Experience Next Bite

——

01. Project Overview

Next Bite is a restaurant discovery app designed to make deciding where to eat simple. Instead of overwhelming users with endless lists of restaurants, the app recommends one place based on preferences like cuisine, budget, distance, occasion, and vibe.

The idea came from a problem I run into all the time. I'd spend more time scrolling through restaurant apps than actually deciding where to go. I wanted to create something that felt more like getting a recommendation from a friend than searching through a database.

Throughout the project, I focused on creating an experience that felt warm, intentional, and easy to use while balancing thoughtful UX, accessibility, and technical implementation.

Project Type: Personal Project

Industry: Food & Lifestyle

Timeline: ~2 weeks (continue iterating)

Role: Product Designer, UX Designer, Developer

Tools: Lovable, Figma, Google Places API, Google Authentication, HTML/CSS, React

——-

02. The Problem

Choosing a restaurant has become surprisingly overwhelming.

Most restaurant apps prioritize giving users as many options as possible. While that sounds helpful, it often creates decision fatigue. Endless scrolling, dozens of filters, and hundreds of reviews make finding somewhere to eat feel more difficult than it should.

I wanted to design an experience that reduced the mental effort of deciding while still giving users confidence in the recommendation.

Some of the challenges I wanted to solve included:

• Reducing decision fatigue by recommending one restaurant instead of displaying hundreds

• Helping users quickly narrow results based on budget, cuisine, distance, occasion, and vibe

• Creating a dining journal where users can remember restaurants they've visited, what they ordered, and their personal experiences

• Designing an interface that felt warm, modern, and inviting without looking like every other restaurant app

——-

03. Design Process & Approach

I started by defining the core experience before thinking about additional features.

The primary goal was simple:

Help users decide where to eat in under a minute.

Once that experience felt solid, I began expanding the product with features that supported the overall journey rather than distracting from it.

Some of the key design decisions included:

• Designing a conversational filtering experience instead of a traditional search form

• Prioritizing a single recommendation rather than endless restaurant lists

• Creating a visual dining history where users can rate restaurants, upload photos, and remember what they ordered

• Building thoughtful loading states and recommendation explanations to increase user confidence

• Iterating on the visual design multiple times to create a warm, premium experience that felt approachable without becoming generic

Accessibility was also considered throughout the design process, including scalable text, color contrast, and support for color blind users.

The project evolved through continuous testing, refining layouts, improving recommendation quality, and polishing interactions to create a cohesive experience.

————

04. Solution & Outcome

The final product delivers a curated restaurant discovery experience that helps users spend less time deciding and more time enjoying their meals.

Instead of overwhelming users with choices, Next Bite recommends one restaurant tailored to their preferences while allowing them to build a personal dining history over time.

Current features include:

• Personalized restaurant recommendations

• Google Maps & Apple Maps integration

• Favorites

• Dining history

• Restaurant reviews

• Photo uploads

• Community photos

• Reservation links

• Google Authentication

• Responsive mobile design

Future features currently in development include:

• Next Bite Replay (annual dining recap)

• Friends & recommendations

• Café, brunch, dessert, and late night discovery

• Personalized restaurant collections

This project strengthened my skills in product thinking, UX design, accessibility, API integration, responsive design, and iterative development while reinforcing the importance of building and testing products with real users.

———

This project taught me that good products aren't built in a single design pass. Through continuous iteration and user testing, I refined everything from the recommendation flow and visual design to accessibility and interactions. More importantly, I learned that solving a clear, everyday problem is often more valuable than adding more features. Every design decision came back to one question: Does this make choosing where to eat easier?

——

Experience Next Bite