TRUXEATS

An exclusive food truck mobile app catering to the needs of food truck lovers and vendors

Overview

Today, food trucks cater to more customers than restaurants as they have been proven to be a healthier, affordable, authentic, and safer alternative to restaurants. In spite of many benefits, there are some factors that are limiting the food truck’s potential. TRUXEATS is an exclusive food truck app built to elevate the food truck industry.

Role & Duration

Product Designer | UX course
UX Research, Wireframes, UI design, Usability study, Prototype, Testing
1 month

Tools : Paper, Pen, Figma, Mira, Illustrator, Photoshop, Google meet

Problem

Food truck owners are seeking an efficient online order technology platform to navigate a world without crowds.
A lot of food truck lovers had to choose restaurants over food trucks due to rush hours, no proper pickup services, and frequent location changes.

Solution

TRUXEATS is a food truck app that can cater to the needs of both users and vendors.
1. Seamless navigation, scheduled order pickup, and location updates can make it easy for the user to enjoy the food in their own comfort.
2. It helps the food truck vendors to increase their sales and revenue by maintaining their customer connectivity.

**Browsing and adding food items to cart**

See Full Prototype

| Background

Living in the bay area made me crave food truck food for its affordability, freshness, and authenticity. But I always had to choose restaurants over food trucks because of the rush hours, lack of seating, and delivery services.

Though we have a lot of food delivery apps, not many food trucks are able to make it to their list due to some limitations. A food delivery app exclusively for food trucks can overcome these factors and make the food trucks more accessible to food lovers.

My thought process -

Empathize

Key Insights, Constraints, Competitive analysis, User research

To understand the context for the existence of the product, I started my research by interacting with the food truck vendors who are possible stakeholders to know the market gaps which laid an effective foundation for my research.

| Key insights from vendors

Not many exclusive apps for food trucks.
Current apps charge more commission.
Keeping up with the demand of the customers.
Hard to build a customer base with frequent location changes.

| Constraints

During my research, I came through some of the hindrances that could limit my product accessibility with respect to locations.

Many cities especially suburbs with less population are ignorant of these food trucks.
Cities where there is a scope of food trucks booming, there is the cost and competition that comes along with the location.
There were not many direct competitors and had to rely on indirect ones to do the competitive audit

| Competetive analysis

It was a bit challenging to do the competitive audit, but it helped me in discovering the problems that are holding back the food truck industry’s full potential.

| User Research

Leveraging the user research through surveys, gave a jump start to my thought process in identifying target users who are either busy students or working people with ages ranging from 20 - 50 yr old.

Conducting User interviews was an eye-opener in understanding the holistic experience of the users with the food trucks and helped me in prioritizing the pain points that should be addressed.

Define

User persona, User story, User journey map, Problem statement

Using my gathered data from surveys and interviews, I defined my user base more accurately by creating a user persona which helped me reflect back on my design decisions.

| User Story

As a busy student and intern, I want to schedule my order at the food truck ahead to be picked up on time so that I could avoid waiting in the crowd and be more productive with my work and study.

Building a user journey map reflected what the user will be going through when using our product.

Problem statement
Young working professionals, and food truck lovers who need a quick, convenient solution to find food trucks and get the order on time because they want to be productive of their time without compromising on their cravings.

Ideate

Crazy 8’s, User Storyboards, User flow

Now that the problem derived from user persona and journey is known, I started brainstorming some ideas using the Crazy 8’s method with the intent to find insightful solutions for the user problems similar to a design sprint.

With all the ideation into consideration, I created a storyboard to present the user task flow more visually considering their needs.

Outlining the user flow got me a better understanding of how users can efficiently navigate through our food truck mobile app.

Wireframes

Paper wireframes, Low fidelity and High fidelity wireframes

Based on the user flow started pitching in some paper wireframes and later low fidelity wireframes to get some visual interpretation of the app.

Prototype

Low fidelity prototype, High fidelity prototype

| Low fidelity prototype

Providing information about the food truck like reviews and popular items might help the user to make the decision easier.
Scheduling the order at the user’s convenience will help the user to avoid the rush hour traffic.
Tracking the order in real-time might give the user some assurance about the pickup time.

Testing

Usability testing, Affinity mapping

| Usability testing

In order to know the efficiency of my prototype, I did a usability study with my potential users. So I prepared a research plan where I did some briefing about the project and prepared the scripts for my users to test the low fidelity version of the app. For my usability testing, core tasks that user need to perform were :

Logging into the app and choosing food trucks using categories or filters
Adding items to the food cart and checking out
Scheduling and confirming the Order pickup and tracking the order

| Affinity mapping

With the help of usability test findings, I arrived at some common patterns that users followed throughout the testing chores. I laid out the patterns and sorted them into groups using affinity mapping which helped in refining my designs into high fidelity prototypes.

UI Design

| High fidelity mockups

| Key insights of usability testing

I was able to implement some of the key insights from the usability test findings into the high-fidelity wireframes of my food truck mobile app.

| Accessibility considerations

IMPACT

Most of the users especially those who crave the food truck food in their areas liked the product and wished to be implemented soon. Some of the users wanted delivery services as well influenced by the pandemic situation. I showed my prototype to the food truck vendors and their reaction was out of the world. They were so much awaiting an exclusive app for food trucks. They asked me if I can introduce the product in the market to get the investors and offered their side of investment as well.

“I loved the product and wish it’s active on the market now so that I get to try different food trucks” - Product user

“I want this app to be released soon as I could increase my customer base and could as well be an investor for the product” - Food truck vendor

WHAT I LEARNED

Whether it be a physical product or a digital product, customers are always inclined to the best that satisfies their needs.
User research, Market Research, and Usability studies, peer feedback taught me how users would go about choosing a product and also influenced each iteration of the app’s designs.
During the research, you have to stop somewhere to prioritize the issues that need to be solved to make your product more efficient as it gets hard to solve each and every problem of the user.
One of the most important things that I learned is you should be aware of your own bias when conducting research as it can totally change the perspective of your thinking.