Nom:
A Brand New Paradigm for Restaurant Search
Summer 2017
In Collaboration With Tim Guo (Engineer)
Product Design, User Interface Design
Personal Project in 1 Month
In Collaboration With Tim Guo (Engineer)
Product Design, User Interface Design
Personal Project in 1 Month
Thinking backwards
The current paradigm for searching restaurants is restrained under cuisines and locations. We’re thinking of a more liberating way of restaurant search that allows users to explore more experiences.
Our initial research basically centered around the following questions: What are the factors that make people choose what they eat? What are the factors that make people choose a restaurant? How are those mental models being applied to their current restaurant search experience? We also conducted a short diary study to record and learn people’s decision making process, which helps us a lot answering our questions.
The current paradigm for searching restaurants is restrained under cuisines and locations. We’re thinking of a more liberating way of restaurant search that allows users to explore more experiences.
Our initial research basically centered around the following questions: What are the factors that make people choose what they eat? What are the factors that make people choose a restaurant? How are those mental models being applied to their current restaurant search experience? We also conducted a short diary study to record and learn people’s decision making process, which helps us a lot answering our questions.
Some sample answers we got
from our diary study
from our diary study
Lower the barrier
After we discovered that users’ mental model is much more complicated than
just finding a restaurant through cuisines, we decided to create a more comprehensive
customized search with larger keyword set. Users can input keywords across different aspects of
restaurants to initiate an unique searching process. This way, the barrier for a customized search
is much lower, as we don’t force users to go through a general search.
After we discovered that users’ mental model is much more complicated than
just finding a restaurant through cuisines, we decided to create a more comprehensive
customized search with larger keyword set. Users can input keywords across different aspects of
restaurants to initiate an unique searching process. This way, the barrier for a customized search
is much lower, as we don’t force users to go through a general search.