Eatso
Amplifying restaurants through a
social media ordering platform
Sociavore ✦ 2021
Overview
Summer 2021, I was a Product Designer at Sociavore - a local start-up focused on restaurant commerce. During that time, I redesigned Sociavore's website builder and animated marketing campaigns and explored additional features that Sociavore could offer with its digital services.
One main project we focused on was Eatso. Eatso was an exploratory proof of concept targeted towards Sociavore's clients - restaurant owners. Eatso is an iOS app that combines food ordering tasks in a social media-like experience. Using a Lean UX design framework, my colleague and I worked the whole summer to develop an entire app on Figma.
My Role
✧ Product Designer
My Team
✧ 1 Project Manager
✧ 2 Product Designers
Timeline & Status
✧ May - August 2021
✧ Under development
✧ 01 - Prototype Highlights
✧ 02 - Problem Identification
Restaurants lose service quality and money through third-party online platforms.
During COVID-19, a major disadvantage restaurants experienced was outsourcing their deliveries and order management services to third parties (e.g. Uber Eats). Restaurant managers were unable to track their customer traffic flow and took about a 3%-5% cut from these services.
✧ 03 - Proposed Solution
Make an easy-to-setup online platform for restaurants to show off to potential customers.
The Eatso app is a trendy online food ordering app that’s as easy to manage as Instagram. We believe that providing an intuitive and trendy food ordering service is game-changing for our clients to get online fast and see growth right away.
✧ 3A - User Context
Our User Groups
Eatso was designed for two different users that are valuable to Sociavore.
Clients (the restaurants)
The businesses that purchase Sociavore’s products and services.
Customers (the hungry people)
The people who purchase our client’s foods and services.
✧ 04 - Value Proposition
User Stories
To find valuable features, we created user stories that express the common feelings and objectives users experience when creating an online storefront or food order.
User Story: Clients
"As a Restaurant Owner, I want to set up my online storefront with a lot of photos and videos to visually advertise my food."
User Story: Customers
As a Hungry Customer, I want to quickly view some food options, so I can focus on the more important things in my day.
✧ 4A - Solution Definition
User Scenario Maps
Keeping their goals in mind, we make scenario maps to illustrate how the flow of actions that the user can do on Eatso to achieve their goals of that story.
Here’s one of the many Scenario Map we made for the customer. Knowing this customer values their time, this map focuses on a scenario where Eatso is flexible and convenient using social media account stories.
✧ 05 - Ideation
User Flows
After defining the features within the app, we created user flows to organize tasks per feature.
The photo above is a User Flow we made for the restaurant owner based on their User Story in the top left. This covers how they’d complete the tasks needed to publish their food catalog.
This second photo is another User Flow for the customer. Illustrating the sequence of tasks they do to order food.
✧ 5A - Wireframes
Delivering information for hungry shoppers.
Now comes the wireframes. Customers needed to find their meals, quick. So, I ideated many different ways we could show that.
Figure A notes
✅ Scannable by categories
✅ Good way to explore local food options
❌ Possibly too crowded
Figure B notes
✅ Shows essential store information
❌ Very linear, risk of being too boring
Figure C notes
✅ Quick for browsing
✅ Fun way to look at individual food deals
❌ Not intuitive
✧ 5B - Mockups
Fast and easy way to share covers.
Putting our ideas into action, restaurant owners can set up their store as fast as customers post their food.
✧ 06 - Brand & Design System
Making a bold and memorable app.
Taking a break from the app’s UI, we built Eatso’s branding and design systems. With the design system, we could solidify UI patterns and generate colourful and consistent mockups.
✧ 08 - Key Takeaways
An end-to-end designer’s wisdom.
Lean UX Design
During this process, I used a Lean UX process where I quickly made a new feature, presented it to users or my PM, and then continued to iterate from the feedback. I think it’s a great method when you want to churn out new features with ample user involvement.
Figma Veteran
On the more technical side, I learned more about Figma components, variants, auto-layouts and asset libraries. Most of these features are available in other industry standard software, so being well-versed in Figma will help me adapt to different tools.
Competitive Research
I did not know that third-party services restrict access to the information generated by restaurants. After reviewing competitors’ business models and talking to my PM, I learned that Eatso is meant to make online ordering fun for guests and give back the data and tools to the restaurant owners.
✧ 09 - Overall Experience
Dear Sociavore,
I’m super grateful to have worked on such a lovely team! I had a bunch of fun working with others and learning more about other departments through our other co-ops. It was a great experience that allowed me to exercise my creativity but also grow within constraints as a designer.
Thanks for delivering many challenges and yummy foods to me. I’ll make you guys proud and return the favor one day.
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