Eatlas

Eatlas helps you discover new food, cultures, and countries.

Wondering what to eat? Where does a dish come from? What to eat when traveling? Check out Eatlas for all your questions.

How many times have you found yourself thinking about food? We all know it is sometimes exciting and sometimes mundane and necessary. Continue reading to know more about how Eatlas will give you joy while accomplishing these tasks.

Based on just 3 simple gestures

Spin

Decide

Explore

Just spin the globe. Tap to stop (or let it stop on its own). Eatlas will give you the countries that it found on that face of the earth. If you don't like what you got, well ... then spin again. You can also use the search bar to go to a specific cuisine. Play the video to see it live in action.

So, how it's made?

Let's talk about that.

Online food delivery industry is at its all-time high with billions of dollars being invested in this [1] . With more and more option to order food from, people spend more and more time trying to figure out what they want to eat. Whether it is for themselves, for a group of people, you will find people spending a lot of effort trying to learn, understand and experience different kinds of food, culture, and variety.

Thought process of my target audience when asked about food

Convenience is a big key player in the decision factor

Image source: the-billion-dollar-food-delivery-wars

Why the spin?

During my market research, I found that there are three basic types of food hunting solutions. Firstly, there are ones that give you a lot of options any let you decide where to source your food from. Secondly, the ones that help you learn and try out recipes and cook yourself and thirdly, the ones that make the decision for you and relieve you from all the tension.

Pickers

Recipers

Deciders

In all of the above categories, I found that the users had some level anxiety and work that they needed to do to achieve their goals. I found that gamification of the selection process can ease this burden and provide a fun and easy way of letting people figure out what they want.

To organize all the data points that I collected during interviewing and surveying my target audience, and draw good insights from it, I laid them into an affinity diagram. It reveled five major insight and directions for EATLAS.

Insights

Things people do about food at home

There was a lot of activities that users did at home while thinking about food. From researching about the next travel to cooking different meals, to ordering food for a bunch of friends. EATLAS should help the users in achieving all these activities.

I like comfort food from home when I am tired.

Where do I buy good cheap ingredients for my ethnic cuisine?

I like to learn different traditional ways of cooking.

Things people do to pick a restaurant faster

While there are many apps that help you pick and filter the restaurants that you want to order from or dine-in, but there is a lot of time spend on deciding which one to pick. EATLAS should help users pick restaurants they want quickly.

I go out with people of different countires all the time.

Decisions are very difficult to make, especially for a group of people.

I read reviews of the restaurants but they are getting a bit much.

Things people do to educate themselves about food

Users were curious about different types of food and culture. EATLAS should tap into this curiosity and help users enjoy learning and discovering new countries, food, and culture.

It is easy to read a food blog than to search information yourself.

I feel dumb when I go to french restaurants and have no idea what is on the menu.

I get distracted when I am browsing online.

Things people do to get more sustainable

A lot of users showed interests in being sustainable and save environment . EATLAS should help these users learn about different ways of achieving this.

I hate when restaurants pack plastic spoons when I order food at home.

I do not like food wrapped in plastic.

I would like to save money and share cooked food with friends.

Things people do when they were overwhelmend by the vast amount of information available

Last but not the least, users did not know what they did not know . Most of the users picked a few cuisines and countries and learned about them. Most of the curiosity came from their conversations with friends. EATLAS should help users discover countries beyond their reach and make this experience enjoyable.

I just follow my friends and let them pick a cuisine or the restaurant.

What are people eating in China these days?

When I travel I don't know what to eat.

The content

The design of the app is very simple and based on three primary interaction to discover. Once the user has discovered the country s/he wants to pursue, they can deep dive into it and either read about the country, look into its cuisine and recipes or pick a restaurant to either to go or order from. The other side of the app is the admin content generators where they will be provided with a good editor tool where they can write about the countries, add new recipes or promote restaurants.

The design system of EATLAS

While designing this app, I went through various iterations of design and testing to make sure the app is both informative as well as pleasing and fun. During this phase, I made a design system with grids, typography, colors, and components that can be used over and over and overloaded so that the content generation is geared properly to make templates that can be coded easily. Below is a glimpse of such iterations.