Thai Bites
A mobile app helping Gen Z backpackers, with food allergies, to navigate through Thailand's street food ingredients safely.
Duration
5 weeks
Responsibilities
UX research
Design strategies
Client communication
Design system and UI design
Overview
MVP #1
Allergy, and Dietary Profile Creation
Users can set their allergy ingredients and food preferences, which flavor profiles they usually eat, and their favorite ingredients.
MVP #2
AI Menu Scan
Users can scan menus in Thai restaurants, AI will detect the menu list, and generate a translated list with info of each dish for the users!
MVP #3
Menu Recommendation
The system can filter out, and curate dishes from the scanned menu, or from the most common Thai dishes that has safe ingredients and matches users' food profile.
MVP #4
Customizable Ingredients List
Users can modify dishes by adding, removing, or replacing ingredients based on their dietary needs.
MVP #5
Generate and Customized Translate Orders
Converts customized dish requests into the Thai for the users to show to the Thai street food vendors, ensuring clear communication.
The reason behind our Thai Bites…
Lonely Planet, a travel guide company, is seeking new ways to enter Gen Z travelers market…
The Ask
Lonely Planet, school old travel guide company, was slowly losing popularity among younger travelers. Therefore, Lonely Planet is seeking new products ideas to help them become relevant again, especially among Gen Z travelers. They have define their product high level goals for us:
is “non-sticky" meaning, does not make users addicted to their phone.
is “utility based” Helping people solve a problem, not just providing contents.
is "Simple" straight to the point, and easy to use.
Make Lonely Planet "relevant again" among Gen Z backpackers.
Understanding the industry, and market…
Looking at the current travel industry, and learning from others to find market gaps for new products entry…
Industry Research
Identifying Business Opportunities
After looking at the players in the travel industry categorized by pre-traveling, during traveling and after traveling, we saw a potential market opportunity in the food space as most players focuses on "Must visit" food recommendation and online ordering, but most travelers relies on roaming around town outside, and prefer asking for food recommendation from others to eat at local places.
Digging deeper, and Learning from Others in the Food space
A deeper look into the players of the food space, most food apps are either online ordering, recommendation system and focus only on just translation. There is no apps that actually helps people order food when actually eating outside in real life.
Talking to the target group about their experiences with food…
We talked to Gen Z backpackers at Khao San Road, a place famous for hosting the most backpackers in Bangkok
User Research
User Interviews
Our Team went through a series of semi structured interviews with Gen Z backpackers regarding how they eat their way around Bangkok when traveling, as well as their general eating habits and concerns.
33
Backpackers interviewed
18 - 25
Years old backpackers
3
days of interviews
3
days of observations
Data Synthesize
Through the methods of grouping and synthesizing, we were able to piece together on the common food pain points of the interviewees which revolves around food ordering and personal food requirements!
Pain Point #1
Do not know what to try and eat
Gen Z travelers are often confused at the menus of local Thai made-to-order restaurants as most menu are in Thai.
Pain Point #2
Lack of dish and Ingredients Information
Travelers often spent a lot of time and effort, translate the menu, search the dish online to know the ingredients, or just try to asking the Thai Vendors.
Pain Point #3
Hard time making customization
As everything has their own preferences, dietary restrictions, and allergies, it is hard to communicate their order's customization due to language barrier.
Analyzing our insights further…
Distilling our insights into personas, dividing our personas based on different eating habits
Personas
After the exploration phase, we came to conclude our findings into 3 main personas.
Picky Patricia aka our main persona!
“I love Thai food! I know what I like and can tell if they are prepared poorly or well. I only want the good stuff.”
Patricia is a vegetarian with knowledge of Thai food who does a lot of research and is willing to spend on food.
Pain Points
Workarounds
Worried about hygiene and food poisoning
Reading reviews online, and avoid eating food that looks unclean
Language barrier when customizing her order
Uses Google Translate, gestures and pictures
Can’t handle Thai spiciness
Learning basic Thai words, and try speaking thai with the sellers
No - Restriction Sam
"I only know Pad Thai and mango sticky rice! I kind of want to try new things, but I do not know what they are."
Sam is eager to try new street food and has no special dietary needs.
Pain Points
Workarounds
Language barrier when asking the seller about the food
Uses Google Translate, gestures and pictures
Only knows common Thai dishes
Follows others' orders and sets goals to try new foods
Can't find online information on street food
Try the food first
Conservative Charlie
"I am skeptical about eating Thai street food. I am afraid I can’t handle the spice! I would rather eat fast food."
Sam is eager to try new street food and has no special dietary needs.
Keeps eating the same food pattern due to the fear of being disappointed of new food
Try to find, and eat fast food, or western food that he usually eats
Having to spend a higher budget in eating
Allocating more budget to food, and only eat mainstream Thai street food
Can’t handle Thai spiciness
Will never eat dishes that looks like they might be spicy
How might we help Picky Patricia to communicate their dietary needs to local Thai made to order street food vendors effectively?
Ideation
Wireframing
By combining the industry insights, and user pain points, we brainstormed MVPs and visualized them into mid fidelity wireframes!
How does Thai Bites work?
Scan Menu, Pick a dish, customize the ingredients, translate your order all in one place!
Delivery
User's Journey
Start
The users opens Thai bites which they will be greeted with the onboarding page.
Create Dietary Profile
Patricia create a profile with all of her dietary restrictions and preferences!
Scan Menu
Patricia scanned the menu for Thai Bites to translate and create a list in English based on the menu.
Pick from recommendation
Patricia went through the translated menu recommended based on her dietary profile, and chose Stir fired basil leaves with minced pork
Customize
Patricia went through the ingredients list and decided to replace minced pork with tofu
Adjust
Going back to the ingredient list, Patricia also selected the chilies and adjust the spicy level to be very spicy
Confirmation
Patricia checks her customization on her food order before translating to Thai
Success!
The user flips their phone horizontally and shows their order to the street food vendor!
Enjoy the meal!
The user finally knows what goes inside thai dish without googling and customize their order all in one go!
User Flow
This is how the user navigates through the main features of Thai Bites
Site Map & Information Architecture
How the app is structure, and the basic screens of Thai bites. The blue ones represents the screens that you have already seen in the case use! There are a total of only 13 screens!
Basic Style Guide and UI Elements
Since Thai Bites is very simple, the style guide is created with simplicity in mind.
Testing & Result
Prototype Testing Plan
4
bag packers around Khao San Road
3
foreigners with food restrictions
The testing methods consisted of giving a task for the users to go through the user journey, and afterwards they went through an after-task interview, and did a System Usability Scale survey, as well as Net Promoter Scale survey.
A snapshot of the overall testing insights
Most testers displayed a need for Thai Bites, as they can relate to the problem that Thai Bites is trying to solve
Overall Interview Feedback:
Much Needed Tool
Despite some issues with the dish info, most testers liked the app
SUS Score Result:
80.36
Indicates good usability but room for improvement
NPS Score Result
71
Majority of users would recommend
Key interview findings & Actionable Insights
Some of the most frequently mentioned issues in the interviews includes:
The same dish can have different recipes and ingredients in different restaurants
There is no feature for the food sellers to communicate back to the users
There are many Thai dishes, how will we cover all of them?
Next Step #1
Standardizing Dish Information
Implement a way to differentiate recipes for the same dish across different restaurants.
Next Step #2
Two-Way Communication Feature
Enable real time translation functions between users and vendors.
Next Step #3
Expanding Dish Coverage Efficiently
Prioritize high-demand or allergy-sensitive Thai dishes first.
Key Learnings
Self Reflection
Research is key, but how we present findings and designs matters too. Tailor presentations to the audience, and prioritize communication and cultural understanding, especially in a diverse team. Listening without judgment is essential, especially when working with people from different backgrounds.
The Team
I deeply appreciate my talented teammates, Jackie from Taiwan, Samson from Nigeria, and Rick from Myanmar, for their invaluable contributions to this project, making it one of the projects we have ever done. Special thanks to Irene Preya, Co-founder of Irene and Anton, for her supervision and support during the whole process.
