Meet U There

This project was completed as part of the Human Computer Interaction (HCI/UX) course at Howard University.

I was tasked with creating user personas and low-fidelity prototypes for a mobile app that enables people to bond over amazing food. The project brief specified that the app should have the following capabilities at minimum:

Make reservations
Social media aspect

Role / UX Design, UI Design, Prototyping, Competitive Analysis

Task / Create user personas and develop low-fidelity prototypes for a mobile app that enables people to bond over food

Duration / 4 weeks

Tools / Figma, Photoshop

Target Users

Before designing the app interface, I wanted to understand who my users were and how they would use Meet U There. So, I created two distinct user personas that represent the target audience and their motivations for using the app.

Meet Angela and Jordan.

Competitive Analysis

Resy /

Resy is an online reservation platform that enables consumers to discover and make reservations at restaurants in a specific area. Resy also provides restaurant guides for major cities. Reservations are limited to restaurants that are part of the Resy network.

OpenTable /

Similar to Resy, OpenTable is an online reservation platform that enables consumers to discover restaurants in a specific area, make reservations, and earn dining rewards for user activity. Reservations are limited to restaurants that are part of the OpenTable network.

Yelp /

Yelp is a mobile app and website that publishes user-generated reviews for businesses and enables users to make reservations. What distinguishes Yelp from the other competitors is the social aspect: users have profiles that include their preferences and any reviews they've left.

Core Differentiators

So, what distinguishes Meet U There from these competitors? The social nature of Meet U There.

This app will function like a dating app - suggesting new people in your area to meet up with over a meal. For those not interested in meeting new people, Meet U There can be used to make a reservation and invite friends from your contact list to join you. It’s the best of both worlds. Because we want to inspire real world connection over food, we’ll capture limited data with a focus on basic demographics and food preferences.

The idea is that users match with someone that has a similar food preference and get to know them over a meal (not the app), so profiles will be more minimal than that of a dating app.

User Requirements /

1. Ability to meet new people in your area

2. Ability to find the newest and closest restaurants and bars in your area

3. Ability to make reservations and invite friends to dinner (reservation updates with the restaurant as

friends accept)

Design

The final stage of this project was to design wireframes that demonstrate the multiple flows for the app, which are shown to the right.

To further contextualize this, I created final mockups of key pages within the app to demonstrate the overall functionality of Meet U There. I performed market and UX research to determine the visual identity of the app. What’s a color palette that might invoke hunger in a user? Do these colors have enough contrast to abide by WCAG guidelines? What typefaces encourage action but are still readable? These are all questions that were considered throughout this part of the design process.

Final Design /

Learnings

Build for different users

User personas are invaluable visual assets as it's easy to think about users as a conglomerate, rather than a group of archetypes each with specific needs and motivations

Understand the competition

Market analysis helps identify the whitespace and areas of overlap in an idea

Design for ease of use

It's important that the interface design is simple and easily guides users to perform an action, especially when creating a new app in a

saturated market