The Allergic Pursuit of Deliciousness

By Loni, Ethan, Merhawi

Problem and Solution Overview

For many people, eating out at restaurants is the most common setting where people catch up and socialize. Whether this be with friends, family, business partners, or even by yourself, the expectation is a great dining experience, which is made up of good company (yes, even the company of yourself is good company) and good food. For people with food allergies, this is not always the case. In the past, many people with food allergies have had to sacrifice the enjoyment of their meal when eating out due to restaurants having limited dishes. They have had to settle for ordering overpriced alternatives that weren’t appealing in the first place, or ordering a dish containing their allergen and suffering the consequences later, or even not eating at all. With our design, we will help improve the dining experience for those with food allergies. Through a mobile app, users can receive recommendations for restaurants that are well-suited to their food-allergy restrictions / dietary needs. Users can also check whether restaurants can substitute certain ingredients in dishes that they’re interested in ordering before actually committing to going to a restaurant and placing an order. It is easy to make groups within the app and streamline the restaurant-choosing process for you and your dining party. All of this in an easy and convenient way, bringing our users one step closer to the perfect dining experience.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants

To gain a better understanding on the impact of food allergies on people’s social lives, we conducted a survey and a focus group. Our survey allowed us to gather a large number of research participants thus gathering a broader range of perspectives. This made it easier for us to see a pattern amongst our stakeholders. The survey included questions like “have you ever felt hindered by your food allergies in a social context, if so what was the social situation and why did you feel that way?” Following that we asked about how the participants have gone about resolving similar issues in future instances to get a gauge of how people with allergies have been dealing with their social challenges. We surveyed over 15 participants who were all undergraduates that had a range of different food allergies, sensitivity levels, and were of different ages when discovering their allergies.

As mentioned above, our team also conducted a focus group session where we, in contrast with the survey, were able to spend some time with our participants to query for greater detail in their answers. Similar to the survey, we asked questions to gather some information on some pain points that our participants have had with their food allergies in social contexts and different ways with how they have dealt with it. We led the discussion with questions like “what are some pain points of having food allergies” and then to get more detail, “how have you dealt with those pain points? Do you have a method that’s been working for you?” For the focus group, we recruited three of the participants who took our survey. We specifically invited these participants to join the focus group because these participants had discovered their allergies at different stages in life, had varying severity levels, and indicated interesting experiences that we wanted to probe further on.

Research Results

Prior to conducting research, our team was under the impression that food allergies would have a more significant impact on people’s social lives. This did not appear to be the case amongst our research participants, who have not felt like their social lives have been affected by their allergies in any meaningful way. Even amongst those that are deathly allergic to common foods, they do not allow those allergies to impact their restaurant choices, as most restaurants will have at least one item that they can eat. They felt that it’s adequate to read the menu items’ ingredients and then double check with waitstaff to confirm that it is safe for them to eat, although also expressing an annoyance with having to constantly ask. Despite our initial impression about people with food allergies and their social lives being incorrect, based on our research, participants’ experiences at restaurants could still be enhanced as many of our participants expressed that sometimes they do not end up eating at all or do not end up enjoying their meal as much as they could have due to the lack of variety. Based on these findings, we decided to slightly change our direction; rather than focusing on the impact that food allergies have on people’s social lives, we decided to focus on improving the restaurant experience for those allergic to certain foods.

Themes

After debriefing the results from our survey and focus group session, we found that among many of the participants, the social setting that poses issues are restaurants. Despite this, for many participants their food allergy is not a large factor in the process for choosing what restaurant to eat at. Instead, they will take into consideration their food allergies when already present at the restaurant, suggesting that there may not be a convenient way for people to gather information on if a restaurant is suitable for their food allergies, so participants end up taking the risk and going to restaurants without this knowledge. Participants expressed annoyance with searching through the menu and always having to ask their server if an item on the menu contained their allergen. Even with this annoyance, participants expressed that having a technological solution would be overkill and it would just be easier to ask the server when in doubt about a food item on the menu or just avoid the food item altogether, signifying that we need simple and convenient solutions, especially if we are considering technology as a solution so that our users will feel more inclined to use our design. Participants have also commonly expressed that at restaurants, they end up eating foods containing their allergen anyways or do not eat at all, indicating that participants might be struggling with what to choose as an alternative, whether it be an alternative dish or restaurant, that is safer for their food allergies.

Proposed Design

From our research results, we can draw that our solution needs to be simple and convenient in order for users to feel that it is easy and worth integrating into their daily lives. We can also conclude that our solution needs to address the restaurant-picking process since so many of our participants have chosen and have continuously chosen to not engage in research prior to entering the restaurant despite this leading them to have subpar dining experiences. We can infer that many people do not do this because they don’t want to feel like a burden to their dining party, and there is no existing solution that is convenient enough for our users.

Below depicts the flow of our proposed design, Allygen, a phone app that aims to be an ally to users with food allergies by helping coordinate a restaurant with their dining party and showing all of the dining options with the substitutions users can make to ingredients for each dish before they head out to the restaurant:

We chose this design because, as indicated through our research, our users want a solution that is convenient for them. A phone app embodies convenience since many people already carry their phones with them all the time, so this solution can easily be integrated into the daily lives of our users. In frames 4, 5, 6, and 7, our design addresses the process of finding a suitable restaurant, either by yourself or with others, in an easy and convenient manner, which would drastically improve our users’ dining experience since they’d be able to enter the restaurant with confidence that there is a delicious menu item for them. We also addressed our users’ annoyance with having to ask the server about whether a dish contained their allergen and what substitutes they could make in frames 8 and 9. These frames show the restaurant’s menu, the ingredient list for all of their dishes, and what substitutes are available for those dishes as outlined by the restaurant owners themselves.