Case Study: Ballot Bites
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Ballot Bites
Solves group indecision when determining where to eat out.
My Roles
I worked on a team with one other person, Mayur Diar, who had the same responsibilities as me.
UX Designer, User Researcher, Data Analyst, Content Creator
The Problem
Restaurant goers, struggle with consensus on what and where to eat when planning outings which causes frustration while planning social experiences.
The Solution
Family and friends complete individual ballots, and once results are calculated, the app presents a variety of restaurants for the group to choose. The app also offers a ‘roll the dice’ option to eliminate decision making.
User Research
The Numbers: Survey & Interview Insights
5
One on one interview
60
Survey respondents
88.3%
Of people go out to eat with one person or more
The most difficult part of choosing where to eat is choosing something everyone wants in their preferred price range.
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-- Anonymous
Current Market: Competitor Analysis
Key Insight #1
Few apps address the group consensus issue
Key Insight #2
Main competitor, Restaurant Roulette, lacks a communal aspect to it.
Key Insight #3
All other competitors were indirect and only met a portion of the needs that our target audience expressed to us during our user research phase.
Definition & Ideation
User Needs: Feature Prioritization
The following is what our team determined are the most important and feasible features to implement in our application build out.
We considered our competitor analysis, 60 surveys, and our 5 one on one interviews.
- Voting feature
- Group chat
- “Roll the dice” for ties
- Preferences comparison
- Restaurant selection
- Dietary/ monetary restrictions
Who our user is: User Persona
Storyboard
The storyboard illustrates the frustrations that our typical user struggles with and a solution with our application.
Here, we demonstrate a group that cannot find a place to eat that fits all of the groups needs.
With Ballot bites, they are able to feel like each person’s needs are met and determine where to eat with little argument.
Prototypes & Testing
Sketches
Wireframes
During the wireframing process, we created a chat room for friends to socialize and to meet the communal aspect that was missing from our competitors apps. We emphasized our consumers needs through
our feature prioritization details.We also added a group leader to facilitate planning of events and focused on the preferences ballot to ensure everyone felt like their voice would be heard.
Testing & Feedback: Tested By 5 Users
Before
What we fixed:
- automated on boarding screen was too fast for user
- icons were too small and needed notifications
- event names should be in notifications
- there should be a way to group friends that the user adds frequently
After
Final Thoughts
What I've Learned
We went into this project thinking that we wanted to solve the problem of finding happy hours in a users location.
However, as we surveyed and interviewed users, we found that users ultimately struggle with group consensus on what and where to eat/drink.
This led us to the following conclusion: often times we think we know what our users want/need, but they will ultimately tell us during interviews and surveys.
Through testing and iterations, we found that we may believe our application is intuitive, but users may feel differently. TEST TEST TEST!
Ballot Bites effectively removes the frustration that groups experience when determining where to eat.