Taste Ukraine

Taste Ukraine is a B2C portal for tourists to explore Ukrainian culture through local eateries, learn the stories behind each dish, and interact with the makers. The app helps organize travel quickly and easily to find desired experiences.

Problem

One of the best ways to understand the culture of a city/country you are traveling to (Ukraine) is through local food. Unfortunately, it is time-consuming to do your research, the information needed is spread all over the internet, and there is no official platform that unites all the data for travelers' convenience.

Solution

Uniting all the local recommendations in one place will benefit both the user and the potential client (Ministry of Culture of Ukraine). Educating the world about what Ukraine has to provide in the gastronomical tourism sphere, and encouraging travel to the country is what is to be achieved with Taste Ukraine's main features like personalized recommendations, articles, a complete list of food-related activities, etc.

Tools

Miro
Figma
Zoom
Adobe Photoshop

Role

Sole UX Researcher, UX Designer, and UI Designer.

Process

Agile

Duration

8 weeks

Discovery

Ideation

Design

Test

Reflection

1. Discovery

1.01 Secondary Research

During my secondary research, I discovered that both foreign tourists and locals in Ukraine have inadequate information regarding concept restaurants, culinary holidays and festivals, gastronomic centers and routes, and other related matters.

The reasons for this include:

the absence of a unified platform for Ukrainian gastronomic destinations data.
lack of coordination among market players.
a decentralized approach to the development of various regions, leading to competition among market participants with similar products from neighboring areas.

1.02 Screener Survey

Following my secondary research, I aimed to interview individuals to gain further insights into their decision-making processes when choosing a travel destination. To achieve this, I utilized social media platforms and distributed a screener survey, which yielded valuable feedback. The primary objective was to identify interviewees who possessed prior travel experience, had encountered challenges when seeking food-related activities and had expressed a keen interest in gastronomic tourism within Ukraine.

1.03 Interviews

I interviewed 5 individuals who met the desired demographic criteria, with a focus on their past experiences with gastronomic tourism and their decision-making processes when selecting a travel destination.

Based on the interviews, it became apparent that most participants faced difficulties in conducting thorough research before finalizing their travel plans due to the time-consuming nature of the task. Additionally, the participants emphasized the significance of reviews and a fair review system when choosing their destinations.

Michal is an Engineering Manager, who lives in Berlin. He travels a lot for work and organizes his team's recreational activities. He uses google and social media to check reviews of a place he wants to book. He often struggles to find a good restaurant for his team because of unreliable reviews, lack of group packaging offers, and language barriers.

Michal, Engeneering Manager

Kateryna is a Ph.D. at Odesa National Academy of Food Technologies, where she teaches Hotel and Restaurant Business. She also consults restaurant owners on how to improve their businesses. Kateryna travels a lot with her students. She also frequently books gastronomic tours and loves to explore food-related destinations in her own city of Odesa. Kateryna always organizes travel herself, which can take her quite some time. She believes Ukraine should have a website with all the gastronomic opportunities in one place.

Kateryna, Ph.D., Restaurant Business Consultant

Nataliia is a realtor who lives in Odesa. She often eats out in restaurants with her friends and loves trying the local cuisine of places she travels to. Nataliia does not like spending too much time doing her research and would love to minimize the number of websites and apps she has to go through before making her decision.

Nataliia, Realtor

Oleksandra is a Ukrainian photographer who lives in Berlin. She has a 3-year-old daughter, so it is very important to her to do the research before attending any food-related destination. The main pain point for her is to make sure the place is kid-friendly. She often does her research herself, but can't spend much time on it since she is constantly busy with work and her daughter.

Oleksandra, Photographer

Alex is a business owner in Odesa, Ukraine. He is adventurous and spontaneous. He likes to take other people's advice on choosing a food-related destination. It is also important for him to be able to see the menu and prices of a place he's planning to attend.

Alex, Enterpreneur

1.04 Synthesize

With all the notes and recordings from the interviews, I put everything in perspective, synthesized with the participants, and created Affinity Maps, Empathy Maps, Personas, and HMWs.

affinity maps

1.04.01 Affinity Maps

While interviewing the participants I looked for the patterns to identify challenges they face while looking for a perfect destination, what websites and apps they use, what their wants and needs are, their habits, and features they would like for the future app to have. I abstracted 75 sticky notes from the interviews to generate Affinity Maps.

Affinity Mapping + Empathy Map_9_25_22 (6).jpg

Empathy maps

1.04.02 Empathy Maps

After diving deeper into my findings I started visualizing what a user says, thinks, does, and feels. This helped me identify groups of people with similar tendencies, who will use the product, thus providing more detailed information regarding the potential users. I analyzed the data and created two Empathy Maps.

Affinity Mapping + Empathy Map_9_25_22 (8).jpg

Affinity Mapping + Empathy Map_9_25_22 (9).jpg

Personas

1.04.03 Personas

After a deeper look into both Empathy Maps, I created two personas: Planner Kate and Adventurer Alex.

Kate’s career in hospitality influences her willingness to explore Ukraine’s gastro destinations. She travels a lot and never misses an opportunity to try new things. She often dines in restaurants, books tours to local farms and wineries, and brings food home as a souvenir.

Alex is a social person who has a lot of friends. He likes traveling but doesn’t like planning a trip. He enjoys asking other people for travel advice or for help with booking. Alex is spontaneous and often just walks into a place that grabbed his attention. Sometimes he is responsible for organizing food-related activities for his team.

HMW

1.04.04 How Might We

Writing HMWs was easy with all the findings during my discovery thus far. HMWs generate creative solutions while keeping me focused on the right problems to solve.

HMW help people find gastronomic destinations fast?

HMW make it easier for users to find a good destination?

HMW make sure users can easily understand the provided information?

HMW make sure users trust the reviews?

HMW make sure users are able to find destinations with a same-day booking?

HMW help users find group packages?

HMW help users find kid-friendly destinations?

2. Ideation

2.01 User Stories

User stories allow me to build a common language and a mental model of what this project is and helped me empathize more with the target groups.

With the user stories, I then started working on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) by sorting the stories from highest to lowest priority to create fundamental values for users.

As a user, I want to...

As Planner Kate, I want to have a drop-down menu with different options, so that I can easily find all the destinations provided.
As Planner Kate, I want to create a personal account, so that I can save destinations to a personal folder and leave reviews.
As Planner Kate, I want to save desirable destinations to “favorites”, so that I can easily find what I liked whenever I need.
As Adventurer Alex, I want to be able to get personalized recommendations, so that I don’t spend much time doing my research.

2.02 Sketching

All the research and synthesis provided me with enough insights to start sketching to generate ideas and establish concepts to tackle users’ problems.

2.03 Wireframes

I started creating Low-Fidelity Wireframes based on my sketching to see how everything pans out. It helped me understand how much information I can fit on the phone screen, so I had to use a completely different approach while designing Categories. I also was able to try out different icons and fonts, and choose those that fit perfectly with the design.

By testing out different design elements in the Lo-Fi Wireframes, I was also able to identify potential issues early on in the design process, such as information overload or poor readability. This gave me the opportunity to make adjustments and refine the design before investing too much time into High-Fidelity Wireframes or prototypes.

3. Design

3.01 Mood Board

To create my Mood Board, I was inspired to create a unique compilation of what represents Ukrainian gastronomic culture. The country is widely associated with things like traditional holidays, local wineries & beer factories, 3d wave coffee shops, and of course Borscht (which was recently declared an endangered Ukrainian heritage by UNESCO).

3.02 Brand Platform

I wanted Taste Ukraine to be a place where people come to find the information they need.

We want to show what all the options are and provide them with pictures, videos, and information about what their experiences will be like. All this information should help travelers make better decisions and have a good time while traveling.

3.03 Style Guide

As the main color, I decided to choose between warm colors as they are naturally associated with food. Gold Web Golden is the official color of the Ukrainian Flag, so I went with it. The rest of the colors were picked by Gold Web Golden complimentary colors.

The chosen fonts I believe are emphasizing modernity, while smaller fonts are complementary to the main one and are easily readable.

3.04 High-Fidelity Wireframes

Using my Style Guide as a reference, I started developing my High-Fidelity Wireframes. My main objective was to ensure that the content is presented in a user-friendly manner, with a focus on clarity and accessibility. To achieve this, I included detailed information, categories, and locations on the preview screens to help users make informed decisions before delving into more detailed information and building their itinerary.

4. Test

4.01 Prototype

Time to bring the design alive now. I used Figma for prototyping and went through multiple iterations before I was confident the design is ready to be presented to the users.

4.02 Usability Testing Plan

Objectives:

Understand users’ overall impression and experience while using the app
Uncover usability problems
Can users navigate easily and successfully complete tasks without any assistance?

Tasks:

Add “Kyiv Food Market” restaurant to the Wishlist.
Find a winery in Odesa
Find food destinations in Lviv

04.03 Test Result

I conducted Usability Testing to uncover any usability issues or mismatches of expectations of the functionality of the application. 5 participants were tested using a prototype over Zoom and asked to complete 3 tasks. The main findings are below:

Issue #1 - Several users noted that categories are not noticeable enough. When asked to find a destination all participants started with the “City” option rather than categories on top of the home page.
Issue #2 - Several users found the “The Articles” page name to be confusing and sound too scientific.
Issue #3 - It was commented that category buttons look more like filters which might be confusing.

4.04 Synthesize & Redesign

Usability Issues by Priority

Redesign

During the Usability Testing, a majority of the participants did not consider using the Categories buttons as they found them confusing and visually similar to "filters". To address this issue, I opted to improve the app's overall intuitiveness by restructuring the home page and making the options more prominent and visible.
Furthermore, some participants found the term "Articles" too technical. Therefore, I decided to remove the names under the navigation menu icons as they were already intuitive enough to be self-explanatory.

before

after

Explore the Finished Prototype:

Use in full screen for best experience

5. Reflection

Developing Taste Ukraine proved to be an exhilarating challenge that allowed me to enhance my skills as a UX/UI designer at every stage of the development process. From conceptualizing the app's design to implementing it with user feedback, I gained valuable experience that helped me grow as a professional. Conducting interviews on Ukrainian food tourism was a particularly fulfilling aspect of the project, allowing me to interact with a diverse range of individuals and gain insight into their behaviors.

At the beginning of the project, my goal was to develop an app that was not only highly creative and modern but also enjoyable for users of all ages. The biggest challenge I faced was finding a balance between a creative layout and a design that was easy to understand. Through the experience, I learned that maintaining an explicit and easy-to-understand design is crucial. Moving forward, I plan to prioritize clarity over creativity when making any design decisions based on this lesson.

The most important question is: how does Taste Ukraine cater to the created Personas? The app resolves most of their pain points, such as:

time-consuming research - everything can be done within one app
reviews - every destination has a review feature where any registered user can share their experience
recommendations - we added a page with different articles that may help users through their decision-making process
kid-friendly destinations, group packages, etc - we added filters to help the user separate the results

From a business point of view, for future iterations, it’d be interesting to see this product to:

scale up by giving business owners the ability to add their own destinations (restaurants, farms, wineries, and other food-related experiences) to the platform.
be able to provide personalized recommendations to users based on their preferences.

Throughout the entire process of creating this project, from start to finish, I found each stage to be enjoyable and rewarding, and I am excited for what lies ahead in the future.