Sprint Background

Vegans new to the lifestyle are having a hard time finding restaurants, products, and communities that align with their moral and ethical standards. How do we make it easier for them to find vegan consumer-packaged goods (CPG)?

I joined the PlantBase team after the initial design sprint and validated the design (which searched for vegan consumer-packaged goods) with usability testing and more user interviews. We made data-driven iterations based on the testing findings and expanded the platform to search for restaurants and events.

How do users find the nearest vegan restaurant?

Testing Round 1

User Interviews Insights

From hunting down rumored products at different grocery stores to reading the ingredients list of every single nutritional label to the end, vegans haven’t had the easiest time maintaining their lifestyle. Users reported being intimidated by the “vegan” label, the fear of missing out on favorite foods (cheese and fish being the biggest contenders), and being unsure of what was safe to eat.

Although all of our users are current residents of Los Angeles which reportedly made it easier for them to maintain a vegan lifestyle, that wasn’t always the case. Users from small cities and towns described the difficulty in finding restaurants and grocery stores that offered vegan foods. It made socializing with friends over lunch and dinner that much harder. They had a difficult time digging through menus on Yelp and Google to find vegan options, which meant that our users were going to the same places time and time again, just to be safe.

Usability Testing

I used online testing sites (userbob.com) and guerrilla testing to conduct user-flow task completion tests.

The task:

Imagine you are a user following a vegan lifestyle. You are at work and looking for healthy, plant-based food in your area. You pull out your phone and load Plant Base to explore all the products that are available to you.

• Explore the app to find a product that you would be interested in purchasing

• Share it and like it

• Navigate to the closest grocery store

The Results

Userbob testing: 6 users finished the task in average 125 seconds (~2min).

Some comments:

“How do I navigate?”

“I’m actually vegan and I’d use this app”

“I thought it looked great but it was difficult to navigate”

Ideation

User Flow

Upon testing and interviewing, we found that users launched the app for 2 main reasons:

1. Finding things nearby

2. Looking for a specific item

I created a user flow that accommodated users to search within the application as well as populate all items nearby. The happy path between the user and discovery of a CPG (specifically snacks & beverages) was 8 steps. A similar path utilizing Yelp for finding vegan restaurants was 10 steps. We felt like this might be a step in the right direction.

Feature Prioritization

The app started as a way for vegans to easily access snacks and beverages around them, but as we tested and interviewed it became clear that people who were trying to make the change into a plant-based lifestyle needed more help than just finding CPG. The platform expanded to include a plant-based restaurant and events finder.

For the restaurant finding app, we compared features from Yelp and HappyCow, the industry standards, and vanilla bean, a promising startup. We found that we could stand out from the crowd by offering filters like vegan/vegetarian-only restaurants and restaurants that offer vegan/vegetarian options. We also considered displaying a full menu that would be pulled from the restaurants’ website to help users make accurate choices.

Design Studio

These new wireframes solved for event details screens, and screens for restaurant details. My priority was designing something that would make our product stand out from the competition. A business requirement was that the event finder and the restaurant finder used the same layout because maintaining the look of tabbed sections was important to the brand. Note the similar UI elements between the two platforms.

Design Iteration

Hi-fi Wireframes

Vegan beauty and grooming products

Vegan restaurant finder

Vegan events finder

Testing Round 2

Usability Testing

I used online testing sites (usabilityhub.com) to conduct preference and first-click tests.

Preference test prompt: Which design do you prefer?

This test validated our decision to utilize food photos instead of logos to represent the restaurants.

The first click prompt: Which category interests you the most?

This test determined which categories people are most interested in.

Events: 11 votes

Snacks & Bevs: 8 votes

Cafes & eateries: 5 votes

Beauty & Grooming: 4 votes

Our Solution

Prototype

This video made with a prototype created in Principle showcases the user interaction with one of the categories.

Next Steps

The platform with the highest level of interest is the vegan festival and experience platform. This could also be utilized to promote the company. I recommend that PlantBase start an online newsletter or email notification service that delivers dedicated vegan festival information to interested users. This would help build interest in the company and serve as an inexpensive way to let users and potential customers know about the different services Plantbase offers. An existing user/customer base is an effective way to attract investors as well.