers set out to ease people travelling to unfamiliar places, discover more authentic and culturally rich food experiences.

The research team set out to understand the behavior of travelers and the challenges they commonly face looking for new dining experiences while travelling. Our guiding hypothesis is that conscious travelers want a curated list of authentic food experiences, created by reputable sources.

Challenge

How might we help conscious travelers find culturally authentic food experiences while helping them respectfully participate in local customs?

Proposed Business Partner

Airbnb

We thought of several travel companies as our product partner to accelerate our reach and Airbnb’s mission to help create a world where travelers can belong anywhere allowing them to experience living in a place, rather than just traveling to it aligned with our vision of providing non traditional and authentic experiences.

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SHORT LIST – a curated food travel guide

Short List simplifies the dining option search by focusing on locally owned establishments that come highly recommended by industry experts as well as local residents within the vicinity of your booked Airbnb.

Process

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Research

User Interviews

We carried out user interviews from our screened target users to drill into aspects of the frustations and struggles of travellers planning their trips, following the structured discussion guide to capture the insights needed to understand the “meaning of authenticity” to travellers. Interviews were held in-person or over Zoom, and auto-transcribed in the Otter app.

We then synthesized these insights from interviews through affinity mapping — to illuminate key themes.

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Local Recs          Tourists trust that locals know their area best


Customs              Travelers care about being respectful in a new environment


Tourism                “Off the beaten path” spots for food and drink are often preferred


Research             Travelers are apprehensive to take crowdsourced recommendation                                 like Yelp and Google at face value


Culture                When storytelling is a part of the serving of food, it builds ones                                        appreciation of what they are eating


Cost                     Value is calculated not just in cost, but in quality of experience

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Our research validated our initial hypothesis that conscious travelers desire a curated list of culturally authentic food experiences, recommended by reputable source.

Persona

Introducing Priscilla. She is a representative of our target audience – travelers who like to build itineraries before embarking on new culinary cultural experiences. Our design decisions in this project are based on her insights.

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Priscilla's Journey

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Synthesize

Insights to Features

Before we moved Into the design phase, we wanted to make sure our user interviews and our persona, Priscilla were informing our product build. To do so, we outlined which insights we should turn into key features of our solution.

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Product Principles

We wanted to agree on a set group of principles to guide our product’s design. This process assisted us with identifying our true north.

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  • Food destinations are selectively curated

  • Diverse expert panel that allows for inclusive suggestions

  • Experience centered content

  • Advised by local stakeholders

  • Careful consideration of local social etiquette and food culture

Design System

We decided on branding elements and created a style guide to assist us. We settled on respecting the company color scheme but holding a self identity. To adapt to local cultures we settled on having a location-specific color scheme to give more personality to the country specific pages, along with outlined typography rules and assets.

Here is our style guide for Kyoto, Japan.

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Design

App Map

User flow through our product.

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Product

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Insights from Testing

After conducting usability testing, we obtained a general task completion rate of 80% for our medium-fidelity prototype. Specifically, the sign-in task achieved a 100% success rate, while finding the experts page had a success rate of 60%. Users expressed a desire for visible menus and food images. Furthermore, we discovered that users anticipate the 'experts' page to be included in the main navigation rather than being hidden in a hamburger menu.

Testing

 Next Steps

In the upcoming sprint, our focus is on incorporating additional core features that were initially lower in priority for the minimum viable product. This includes implementing a map view of the eateries. Moreover, we will explore the development of other platform versions to ensure a diverse range of device experiences.

As we look forward to the release and implementation phase, it is crucial to expand our pool of Airbnb host experts to cover a broader range of locations. Once launched, we will utilize Google's HEART metrics, a user-centric measurement framework encompassing Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. These metrics will help us gauge the reception and success of our product.

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