Finding Overseas Food

Challenge

After travelling, finding the same food and drinks back home wasn't always straightforward. Products could be scattered across supermarkets, specialty grocers and online stores, making availability, price and distance difficult to compare.

I wanted to find out whether this was a broader problem — and what actually mattered to people when searching for imported products.

So How Might We

Understanding the Problem

I started broad, mapping out who this affects and why, using the Five W's, then a Five Why's exploration to reach the root of the problem.

Survey

Three findings shaped the direction.

How People Solve It Today

Supermarkets

Convenient, but limited. Easy to access and familiar, but imported ranges are inconsistent and users may need to visit multiple stores.

Online Retailers

More choice, more friction. Broader product ranges, but shipping costs and delivery times make them less useful when someone wants something locally.

Communities & Forums

Local knowledge, scattered information. People can recommend hard-to-find products, but information can be outdated, incomplete or spread across different platforms.

The opportunity: bring product availability, price and location together so users can compare their options in one place.

What Does the User Actually Need?

Easy to access and familiar, but imported ranges are inconsistent and users may need to visit multiple stores.

Turning the Research Into a Product

The research pointed toward a location-first experience. Rather than making users search individual retailers, the product could show where an item was available, what it cost and how far away it was — all from one search.

Putting the Concept in Front of Users

Rather than looking only at whether they completed each task, I watched where their behaviour differed from how I expected the product to be used.

I tested for:

5 Participants · Moderated Test · 3 Tasks · Interactive Prototype

The Map Didn't Behave How Users Expected

Assumption

Users would explore the map and switch between map and list views to compare nearby stores.

What happened

The interaction didn't match familiar map behaviour. 3/5 participants didn't recognise the store card as something they could interact with, while participants also expected the store list to be accessible from the bottom of the map.

Change

I redesigned the map around more familiar navigation patterns — making store markers clearer, moving the list to a bottom sheet and strengthening the path from finding a store to acting on it.

“Log In” Didn't Communicate Sign Up

I thought

Users would understand that account creation was available through “Log In.”

Testing showed

The label wasn't clear enough. Participants didn't consistently associate Log In with creating a new account.

I changed

I made Log In / Sign Up explicit rather than relying on users knowing the convention.

Users Wanted Confidence Before Travelling

My assumption

Showing that a store stocked the product, alongside its price and location, would give users enough information to make a decision.

What happened

Multiple participants said they would still call the store before travelling to confirm that the product was actually in stock.

What I changed

I kept a direct contact action in the store experience, giving users a way to confirm availability before committing to the trip.

Real-time inventory would be ideal but keeping stock quantities accurate creates a burden for businesses, therefore direct confirmation provides a practical fallback.

One Product Wasn't Enough

What I designed

The initial concept focused on finding a single product and comparing nearby stores.

What I heard

During testing, one participant raised a scenario I hadn't considered: what if they were looking for multiple products at once?

What it changed

That shifted the problem from simply finding a store that stocks a product to finding the best shopping option for a group of products.

From One Product to a Full Shop

I introduced a shopping list that lets users save products as they browse. Instead of treating each search independently, the list gives the app a complete picture of what the user is trying to buy.

Finding the Best Option

With multiple products selected, the question changes from “Who sells this?” to “Which option makes the most sense for my whole shop?”

The experience can compare nearby stores against the user's list, helping them weigh product coverage alongside price and distance.

What I learned

This project taught me that usability testing is most valuable when it challenges assumptions rather than simply confirming them. I entered testing expecting users to navigate the map in a particular way, but observing different behaviours pushed me toward more familiar interaction patterns and clearer decision-making. It also showed me the importance of connecting research findings directly to product decisions, rather than treating research, ideation and testing as separate stages.

The concept was tested as an interactive prototype rather than a live product, so the next step would be validating the revised map experience with a new round of users and testing how reliable store availability information could work in practice.