moo

Discussions regarding where to go or what to eat can sometimes turn into endless loops depending on who you're asking. If dining alone, the choice can be quick and decisive. However, as your group grows, it can be long and drawn out — before you know it your stomach is eating itself.

This is a common scenario I find myself in; both at work and home. Even though eating is my favorite hobby, I rarely plan ahead to think about what I want or should eat - much less cook. When it’s you + 1 it's already tricky, but accounting for dietary restrictions or preferences can make the conversation much more difficult.

Breaking it down

I took the painful experiences from my household and turned those into goals I can focus on to start solving the problem.

The goals include:

1. Having a go-to list of recipes or restaurants to select from when the hanger sets in.
2. Being more proactive about selecting a meal to allow proper time for cooking. Less dining out and more cooking.
3. Identifying individual preferences and dietary restrictions.
4. Soliciting more recipe & restaurant recommendations from friends.

In the past, we've adjusted our habits through solutions like meal planning and prepping as well as food kit delivery services, but nothing sticks. Instead we sought a different kind of solution — a tool to help collect and categorize foods, recipes, and restaurants based on various attributes to help us be better prepared. So, we started with a Google form and a spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet allowed us to add new food items with categories like cuisine type, craving descriptors, recipe links, or restaurant locations. This was a cheap and easy solution that validated the idea. However, it wasn't great for making decisions in the moment. Accessing a spreadsheet on a phone is how you punish someone - not get them excited about making a decision.

So here's where the journey begins.
I'm building a mobile app to resolve the food debate - at least for my family. Below outlines some of the initial experiences and what I'm learning as I begin to build out sections of the app to address each of the goals.

The Google form helped me determine what kind of information we needed to capture for filtering. Although the form was more mobile-friendly than the spreadsheet, I noticed I only ever added new items after eating. This meant that I'd forget to capture an image of the food. Most of the food photos I have are from when I cook or bake something new.

Therefore with Foodie, I wanted to make sure the process of adding a new food item didn't start with or require uploading an image. The phone is great when you’re looking for a meal, but it shouldn't be a distraction that ruins one. All other fields for categorizing are optional, so the user can record what helps them remember the item most.

Our next objective is to encourage proactive decision making to better plan ahead. When schedules are hectic and tricky to align, creating a daily routine can be next to impossible. A simple calendar alert or clock alarm helps get attention, but it doesn't facilitate completing the task.

Mobile apps have an advantage of pushing alerts to people at opportune moments. With Foodie as an app, actionable notifications could help nudge us to create a food recommendation to share. Once a food recommendation is shared, the receiving user could accept or make a counter offer.

Rather than trying to guess what to eat, Foodie helps the hungry identify viable options and speed up decision making. You can filter to find foods that are "spicy", "savory", or "healthy" within the food library. Find food options that you can cook, if you're not looking to go out. If there's something you know you don't want, exclude it, so it's not part of your results.

Craving something new is also an option, but trickier to naildown when you don't know where to start. Rather than asking for a restaurant recommendation, you can explore new food options from people you follow. See new types of foods, restaurants, or even recipes to change up your diet and eating habits.

See food items your friends like, or craving tags that they don't like, as well as any of their dietary restrictions. Knowing what types of foods people can or can't have helps them make the most considerate meal choice when dining with a friend.

With the help of a mentor, I've started building out components of Foodie to be able to test how well it works within these key moments. I'm starting with food creation and filtering, so I can test out whether or not it can successfully replace my Google form and spreadsheet. Learning Swift & SwiftUI has been a fun challenge; it's rewarding to see these small elements come to life.

In the meantime, I'm collecting insights from other people's experiences to learn how Foodie might help them. Want to share your own experiences? You can do so through a survey or email your feedback directly.