Be Free from Your Food Allergies

A tool to help people with food allergies find enjoyable restaurants

Nathan Chia, Victor Kuan, Leo Tsai, Sherry Yang,

Problem and Solution Overview

With over 32 million Americans having some form of food allergy, one would expect there to be more infrastructure to help these people with their diet. Yet, people with food allergies are often frustrated with the limited or lack or information when it comes to dining at restaurants. Menus often lack a list of ingredients or any warnings about potential allergens. Even worse, some restaurants do not have standards for food preparation, risking the possibility of serving cross-contaminated food. People with food allergies also often face social discrimination, receiving annoyed looks from waiters when requesting for food accommodations, as well as having no relatable people to ask for help. Our solution aims to address these issues by giving users a pleasant experience dining out, from finding restaurants to ordering food, and the platform to engage with a relevant, helpful community. To achieve this, users should have a 1 stop for all place to browse menus in detail, with the option to highlight or filter out incompatible food. We also intend to create a platform that allows users to post helpful information related to their diet such as recommended restaurants on a forum and rate restaurants not based on the taste, but how safe they are when handling food.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants

To research this problem, we decided to put a survey up on Reddit. Food allergies are relatively common, so we wanted to take advantage of this and get as many responses as we could by posting something online that people would be willing to fill out. We asked people with food allergies to talk about things like what allergies they have, any existing technologies that they already use to help them find food, and inconveniences that they go through because of their allergies. At the end of the survey, we also asked if people were interested in expanding on their answers in a Zoom interview with us. We got 15 responses for the survey and conducted 3 interviews. Not only were we able to glean a good amount of information through our surveys, but we also got really useful thoughts and opinions from our interviews that helped us better understand and design for our problem. We thought of using other methods such as contextual inquiry, but the pandemic makes such methods impractical.

Design Research Results and Themes

We noticed a lot of different positive and negative themes as we conducted our design research. Overall, responders indicated that there are some pros and cons regarding their current technological tools. One of the most important questions we asked is if current tools sufficiently supplement their dietary needs. 4 voted for “yes”, 4 voted for “maybe,” and 7 voted for “no.” Among the positive feedback, some people appreciated that some restaurants have allergen menus on their websites; some others list ingredients so the users could read the dishes and make their choices; some apps allow users to leave a comment for dietary needs or request for substitutions. One user reported that they could use an app called GF Around Me that helps seek restaurants with gluten-free options. However, regarding the rest of the feedback, the recurring theme is that a majority of the restaurants and tools lack information that would help users with food allergies make their decisions. Not only do users have to search across various platforms and apps, but also most of the time the tools do not present sufficient information on allergens, ingredients, and substitution options. Even if there exist tools that might tailor to specific dietary restrictions as previously mentioned, different sub-populations (people with different allergies) would have to spend a ridiculously long amount of time on searching. We discuss some common problems that we discovered when conducting both research methods as follows.

Most reviews and comments on apps are on tastes, prices, environments, services, etc, which are not helpful for people with food allergies to identify whether or not the restaurants are friendly to their diet. A majority of our participants rely on specific restaurants’ websites instead of food apps due to insufficient information. Some pointed out that apps don’t provide enough information on different allergies; some also say they gave up using certain apps due to the abundance of inaccurate information and/or difficulties with searching; some participants also find that restaurant staff do not have enough background knowledge to answer their questions about specific ingredients and possible allergens. In addition, some people report they are too shy to tell the waiters about their food allergies because these people don’t want to burden the restaurant staff with extra work.

Proposed Design

Based on our user study, we identified the need for more details on the restaurants’ menus in order to filter out potential allergens. We also discover users would appreciate a friendlier environment to communicate with the restaurant about their dietary restrictions so that they do not have to speak out loud in public about their demands. In addition, our research participants indicated they prefer a more engaging community with other people who have similar allergies in order to exchange reviews and feedback for restaurants.

We settled with pursuing a mobile app format for our tool because it’s objectively more accessible than other smart technology that are more situational and specific such as smartwatches and smartglasses. Users will be able to access the mobile app anywhere they happen to be, whether they are at home, walking at the park, or sitting in a car. To address the common problems aforementioned, we tried to focus on tasks that are more general and can affect the vast majority of people with food allergies. After all, most people with food allergies want to eat safe and appropriate food at safe and appropriate restaurants, and it is safe to assume that these people would appreciate having a tool and community to depend on with regards to these concerns.

In our mobile app Allegro that provides efficient searching functions and a lively community, users will be able to filter restaurants based on their allergies and talk to people in similar situations. It will display restaurants that are generally friendly to that type of allergy, whether it be in terms of substitutions, the number of items that don’t contain that allergen, or recommendations from other users. There will be quick facts about the restaurant that relate to food allergies and users can also choose to view their menu. For the menu pages, it will list quick info about allergens. If the users want more info, there’s another page that lists out all the ingredients and underlines ones that you are allergic to. There will also be a section of reviews and ratings from the population with similar dietary restrictions. The app/website will also allow users to communicate with the restaurant’s staff for questions and special requests for orders regarding substitutions and accommodations. This can be in the form of live messaging or a form that gets sent to them.

The following storyboards illustrate two of the core features we would like to achieve with our design, assisting people to find restaurants while providing sufficient information about allergens and providing a platform that collects customer opinions and reviews on how allergy-friendly the restaurants are. We believe these features help create dining experiences that are safer and more convenient as users have a more centralized system to gather sufficient information on their own and also from a community, and thus they will be able to construct a general idea of what to expect at a restaurant that may or may not suit their needs.

We are thrilled to continue exploring a potential solution to suit specific dietary needs and alleviate the trouble people have to go through to filter out unsafe restaurants. Our app will serve as a more centralized database, search engine, and a forum that assists users to find restaurants and express their demands in a stress-free and convenient environment.