Introduction
I was approached by the client to redesign the app that they had described as a “mixture of Instagram + Zomato + Amazon“. I was amazed at the description so I got curious to explore the project. By the way, I described the project as a “Social Food Marketplace” for ease of understanding. Below is the journey of How it went.
The challenge of building a social marketplace for restaurants and wholesalers
An MVP of the product had been already built in a hurry and had been shown to customers. Thankfully, we got positive reviews about the product from customers. They had described it as “their own Instagram” is what I was told by the stakeholders. Hence, I was told that we don’t need to go for any kind of UX Research and needed to work on some core issues in a short amount of time. We decided to work on a few selected issues during the scope of the re-design:
- Improve the Navigation of the App to enable the user to access all parts of the app in the shortest time possible.
- Improve the aesthetics of the app and make it look premium since we were targeting premium sellers and restaurants of organic/healthy/gluten-free food items.
Case Summary
Product Vision
Social Media is all the rage and food blogging is at its all-time high today. Yet most restaurants are at the mercy of Food Bloggers to visit their place and make them popular. But Food bloggers are actually more interested in finding new street food vendors as that gets them many more views in reels (or short video platforms in general) than bigger restaurants.
Also, since organic/gluten-free/healthy food places in not as popular in general they are getting lesser visibility.
They can benefit from a dedicated platform that allows them to be at the centre of customers’ attention. Mixing the very popular infinite timeline format along with the ability to post unlimited content may benefit the restaurants and help them get more business.
Discovered Problems
During the UX Audit, we scoped the project to refine the visual design of the app and improve the key navigation of the app.
Expected Outcome
An App that we could take to the market quickly and get insights on possible business avenues. 
Process Highlights
Project Team
I was the sole designer working on the project.
My Role/Responsibilities
Visual Design. UX Design.
Methodology
We were following rapid development cycles along with the design. So once the user-flows and key navigation of the app were finalised we designed and provided the designs to developers immediately for development as and when they were done.
Project Plan
1 week of UX audit and wireframing. 3 weeks for visuals design (part-time).
Discovery and Ideation
The idea behind the core experience of the app was simple. The customers will only be viewing the content and only the restaurants and food providers will be able to post the content so that they are in focus always! The app had 4 major parts:
- Feed
- Food Fresh
- Vendors
- Farm Fresh
We experimented with multiple possibilities for the navigation and timeline designs. 
And finally settled on this one. It provided easy ways to access all the important areas of the app and did not overwhelm the user with unnecessary details. 
Since it wasn’t supposed to be a full-fledged content creation app we tried not to overdo with features and design.
Visual Design
A part of the app looked like an Instagram clone but we intended it that way. Our users were used to the Instagram interface. Both sellers and customers were using Instagram to binge through drool-worthy content and it only seems right to just follow the design for the initial launch.
Outcomes
The could not be launched on time as the founders faces some issues. The details on the outcome of the app will be updated here post app launch.
Thanks a lot for reading through the entire piece! Your thoughts on the design will be dearly appreciated.
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