TL;DR
Individuals with unique challenges often struggle to meet their nutritional goals due to time constraints, lack of information, and limited options. Imagine if a local restaurant could tailor and streamline diet solutions to ensure users with diverse challenges can easily meet their diet objectives.
2024-2025 A’ Design Award
🏆 This project earned the bronze award in the A' Design Award Competition.
Intro
Everyone deserves to eat well, but the lack of awareness, knowledge, convenience, or the overwhelming challenges of life could hinder many from having a consistent and nutritious diet tailored for their health and conditions. That's why I created the Kinmuni app, a comprehensive nutrition calculator app that helps people make healthy, informed food choices, while providing high values to the business.
The Kinmuni app was originated from the Sharpen challenge — to design a nutrition calculator app for a local restaurant. I chose Kinmuni, a direct representation of a cozy café in my hometown that serves a diverse range of customers from locals to Expats, and travelers.
To understand the needs and challenges of potential users, I conducted impromptu discussions and interviews with people who have different dietary preferences and goals. I discovered that many people want to eat healthier, but they face barriers such as lack of information, time or convenience.
The Kinmuni app aims to overcome these barriers by providing users with the convenience to access nutritional information about their favorite foods. The app also help users plan their meals ahead of time, and provide them the flexibility to adjust key ingredients to meet their diet preferences and needs.
Discover
Understanding the Context
Kinmuni is a well-known cafe in Laos that serves a diverse range of customers with different needs and preferences. It offers a variety of delicious and nutritious meals, as well as coffee and baked goods. It also supports social causes and changes its menu according to the seasons. However, the cafe has some limitations that affect its customer satisfaction and loyalty. Some of the problems are:
Customers often experience frustration and delays due to the need to queue up at a single cashier to place their food orders. This is worst during busy hours.
Customers have limited information about the food they are ordering, such as the ingredients, nutrition facts, descriptions or pictures. They can only see the names of the dishes on a big menu board, which does not provide enough details or options.
The cafe does not offer any convenience or incentive for customers who want to order their food in advance or return frequently. It does not accept phone orders, and it does not have any loyalty program or rewards.
The absence of an accessible menu makes it difficult for customers to know what food options are available and make informed decisions. For customers dining alone, leaving their seats to order food can be inconvenient and potentially unsafe, especially if the cashier is located far away.
The cafe has difficulty updating its menu information easily, as it has to print new menu boards or stickers to update information like seasonal menus or pricing. This can result in outdated or inaccurate information, as well as waste of resources.
These issues hinder the cafe from delivering a personalized and satisfactory customer experience, as well as realizing its full potential.
Exploring the Technology
To design the Kinmuni app, I researched the nutrition calculator technology and its features, advantages, challenges, and best practices.
Nutrition calculators are tools that give users accurate and updated information about the nutritional value of food items, and let them customize their orders to their dietary needs and preferences. They also have many benefits for businesses, such as attracting more customers, increasing sales, enhancing their reputation and trustworthiness by providing transparent and reliable information about their food, and complying with regulations in different countries.
User Research
I conducted informal and semi-structured interviews with cafe-goers, entrepreneurs, and business owners to explore their lifestyle, well-being, challenges, and opinions about the nutrition calculator concept.
Open-ended questions were asked to encourage participants to share their thoughts and experiences in their own words. I also observed participants as they interacted with their surroundings and each other to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and motivations.
The four main questions I focused on were:
What are your biggest struggles when it comes to achieving your dietary goals?
How does your busy lifestyle impact your ability to achieve your diet goals?
How important is it to you that food orders be personalized to align with your dietary requirements and preferences?
How open are you to engaging with a restaurant app to access nutrition information?
User Groups
Three types of personas were identified during the discussions.
Weight management seekers. Individuals from this group desires to lose or gain weight and need reliable dining solutions to ensure that they are eating the right amount to achieve their goals. Fitness enthusiasts and coaches also belong in this group.
Busy health conscious professionals and entrepreneurs. This group represents individuals with ambitious dreams and busy lifestyles, but do not enjoy cooking. They value nutrition and are conscious of the ingredients and nutrients they consume to nourish their body.
People with dietary restrictions and conditions. These are individuals who have to be sensitive about what they eat due to medical or personal reasons. This includes temporary conditions like pregnant or breastfeeding mothers.
These personas represent the main pain points and goals of the target users and will guide the next phase of the design process.
Define
I analyzed the problem from the perspectives of both the business and the users using the 5 W's framework, and crafted an opportunity statement to frame the problem clearly.
Opportunity Statement
Customers with different dietary needs and preferences often struggle to find suitable options when dining out. This leads to dissatisfaction, frustration, and missed opportunities for Kinmuni to attract and retain loyal customers. This is also an opportunity to create a personalized and convenient dining experience by offering health-conscious and customizable options that cater to specific needs and preferences of the customers. This will enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and differentiation for Kinmuni in the competitive market.
User Personas
Using the research data, I created user personas that represent the needs, goals, and behaviors of the potential users of Kinmuni. These personas helped me to establish a clear and realistic picture of who I was designing for and how they would interact with the product.
Develop & Deliver
Brainstorming solutions
The Crazy 8s method was used as a starting point to design Kinmuni’s wireframes. Each session follows the best practices stated by Google, which includes listing its elements beforehand, providing clear labels, and combine ideas to innovate. A sample of 2 screens are available below:
Building the solution
Once the designs of each screen wireframes were decided, I designed the first set of digital wireframes, refined them, and prepared for the first user testing.
Testing the solution
To evaluate the usability and desirability of the Kinmuni app, I planned and conducted a moderated usability study with 6 participants who matched the target user profile using ethical and best practices outlined by the UX team at Google.
During the moderated usability study, I used instruction cards to guide the participants through different tasks on the app, such as getting started with the app, browsing menus, checkout, and save their order in their own ways. The participants were also encouraged to think aloud and share their honest opinions and feelings about the app.
Presenting the study
The study revealed valuable insights about the app's features, navigation, language, and overall concept. Based on the feedback, I made several iterations to improve the app's design and functionality.
The key insights from the testing phase were then compiled into a usability study deck to be presented to the stakeholders.
Iterating the solution
The wireframes are then revised based on user feedback and iterated for another round of moderated usability study. Once ready, a high-fidelity prototype was designed, refined, tested, and iterated following the design thinking process.
Project Outcome
To view the minimum viable product and visual presentation of Kinmuni, please visit my Behance presentation or use the link below:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/173756889/Kinmuni-Product-Design
Closing thoughts
Kinmuni is the first of its kind in Laos that helps people track their nutrition intake and follow their dietary preferences when they eat out. We aim to revolutionize the way people eat and promote a healthier lifestyle in the country. One of our peer reviewers praised our app as “amazingly unique” and said it would “actually change how people approach food here”.
Throughout the development process, we learned the importance of being open to user feedback at every stage. We focused on creating a minimum viable product that demonstrated our core concept and functionality, rather than spending too much time on design details and assumptions. We used the feedback we received to improve our app’s design, usability, and features, and to ensure that it meets the needs and expectations of our target audience.
Let's connect!
Thank you for viewing my work, I would love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to contact me at joeeintha@gmail.com. You can also find more of my work at Behance.