Keep on Truckin’ Food Truck App
Project Background
Keep on Truckin’ is an app that lets you track down food trucks, as well as order through the app in advance to save time for the user in a hurry. Most people usually have a set amount of time they can take to go get lunch. Sometimes its hard to find something that interests you and then to add the wait time on top of it, your lunch hour is already up. We are here to help that customer find and place his order ahead of time through our convenient app, Keep on Truckin’.
The Challenges & Goals
Research the current market and find out who the competitors are.
Design an app that is both easy and convenient for users to use and understand.
Identify and iterate on parts of the app users find most helpful, and rework the features that are causing user pains.
Design a clean interface with consistent branding throughout
Meet the Users
Wiley
Age: 19
Occupation: Full Time Student
Wiley is originally from the Midwest and moved to NJ to attend college. While in NJ he came across a food truck that he absolutely loves but is having a hard time finding them every week. He is a very picky eater and craves his favorite food truck daily.
Vivian
Age: 33
Occupation: Associate Art Director
Vivian is an avid foodie who writes a food blog on the side. She recently relocated to San Francisco for her new job and wants to explore the area’s restaurants, but she is not familiar with her new neighborhood yet. Her favorite places to eat are foods trucks, as she loves street food, but she is having a hard time finding them in her new city.
Ron
Age: 42
Occupation: Architect
Ron is a busy architect in Colorado that has an hour lunch break but often finds himself rushing to find something he wants eat and before he knows it, his lunch break is up. The lines are his favorite food trucks are usually very long. He would love to be able to find and order food from his favorite vendors ahead of time and eliminate the need to wait in line.
“It would be great if I knew where my favorite truck was going to be set up everyday”
— Wiley Addison
Research
We conducted interviews with users and turned what we learned into actionable steps. We used the insights we discovered to identify the following pain points our users were experiencing.
Users wanted to add a home icon to the navigation bar
Users wanted a notes section when checking out
Non-native English speakers had trouble ordering
We need to do more to engage users and get them excited about using the Keep on Truckin’ App
Problem Statements
Vivian is a food truck blog writer who just moved to a new city. She needs to know how to find new food trucks because she is not familiar with where food trucks set up in her neighborhood yet.
Wiley is a college student who needs a way to locate his favorite food truck because they are constantly changing locations every week and do not use social media.
Ron is a busy architect who needs to find a way to eliminate the time he spends finding and ordering his lunch. Because he only has an hour lunch break, he would love to be able to order from his favorite food trucks in advance and not have to wait in the long lines all the time.
Initial Designs
First round wireframes for a lo-fi prototype.
Below you will see some changes made between the lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes. I ended up making each menu item clickable to pull up more options, as opposed to this being the only menu page and having to add items to your order from here. I thought it would help users learn more about the items they are ordering. It would also allow the buttons to be larger making it more accessible for users in the end.
A home button in the nav bar was added so users have 2 options to return home now. The other is by clicking the logo in the top left corner of main page which users may not know can send you back to the homepage.
Sketches
Usability Study
Study type: Unmoderated usability study
Location: United States, remote (each participant went through the usability study in their own home)
Participants: Five participants, each completing the study individually
Length: Each session had 10 minutes, based on a list of prompts
Results: Most users were satisfied with the flow and ease of use of the app. 1 user did get stuck when trying to navigate to a different food truck, which means we may want to clarify how to move back and forth between vendors in the app. Users wanted to add a notes section when ordering food incase they want to modify an order or have any allergies. Users also wanted an additional way to get back home, such as a home icon in the navigation bar. The color was a concern over accessibility to we changed it to a darker blue. Overall, the app was well received and we are going to proceed with building out the app, as users thought it would be a helpful app to have.
Hi-Fi Prototype Iteration
After testing, I took the feedback and applied it to the high fidelity prototype which you can see here. Edits that were made based off of feedback were the following:
Add a home button to the navigation bar
Change the color for accessibility
Expand the food menu items with more details and options, such as a place to put special instructions for modifications and food allergies
Show the rating, distance, genre, and price range for each truck before having to click on them
High Fidelity Prototype
Try out the high fidelity prototype to your right. Click on the image to be brought to the link in Figma. See if you can go through the process of ordering Truffle Fries from Chow Down. I would love to hear some feedback!
Accessibility Considerations
The color palette was run through WebAIM to pass accessibility standards
The images on each page use al text to allow a screen reader to read the content
Takeaways
While designing the Keep on Truckin’ app, I learned quite a lot about research, process, and ideation. User testing and feedback is essential to creating a successful product. I very much enjoyed learning which parts of the app needed work and which parts were working successfully. As the design improved from feedback and ideation, the app really started to come together and take on a new life. Moving forward, I would like to keep testing and make further improvements on this app. I think it is in a good spot but still has room for improvements, and I plan on making them after another round of testing.