How to make smart group decisions on food — iPhoneX experience design

Step 3. Key findings from User Research

  1. Most people handle food decisions over text or email.

Cite: This data comes from a research called Looking at the Food [data], conducted by Hannah Moyers. The results are from a survey which has gained 150 responses, with half of them coming from the US.

2. Users chat (physically or digitally) to make decisions. But they also use restaurant-search apps to find food options. Switch platforms are slowing them down.

“I use Wechat or Messenger to discuss with friends on where to go — but we always use restaurant-search apps to help make decisions. “ — Avicado, software engineer at Google

User base of the most popular food decision related apps in U.S. From left to right, the apps are: Urbanspoon, FourSqure, Google Place and Yelp.

Large user base on chat platform, which users use to make decisions. From left to right, the apps are: Facebook Messenger, Wechat.

3.Yelp data can be better leveraged for food recommendation. Yelp has 142M user base, with lots of user-generated content.

A personalized recommendation system will provide a better user experience by incentivizing users to review and rate more in return for better restaurant recommendations; this in turn gives Yelp more data that can be used to further improve the recommendation system. — A Student Research on Yelp data from Cornell Computer Science School

4. Price, Location and Cuisine type are the top three factors affect food decision.

Cite: This data comes from a research called Looking at the Food [data], conducted by Hannah Moyers. The results are from a survey which has gained 150 responses. [this question was formatted as a multi-select, multiple choice option. Most people tended towards selecting two options.]