We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer anjali srikanth about their original and creative Mobile Application design work. anjali srikanth is an award-winning communication designer, that makes our world a better place with their original mobile application works.
anjali srikanth ("AS") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work Crave Mobile Application. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
AS : Crave has been inspired by our passion and love for food and design. The idea was to provide a mobile application that brought in the joyous aspects of food, cookings skills, culinary knowledge and the social aspect of sharing your food interests. Crave, is designed to deliver a consolidated user experience that inspires and encourages users to explore their food cravings. Key features that distinguish Crave from the current market include a badge collection reward system and a chatbor designed to walk through each user’s specific needs and find a suitable restaurant or recipe.
AS : Crave was created to answer the basic gastronomic need of, “what are you craving?” A visual discovery engine, the application connects users to their desired recipes and restaurants. Crave consolidates the end-to-end food ordering experience from the beginning of the process, where thechatbot helps determine where to eat, to theend of the process,where users make table reservations.
AS : We plan to develop crave into a full functional application and service both from the business to consumer and business to business perspective. The application has a potential for industries like travel, hospitality, food services, media, entertainment and health and fitness.
AS : The conceptualization and design of the application took about a duration of 4-5 months. Research was done on the food industry, diets, chatbots and machine learning technology to support our application.To design this application, our team met regularly to develop multiple low and high fidelity prototypes, as well as supporting documentation to build a complete submission package for the A’Design Award & Competition
AS : Current food-related applications lack a central service and fail to deliver a comprehensive user experience. There is a lack of personalization options for diet restrictions, allergies, budget, and more— thus, some users with specific needs are not able to easily find meals that suit them. From a design perspective, new technology and design trends are not fully embraced and implemented in current applications.
AS : As part of the Capgemini Digital Interactive team has developed a high- fidelity prototype for a new mobile application. This app, named Crave, is designed to deliver a consolidated user experience that inspires and encourages users to explore their food cravings. Key features that distinguish Crave from the current market include a badge collection reward system and a chatbor designed to walk through each user’s specific needs and find a suitable restaurant or recipe.
AS : We wanted to provide a platform on which businesses can deliver personalized restaurant and recipe listings for each user's unique needs. Crave is an engaging mobile application that leverages popular features of other current food-related applications and adds several new functionalities to include a social network connection
AS : The inspiration for this application came not just from existing applications and current lifestyle approaches to food, but also from our family recipes, interesting ingredients, the desire to satisfy a craving related to food and the fact food being a need was very diverse, subjective yet universal in nature.
AS : Food lovers, restaurants, food advisers, dietitians, cooks, people with novice cullinary skills and anyone who want to enhance their culinary and food journey
AS : Current food-related applications lack a central service and fail to deliver a comprehensive user experience. There is a lack of personalization options for diet restrictions, allergies, budget, and more— thus, some users with specific needs are not able to easily find meals that suit them. From a design perspective, new technology and design trends are not fully embraced and implemented in current applications. Specifically, voice UI and conversation design are trending in many other applications and services like personal assistants and banking, but the adoption into food-related applications is trailing behind. Implementing this new technology could potentially increase efficiency and ease of use for mobile applications. The app leverages AI, chatbots and a highly evolved search filter mechanism.
AS : When it comes to satisfying a food need we often rely on our craving whether its for something sweet, sour, tangy or spicy. Food is a holistic experience of taste, perception and the feeling to satisfy a certain aspect of our tastebuds. Hence the name "Crave" came for the application.
AS : We used a range of tools for our application for the creative aspects we used adobe illustrator, photoshop and pdf editor. Apart from that for the prototyping we used Figma and adobe experience design.
AS : Crave is an intuitive mobile application delighting users with visual content and connecting users to their desired recipes and restaurants. Users get their best results through a personalized questionnaire with our chatbot Sydney and through extensive search filters.
AS : I collaborated with group of junior designers who had a fresh perspective of the field. Each one of them had design skills whether it was prototyping , research, sound design or graphic design which complemented one another in our group
AS : Technology ha a good aspect when it comes to our application with o Sydney the Chatbot users can enter a chatroom with Sydney who tailors her suggestions, filtering through restaurant and recipe listings, to each user's unique preferences. There is high filter mechanism and technology to get results of food recipes, restaurants and links to food influencers based ontags and meta tags. The a
AS : Our research spanned from food related platforms to visual discovery food app, food delivery apps, and cooking blogs. We sought to determine what was successful, what could be improved, and most significantly, design and market trends. Our team discovered that while many food applications understood the significance of providing efficiency for the user, competitors failed to personalize the user experience. Crave celebrates these individual stories by creating an inclusive and personalized food application that provides an answer to everyone’s food craving.
AS : An application that caters to the broad category of food, the challenge was to understand the user’s needs, determine prioritization, and appeal to the target audience. Furthermore, in such a saturated market, the team needed to positively distinguish our application from the rest of the competition. With unique and electrifying color combinations, to utilizing conversation design, to the ability to foster community through sharing culinary experiences, Crave creates a hybrid that is both familiar in some of its elements, yet new and unique in presentation and design.
AS : The A' design award is one of the most prestigious forums for design and innovation. Having a chance to be part of this process, has helped us to bring out product and service conceptualization process, to a different level
AS : In the project a lot was learnt about good collaboration, constant reiteration, and how an idea could be taken to a certain level with knowledge sharing, constant evolvement and improvisation
AS : Food is a holistic journey of taste, exploration and innovation, and with "Crave", hopefully many food lovers can enjoy their culinary adventures to the fullest
