Research

The food truck locator product is a personal development project that I created after having poor personal experience, and realizing that the process could be vastly improved. How do you speed up the wait (long wait of 20-30 minutes)? Make sure customer is getting the correct order?

Although I was overall satisfied with my experience at the time, I was seeing gaps in the process that would allow for more speed, accuracy, and efficent for both patrons and the truck employees. The main complaint was, why can't there be a pre-pay option in the app, similar to a recent feature Starbucks added, or along lines of Panera's popular rapid pickup.

Aside from my order, I did also observe other customers who had orders overlooked. What could be done to make the food truck process as seemless and smooth as possible. Would customers prefer to order thru a website or app?... pay before arrival?... present reciept at pick up and be on their way? Could it ease line frustration and order clarity? One potential concern, would be a potential limited availability of goods with too many pre-orders. If everyone orders thru the app would there be enough food left for the people just waiting in line and not prepaying?

Competitor Analysis

Starting to get the discussion and research started, I began some in depth analysis of the features and capabilites at several competitors to locate areas for improvement. Below is synopsis of some of the findings.

Upon diving into some of the competitor features and what they offer, the realization came that this app could fill a missing nitch in the food truck app spectrum.

The main driving feature of this app would be the in app pre-pay to ease frustration, speed up the process, and ease confusion. Throughout my research it appears no one has really thought this could be an advantage, either in app or on site.

Another thing that seemed to be lacking with in the apps are the availability of any sort of a food menu. Most food trucks provide a very limited on site menu to keep things simple and avoid a ton of extra supplies needed. Why can't trucks have a menu of the items they have available to prepare right there within the app, on a personal truck page, to make it easier on the customers? Even if the user doesn't prefer to pre-pay or order in the app, one would think have the menu on hand would help users from having to hunt down a menu else where. Obviously this would have to be generated and entered by the specific food truck vendor. As a consumer, I personally prefer to research the options of a truck or restaurant that I might be heading over to dine at.

Survey Questions and Results

A total of 24 participants were asked to complete a survey and answer some general questions, about who they are, what are their social habits, their eating habits, and any previous experience with a food truck.

The top 10 question and their results are featured below.

What social media sites do you frequent?

Do you own a smartphone?

What time of day are normally exploring eating out options?

Have you ever purchased food from a food truck?

Do you work/live in an area where you have access to food trucks?

If you answered YES to previous question, where you would want to see food trucks?

If you had more exposure to when/where food trucks are available, would you consider it more often?

What type of food do expect/want to see on foodtrucks you frequent?

Which would you be more likely to use?

If you had an option to prepay before you get to the foodtruck, to speed up the process, would you frequent more often?

Personas

Based on the data gathered from the results of the survey, I was able to compile several user personas that could give a glimpse into the potential product demographic. It also helps provide insight into potential preferences and choices a user may make.

Upon completion of the research, some new conclusions were made about some things that were either over looked, or additional approaches that could have been made. One survey question that was overlooked, was not asking users what type of phones they use (Apple, Android, etc). Based on findings, I think this makes sense as a mobile repsonsive site versus an app. A chunk of the users preferred using their laptop computer more. Once an order is placed, a reciept could be emailed or thru sms for ease of access (especially for those preferring a traditional device). User could them display reciept on mobile phone for pickup. One other resources for user input outside of the survey would have been the actually ask food truck visitors on site. Due to this project being started in the off season of foodtrucks, that process was not focused on; It however would be a great supporting tool to the survey.

Moving on from the research portion, I began using some of my findings to begin sketching out the general flowchart, to start to begin to make some sort of visual sense of this app. First of all below, are some rough pencil wireframes to get the thought process moving.

Once the general direction was worked out, and thought process was in motion.

It soon moved onto taking the rough rendering from pencil to Sketch and start composing the wireframes for the product. Before proceeding the more hi fidelity final screens, I conducted a user analysis with paper prototypes on several peers to gather some information/considerations that I may have missed.