Make choosing feel manageable.
Long selection times and complex interfaces pointed toward a guided path. “Surprise me” breaks the decision into meal type, taste, mood, and practical limits.
EARLIER UX WORK / 2022
FoodLiveUX concept
A little surprise.On your terms.
Home-cooked food, with a different way to order: let your mood and preferences guide a surprise meal, while you keep control over diet, budget, and time.
Explore the project
YOUR KIND OF SURPRISE.
01 / THE DESIGN CHALLENGE
What if ordering food felt less like work?
FoodLive explores access to familiar, home-cooked food for students and professionals living away from home. The UX work addresses the effort of choosing, concerns about hygiene, and the need for personal preferences to survive the ordering process.
- Context
- Origin: ENT603, 2022 · Team venture concept with UX exploration
- Practice
- Customer discovery · Survey · Journey mapping · Service flows · UI design
- Output
- Service concept and mobile app prototype
THE SIGNATURE FEATURE / SURPRISE ME
Choose how you feel.
Leave the dish open.
FoodLive includes a surprise-delivery path: customers share their mood and food preferences instead of selecting a particular dish. The delight comes from discovery; the boundaries stay in the customer’s hands.
Walk through the original screens01
Express the moment
Mood, meal type, and taste give discovery a personal starting point.
02
Set the boundaries
Dietary needs, budget, and delivery time remain explicit choices.
03
Invite the surprise
Review those preferences before checkout. The exact dish stays open.
Designed in the 2022 prototype: mood and taste guide discovery, while diet, budget, and timing define the customer’s boundaries.
02 / DISCOVERY → DIRECTION
The meal is personal.
The friction is familiar.
52 PARTICIPANTS / MUMBAI
The bottleneck
was choosing.
People living away from home wanted variety, familiarity, and food they could trust. The research examined what stood between that need and the next meal.
- 75%reported spending a long time choosing what to order
- Finding → direction: offer a guided path through preferences, one decision at a time.
- 26 / 52rated the food they received “satisfactory”
- Finding → direction: explore a better personal fit through home-cooked food and expressed preferences.
Survey of 52 Mumbai hostel and paying-guest residents, supported by qualitative synthesis. These descriptive findings informed the prototype direction.
Build trust into the order.
Reviews mattered when choosing a service, while customer discovery raised hygiene concerns. Home-cook discovery, clearer information, and a familiar review-before-payment step became priorities.
Give variety personal boundaries.
Menu diversity attracted people; dietary needs, spending, and timing shaped what they could choose. Those constraints remain explicit before the surprise is confirmed.
ListenMap the meal journeyDefine personal boundariesPrototype
Research context and evidence
Research with 52 people living away from home in Mumbai’s hostels and paying-guest accommodation combined survey findings with qualitative exploration of everyday meal habits. The work examined where people ate, what made ordering difficult, and how they judged quality, variety, and trust. Customer-discovery conversations also explored willingness to try a home-cooked food service and what people would pay for it. Together, these findings shaped a guided ordering experience that made personal preferences easier to express.
03 / THE EXPERIENCE
A little surprise.
On your terms.
The most distinctive concept is a guided “Surprise me” journey. Step through the original screens to see where the customer gives direction, sets limits, and commits.
THE SURPRISE-ME JOURNEY
Start with the kind of meal.
Snack, meal, or beverage gives the experience an initial direction without asking for a specific dish.
01 / 09
A walkthrough of the original concept screens. No orders or payments are placed.
TWO SIDES OF ONE SERVICE
Good food needs
a connected system.
For the customer
- 01Discover a cook
- 02Choose or personalize
- 03Pay & track
- 04Receive the meal
For the cook
- 01Receive the order
- 02Prepare the food
- 03Coordinate delivery
- 04Manage earnings
The customer and cook flows connect discovery, preparation, delivery, and earnings. A service pilot would examine how verification and fulfillment work across this shared journey.
04 / REFLECTION
Less effort.
Without losing agency.
FoodLive turned a familiar frustration—spending too much effort deciding what to eat—into a service and interaction-design opportunity. The concept connects the comfort of home-cooked food with guided discovery, while keeping the customer’s needs visible throughout.
What I would validate next
I would test whether the guided journey reduces decision effort, whether customers understand what remains a surprise, and how cooks receive and confirm dietary requirements. These questions connect the interaction concept to reliable fulfillment.
MORE UX DESIGN
SKYBUZZ
A connected world of drone services.