iOS Mobile App
A Social Media App For Foodies and F&B businesses
Project Summary
An App that leverages social media technologies to create new opportunities for F&B businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It enables users to create and share food-related content. One of the unique features is its ability to identify food names from food images through the use of neural network.
Responsibilities
iOS Developer
UI/UX Designer
Product Owner
Machine Learning
Technology Stack
Swift & SwiftUI
Google Firebase
Python & Tensor Flow
Core ML & Create ML
Problem
Social media, notably platforms like YouTube and Instagram, has fundamentally transformed global communication, becoming indispensable for daily activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments leveraged these platforms to efficiently disseminate health information. However, the crisis severely impacted Food and Beverage (F&B) businesses, imposing restrictions that led to a decline in revenue and customers. For instance, French restaurants experienced significant reductions, emphasizing the critical challenges faced by these establishments.
While social media has proven effective for information dissemination during the pandemic, (F&B) businesses, particularly hawker vendors, are not reaping equal benefits. Casual dining restaurants and cafes garner more attention due to visually appealing content, leaving local hawkers with fewer opportunities for assistance.
Aspiring entrepreneurs in the F&B industry face challenges anticipating business disruptions amid the unpredictable COVID-19 situation. Apart from operational costs, they must allocate funds for advertising to attract local patrons.
Despite social media's global connectivity, there is a notable absence of a dedicated food-sharing platform. Current platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok lack effectiveness for food content due to user recommendation algorithms, which may not prioritize such content for users with infrequent food-related views.
Objective
To develop a social media iOS app that would allow users and F&B businesses to post, share, and enjoy viewing food contents. The product was built with SwiftUI with the consideration of recommending and publishing food related multimedia contents to the users of the app. Insights from this development may help to increase F&B businesses’ customer base by creating more opportunities using social media technologies. Subsequently, it will increase their revenue in the future.
Research
A survey was conducted to collect opinions and suggestions of what features a social media user would like to see in this mobile app. There were a total of 31 responses with the majority aged between 23 to 27. Among them, 29% of the users spent more than 5 hours daily and another 29% spent 2 hours daily. Instagram, Telegram and YouTube were ranked the top 3 frequently used apps by these users.
From the results, the ideation to develop a social media platform to help F&B businesses may be effective.
The common denominator that makes users favour these three apps is the availability of the endless scrolling feature in each of them. This feature enables the release of dopamine in the brain, inducing a sort of neural thrill, and it encourages one to persist in scrolling through the content.
In addition, suggestions on some possible features or functions that a user would like to see in a food sharing social media app were collected. The most popular suggestion was the ability to view location of the food, reviews, menus, prices and special promotions. Although these information can be found with a simple google search, it is still a hassle for users to look for them. Currently, there is no one-stop platform capable of providing all these information concisely and conveniently.
Features
Login
Users can create and manage their own accounts. They can simply sign in with their registered email address and password in the Login screen. Alternatively, they can also use their existing Google, Apple or Facebook accounts.
Register
New users can register by inputting their preferred username, email address and password. Once the app has validated their information, users can choose their profile picture and country of residence. Then, the app will ask the user to select up to five of their favourite cuisines. This information is used to generate personalised content for each user.
Home
After signing in, users are directed to the Home screen, displaying posts from followed users. Actions like liking, commenting, sharing, and bookmarking are available. Clicking on a post's image or the comment button opens the Post Detail screen for more information and user interaction. Bookmarked posts are accessible via the heart icon on the home screen's navigation bar, where users can also search for specific posts using criteria like username, restaurant name, address, or caption.
Explore
They can view food contents posted by other users outside of their connection or search for their friends by specifying their account username.
Random Food Selector
One of the unique selling features in this app is its ability to suggest food to users who may be having difficulty deciding what to eat. Users are presented with a fortune wheel consisting of six random foods, which they can spin by swiping left or right. Once the wheel stops spinning, the result is displayed to the user.
Deals
This screen displays the different deals offered by the F&B establishments registered in the app. Through creating a business account, these establishments can post and promote new deals to attract potential customers.
Create New Post
Users can create and upload a new food post, which can be viewed by their followers and other users within the app. They have the option to choose a photo from their photo library or use the camera on their iPhone to capture a new one.
Recipe
Apart from browsing food media content shared by other users, the Recipe feature allows users to learn how to cook their favorite dishes. Users can access this screen by clicking on the second icon from the right of the bottom tab bar navigator. Once there, they can browse a list of recipes that have been created by other users of the app. Users can then utilize the search bar to find a specific recipe by the food name or use their device’s camera to scan a dish and have the app perform a search based on the image scanned. This feature is especially helpful when a user is unsure of the correct name of the dish and wants to recreate it at home.
Personal & Business Profiles
The Profile screen shows the necessary account information for a user such as their profile picture, number of followings, number of followers, username and a list of posts created by them. F&B businesses can create a business profile where they can provide additional information such as their restaurant’s menu, contact details, location and deals on top of the existing features found in normal profile accounts. Messaging is an essential component of any social media platform, allowing users to communicate with each other in real-time and form connections beyond the public domain. Hence, it is critical to have this feature implemented in this project since the fundamental scope was to build a social media app.
Summary
This project attempted to permit users and F&B businesses to share and view food-related media contents on one platform with the aim of increasing awareness and opportunities for these businesses, particularly during post COVID-19 recovery period. By leveraging the power of social media technologies to expand their potential customer base, F&B businesses may experience a boost in their revenue growth in the future.
This project followed the software waterfall model, which involved various stages such as requirement analysis, planning, modelling, coding, and testing.
To design a product that catered to the users' needs and expectations, I conducted user research to obtain valuable insights.
Using Swift and XCode, I developed the product while continuously testing all the implemented features to ensure the product's stability.
Towards the end of the development, I added image recognition functionality to enhance the services and user experience of this product using neural network.