BusyBee
Bringing a social aspect to food delivery
Role: UX Designer / UX Researcher
Timeline: 2 weeks (July 2022)
Teammates: Vivian Pham, Andrea Bolanos Mendez, Rachel Lerman
Tools: Figma, Miro
Overview
Problem
After experiencing my first year of college virtually, I was finally on campus for my second year. However, I soon realized how difficult it was for me to fully adapt to UC San Diego socially. Adding that UCSD is also an academically rigorous school, so I didn’t have the time or energy to constantly go out and put myself out there.
I talked to other students whose first year was taken from them due to COVID-19, and they felt the similar to how I did. Students lose out on fun experiences, and aren’t able to enjoy college life due to academic workload. They end up feeling lost, isolated, and unfulfilled when they come back to campus.
How might we help busy college students who have missed portions of in-person learning to connect with campus life?
Solution
My teammates and I got together to design a food delivery app with an emphasis on connecting with others and exploring the local area. We decided to put a twist on a food delivery app so that everyone has the accessibility to try new foods out, and still understand what’s hot in their area.
Research
My teammate and I interviewed 4 students who missed out on their first year of in-person college, to see how they feel about college life.
“My engineering workload is getting more and more difficult and I’m scared I’ll go through college just studying everyday.”
-2nd Year, Electrical Engineering major
“I don’t know how people do it. A regular 16 unit course load makes me so busy and tired. After studying and attending classes, I’m so drained and just have to sleep or relax”.
-2nd year, Cognitive Science major
“The best food places are so far away from campus without a car. I would like to try new places, but I honestly have no idea what’s good around here.
-2nd Year, Math major
I still feel like I honestly don’t know what’s hot in this city.
-2nd year, Applied Math major
Competitive Analysis
We looked specifically at ChowNow, and decided to conduct usability tests on ChowNow to see if there were any design opportunities.
Students feel disconnected with campus life and the culture in their college town.
Students do not always have the resources or energy to always be exploring.
Current delivery app UI’s are visually plain and not interesting
Insights
User Persona
Ideation
For initial ideation, we decided to use the Crazy 8s technique to produce as many ideas as possible. We each produced a Crazy 8 sketch, and we all walked through each of ours. We then posted notes on each sketch for features we liked.
We picked our features that would be suited for our design.
We then solidified the screens and features.
Low Fidelity
Mid Fidelity
Usability Testing Feedback
Include a search bar on homepage to make it easier for students with a specific search in mind
In our usability tests, some things that were noted were:
Make icons bigger and have more contrast in the checkout screen
We also decided to change our branding of the app.
Hustlers was the first iteration of our name, and in our testings, all of our participants commented on our choice of name. We had wanted the name to show the hardworking nature of students, but we decided to scape the name due to the many connotations of the word “Hustlers”. We didn’t want the name of our app to detrack from its true purpose, which is helping students adjust to college.
We decided a more fitting name would be BusyBee, a common saying for people who are busy and active.
Design Outcome
Sign Up / Log In Screens
Going To Restaurant Flow
Student specials and promo deals are emphasized. On the restaurant page, users are able to see ratings, share the restaurant with friends, and see general information.
Randomizer Feature
Users can discover new restaurants and popular food spots in the local area. User interviews and competitive analysis revealed that students wanted easier ways to find new places.
Friend Feed Feature
Also brought up during Crazy 8s, the friend feed feature was born. Users are able to see what their friends ate, liked, commented, and what they posted photos of. User interviews revealed that students felt disconnected from campus life, so this feature was created in hopes to connect college students with food!
Checkout and Review Screens
Design System
Our main colors ended up being offshoots of golden yellow. Golden yellow represents illumination, passion, and energy, which is fitting for hard working college students who just need a quick means for food, a source of energy for all of us. Our competitive analysis revealed that many delivery app UIs are plain. Because of this, we decided to add more visually interesting elements to the app, such as gradients, underlines, and playful illustrations.
Reflection
This was my first ever project designing something that wasn’t assigned to me! My teammates and I struggled with feeling alone at our schools due to virtual schooling and COVID-19, so it was awesome to get this project started.
I have the most experience with Figma on my team, so my teammates trusted me to create the branding, which included most of the colors, logos, and icons. I really practiced my UI design skills in this project.
Future Work
Continuing this project, we would conduct more user research. We were designing for a niche group, so it was hard to find people to interview. We could’ve also sent our a survey, which would’ve help us reach people who fit our criteria.
We also would conduct more user testing. The friend feed and randomizer were really design features that internally were decided by my team and I. It would have been insightful to interview or survey others in regards to these two features, and see if these features are desirable.
