Reliable, up-to-date information
Outdated or inaccurate restaurant details and limited, unhelpful reviews made information difficult to trust.
iHungryBear
Redesigning Restaurant Discovery & Community.
iHungryBear is an established restaurant discovery app in Taiwan with 90,000+ users. We redesigned the mobile experience to make restaurant discovery more personalized, trustworthy, and community-driven.
At a glance · Outcome
Results from testing the redesigned experience.
+27%System Usability Scale (SUS)
+35%User satisfaction
01 / Overview
Finding dinner shouldn’t feel like work.
iHungryBear helps people in Taiwan discover restaurants, browse reviews, and share dining experiences. But overwhelming choices made discovery difficult, while limited participation reduced the usefulness of community content.
Our redesign explored a more personalized mobile experience, with better reasons to share useful reviews and recommendations.
How might we make restaurant discovery feel more personalized, trustworthy, and community-driven?
Process
- 01
Discover
- Competitive analysis
- User interviews
- 02
Define
- Research synthesis
- Key pain points
- 03
Ideate
- Personas
- Journey mapping
- Opportunity areas
- 04
Design
- User flows
- Prototypes
- Visual system
- 05
Validate
- Usability testing
- Iteration
02 / Research
Competitive Analysis
We analyzed direct competitors iFoodie and MENU, and indirect competitors Google Maps and Little Red Book, to identify usability strengths, feature gaps, and opportunities.
User Interviews
We interviewed 10 participants familiar with restaurant-finding apps, focusing on behaviors, feature preferences, and challenges in finding and evaluating restaurants.
The synthesis revealed a gap between what users expected from restaurant discovery tools and what the existing experience provided.
Research Insights
Smooth, intuitive discovery
Unorganized choices and a complex interface made finding a restaurant overwhelming.
Personalized recommendations
Users wanted recommendations tailored to their preferences and lifestyle.
Community and social engagement
Users needed useful community content and opportunities for social interaction.
Personas
Interviews revealed two distinct discovery needs: social diners wanted recommendations they could explore and share with others, while busy families prioritized relevant options that fit practical needs.
Persona 01
Joyce — Social Explorer
Wants to discover new restaurants and exchange recommendations with like-minded diners.
Needs- Trustworthy reviews
- Social discovery
- Community
Persona 02
Miranda — Practical Planner
Wants to quickly narrow choices around family and lifestyle needs.
Needs- Relevant filters
- Reliable details
- Efficient discovery
Journey Mapping
We mapped Joyce’s experience planning a dinner gathering with friends. The journey revealed friction across the discovery process—from overwhelming choices and unclear filters to outdated reviews.
Scenario: Joyce plans a dinner gathering with friends.
The opportunityHelp users move from uncertain browsing to confident decisions, then turn their dining experience into useful community knowledge.
03 / Direction
Not just more places. A clearer way to choose.
Research pointed to a broader problem than restaurant availability: users needed a more reliable and personalized way to narrow their choices, along with useful community content they could trust.
Three questions to guide the design.
- How might we help users narrow restaurant choices without overwhelming them?
- How might we personalize recommendations around users’ real-life priorities?
- How might we make contributing reviews and community knowledge feel rewarding?
Concept exploration
Turning research into three design directions.
We explored ways to make restaurant discovery more relevant while giving users stronger reasons to share useful community knowledge. Three directions emerged from the research.
01
Relevant Discovery
Help users narrow choices around real-life priorities.
Design direction
Personalization
02
Shared Decisions
Make recommendations more useful through questions and polls.
Design direction
Community
03
Meaningful Participation
Give contributors visible recognition for sharing useful content.
Design direction
Engagement
04 / Design
Final Design
Feature 01 · Personalization
Recommendations that fit real-life priorities.
Life Status lets users tailor restaurant recommendations around priorities such as healthy eating, budget, time, and dietary preferences.
Design rationale
Users were overwhelmed by irrelevant choices and wanted faster ways to narrow restaurants around what mattered to them.
Feature 02 · Community
Turn restaurant decisions into shared conversations.
The Community Forum lets users ask questions, create polls, and exchange recommendations beyond traditional reviews.
Design rationale
Users wanted more useful community content and ways to interact around restaurant decisions—not just read static reviews.
Feature 03 · Engagement
Give people a reason to contribute.
Honor Badges and Hall of Fame recognize active contributors and make participation more visible.
Design rationale
Research revealed limited user-generated content, so we explored lightweight recognition as a way to encourage continued contribution.
05 / Impact
Putting the redesigned experience to the test.
We conducted scenario-based usability testing with 12 target users, including tasks such as creating a post, voting in a poll, and checking achievement status.
What we tested
Participants worked through core scenarios involving community posts, polls, achievement status, and filtering.
Friction found
Advanced filtering caused confusion for some participants.
Design response
We refined filter organization and interaction patterns in response to testing feedback.
A clearer experience, reflected in the results.
+27%SUS improvement
Higher perceived usability after usability testing.
+35%User satisfaction
Higher satisfaction measured during usability evaluation.
A more relevant experience.
“The new filters finally make the app useful for my life. I feel like the app is designed for people like me now.”
06 / Reflection
Reflection
More choice isn’t always more useful.
The project reinforced that better discovery isn't about adding more restaurants or filters—it’s about helping people narrow choices around what matters to them.
Community features need a reason to participate.
Designing forums alone wasn't enough. Recognition, polls, and lightweight contribution paths helped us explore how community content could become more useful.
Testing changed the details, not just the score.
Usability testing exposed friction in advanced filters and reinforced the importance of treating validation as another design cycle rather than a final checkpoint.