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Ramen has become one of the most popular choices for Taiwanese to dine out in recent years. Since the broth, noodle, and topping is developed in various styles, plus Ramen restaurants have their own dining culture, people who want to eat Ramen need to collect different information before visiting one.
Since the development team are people who are "Ramenholic," we decided to develop a product that is specifically for people who love ramen and elevate their experience of eating Ramen.
To design an app that improve the experience of eating Ramen, I conducted 6 in-depth interview with people who eat Ramen at least once a month. The main purpose of the interview is to find out (1) what is the core quality that makes people enjoy eating Ramen (2) where is the opportunity for design to intervene
From the interview, I noticed that most people regard eating Ramen as an activity, a hobby. In other words, they feel more engaged when eating Ramen compared to normal meals. This makes them want to take pictures of every bowl of Ramen if they haven’t tried it before.
People like the sense of exploration and collection when it comes to Ramen. Therefore, they will follow bloggers or join the Ramen groups on the internet to get inspiration and expand their pocket list. This is why they prefer discovering new Ramen restaurants compared to one they’ve eaten at before.
To conclude, I give an interaction vision for further design - “Hunter”. I believe people enjoy being a hunter while eating Ramen, and how we can enhance the quality of exploration and collection in the app becomes our main goal during the design phase.
So, what are the factors that make people decide which Ramen restaurants to put on their pocket list?
Firstly, different styles of Ramen have very different flavors and side dishes, and people have their own preferences. This is one big factor that influences whether people want to visit or not.
Secondly, location and the length of the queue influence how smooth the experience is of eating Ramen. People are negatively effected by the commute time and the waiting time.
Lastly, the price will also influence the decision, however, it is not the strongest factor. If they really want to try the Ramen, they will still visit the restaurant. It will influence the frequency they visit it.
The graph above shows that when they collected the information, none of the apps included all the factors that influence how customers make the decision in one app. Besides, irrelevant information may distract people while using the app. Each app or social media has their advantage, but it is obvious that users may switch between different apps frequently, which may interrupt their thinking process.
To fulfill users’ mindset of eating Ramen, which are "exploration" and "collect", we designed the app in three pages. Users can fulfill the sense of exploration in the radar page and the explore page, where they can gain inspiration and decide where to visit. For the profile page, users can see their contribution and their achievements.
On the radar page, we assume that the users will decide which Ramen they want to eat in a short time, therefore, the page shows the factors that are most important for decision making, which is location, waiting time, and flavors.
In order to highlight the quality of “exploration” and “collection”, the store won’t show its picture on the radar page. Once you leave a rating or comment, you are able to unlock its appearance on the radar page. (You are still able to view the restaurant information once you click on the cards)
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The profile page shows users' collections and achievements. If they fulfill specific requirements, they will be awarded specific badges, for example, if they’ve eaten pork broth base Ramen more than a certain amount of times, they will receive a badge for this achievement.
Also on the top left corner, there’s an auto generated visual that shows their preference for eating Ramen, for example, if the users eat pork broth Ramen most of the time, the generated visuals will mainly be yellow.
On the explore page, users come here for inspiration, they do not need to make decisions right at this moment. Compared to the radar page, the information on this page is more comprehensive and diverse. They can find the ranking and in-depth review articles about Ramen. Once they found specific restaurants that they are interested in, they can label the restaurant as a favorite, so the star label will show on the radar page, reminding them to visit.
To conclude, the product is designed to fulfill the needs of people who love to eat Ramen, and enhance the factors (which are “Explorative” and “Collective”) that make people love eating Ramen.
The radar page and the explore page provides the most relevant information for users to decide which restaurant to visit (radar page provides information that helps them decide which to visit right at the moment; explore page provides more detailed and comprehensive information that help them expand their pocket list); the unrevealed items on the radar page and the achievement badges gives the users playful, and explorative feeling.
