Menu Guru
Brand strategy, visual identity, naming, tone of voice, UX/UI and website design.
Founded by Sunil Mistry and co-founded by WeAreNova Co-foundry in early 2018, Menu Guru wanted to be known for its safe, worry-free and innovative allergy solution.
The idea and its evolution began when allergy sufferer and founder, Sunil, believed there was a better way to serve allergy sufferers than presenting them an allergy matrix or the ‘black book’.
With over 2 million allergy sufferers in the UK, 65% of them not eating out for the fear of something going wrong with their order, it was evident that something needed to be done to cater to this large and vulnerable segment of the restaurant market.
Menu Guru intends to set the bar for quality, attention to detail and an enjoyable experience under the utmost levels of care and attention. As the name suggests, Menu Guru’s ethos revolves around guidance – the entire process is built around a system of care; leaving no ingredient unchecked.
The naming.
I was asked to define this brand identity in a way that better communicated the ‘Allergy App’ and its very important role in the dining experience. I believed the name Menu Guru was informative yet vague enough that it did not pin the app down to simply allergies. I had to look forward ten years and envision a world where this app does not only aid allergy sufferers but is a streamlining process for other people who simply have specific dietary requirements or beliefs. So it was important to keep the brand name flexible, yet informative; and something that rolls off the tongue well.
This led the way in defining the new identity, emphasising positivity and consistent precariousness on our side, rather than the customers. All the while, keeping the brand fun and professional as way to help customers navigate their way through the restaurant’s menu and encourage a happy dining experience.
Our approach was to make it easier for customers to see what they can eat rather than what they can’t eat.
By formulating a digital filtration system that cuts and replaces meals and ingredients if they are chosen to be unsuitable for the customer, we allowed diners to quickly find what dishes are allergy-free. And by implementing this function into the mobile app you can make a decision on where and what to eat without the going to the hassle of contacting the restaurant directly.
Mobile App Design
The restaurant profiles would give you the ability to check the opening times, locate the restaurant on a map, check reviews and ratings from past customers and an overview of the menu. Customers could even filter the menu prior to booking a table and check which restaurants offered the most meal options available to them. Once decided, they could contact the restaurant and book a table, which also gave the restaurant a heads up and reminder to be on top of the allergy standards within the restaurant.
Web Design
www.menuguru.co.uk
Working closely with Menu Guru’s marketing team, product owner and founder, we put together a wireframe of what information and sections we thought would be essential to have on the landing page. This included - call to action buttons, an explainer video, how we work, the benefits, restaurant quotes, and email capture.
Nova urged us to stick to a template but I always sought after ways of differentiating from your typical basic templated website layout while keeping it lean. So I utilised my bespoke illustrations and iconography while employing parallax scrolling, photographic mock-ups, and a logo pattern to break up the white space.
Logo Design
I set out to infuse the well known shapes of the hamburger menu to represent the digitisation of the menu and the body shape of a sitting guru visibly in a calm and conscious state of being. By putting these together I found this abstraction of the 3 different parts of the body becoming the 3 bars of the hamburger. The top bar being reduced and centralised to a simple circle to signify head. The middle bar symbolised the arms and the lower does for the legs. By adding two tones of green and swirls I intended to give off the impression of limbs; completed with a waist to give the logo a strong posture and collectively a combination of shapes and concepts that I believe to instils trust in the users.
Tablet App
When I started working on Menu Guru, they had a prototype that took, at least 19 clicks from start to finish. I worked towards reducing that to below 5. Experimenting with all kinds of functionalities like bookmarking certain dishes, looking at the full ingredient lists and sending an confirmation of order email receipt, to name a few. User testing showed us that these functions weren’t necessarily wanted or needed so we stripped it back to just do what is should, to filter a menu based on a persons allergy requirements.
The flow was simple - input the allergens - filter menu - select your meal - receive your food. I also designed the app so the colours were adaptable to the brand of the restaurant that was using it.
Feedback Functionality
In order to obtain another year of investment, there were certain OKR’s we, as a startup needed to complete. I designed a feedback form that would pop up after being on the order summary view for however many seconds. Giving the user a choice of 5 emojis; “frustrating”, “confusing”, “not sure”, “it’s great" and “I love it!”. After 500 users across 8 trial restaurants we had 20% of users leave feedback. 92% of those who left feedback chose the “I love it” emoji.
I designed the internal feedback form and capture over using the generic “rate us on the app store” because I feel like those pop-ups have been known to be instantly disregarded and not cared for. So my making it, internal, relatable iconography and on-brand, I believe more people felt inclined to leave a comment and a rating.
Menu Builder
I was set the task of taking our group research and development work we had accumulated as a team in the design sprints and designing a central management system for the restaurants to add and edit dishes and menus. The design sprints included interviewing with the chefs from our flagship trial restaurant, Maray, about their current process of creating menus and documenting allergens for certain dishes. We had to take into account that not every restaurant works in the same ways. Some update their menu as regularly as every month where some never change at all. Some chefs have e-documents whereas some only have it physically written down or printed as a menu.
So we had to work out what would be the most efficient way of populating the app with their menus which didn’t consume too much of a busy head chef's time. We decided that obtaining their menu and transferring it into our own allergy-focused spreadsheet/matrix while checking it with our allergy experts and the chef before bulk uploading the menu to an accessible dashboard and control system. From here the chef can go through all the items and dishes on the menu with the ability to edit or delete if needs be. We also gave them the functionality to create new menu, sections, sub-sections and even a way of adding ingredients as removable or swappable, rather than removing the complete dish from the menu for the sake of an optional ingredient.
Marketing Video
Our videographer, product owner, founder and marketer went to Maray to shoot marketing video in order to give customers a more real-life experience of using the app. I directed and starred in the video.
Customisable menu interface to fit a restaurant’s unique branding.
Appraisals while working on Menu Guru
“Since working with Owen on Menu Guru, he has been incredibly valuable in delivering what I believe is one of the best validate products we've had through our process. Owen has been flexible in working to difficult deadlines and has brought new ideas to the table along the way. He has taken a lot of what has been passed on from feedback and implemented them in creative and innovative ways. A piece of feedback we consistently get when the product is shown to allergy sufferers and restaurant owners is that the app looks amazing and that's a testament to Owen. He has strong convictions on how the product should look and I grew to trust his opinion very quickly.
I'm very much looking forward to working with him and seeing what we can deliver as we move into the growth phase.”
— Sunil Mistry, Founder of Menu Guru & Startup Consultant at Nova
“I think you demonstrated excellent passion when you first joined and showed a willingness to get involved. I thought the most impressive aspect was your willingness to iterate, often it can be frustrating to redo and revisit work you have already put a significant amount of effort into but after the first few iterations you seemed to take it in your stride and refactor and redesign became just another part of the process. I really appreciate the way you engaged with the Elephant squad and were really a part of the team, this was important for me as I wanted to see the pros and cons of our designers working as part of their own squad.
I think the quality of work you produced is of a good standard and your willingness to iterate is refreshing.
— Richard Dean, Lead Product Manager at Nova
“Owen is the second designer I have worked with whilst at Nova. It soon became apparent to me as I started working with him, that despite him starting at a graduate level, his level of commitment, dedication and professionalism is at the standard of other more senior designers I have worked with, both at Nova and outside of. I've always been able to count on him to go above and beyond on anything i've asked him to do. He always meets deadlines and his work is always exceptional.
Giving the example of Menu Guru, Owen had stated he had never previously designed an app. Quite quickly he learnt and adapted and designed a product that looks polished, professional and delivers a killer customer experience. In another instance, when given an extremely tight deadline to redesign a web page (from scratch) - he did so within a day and produced a design that was 10X better than the original.
From working with Owen, if I could pick any designer when starting a project, it would be him..”
— James McInnes, Startup Consultant for Menu Guru & Nova
NOVA - Portfolio - Menu Guru Case Study
I created all the visuals for this case study.