Platform:

iOS/Android & Web

Duration:

2014/2 – 2018/6

Role:

Co-Founder, Product Designer

Method:

Lean UX

Summer of 2014 marked the launch of street-food trucks in Stockholm and made a big impact during the short summer (e.g. a new TV-series about street-food). Streetkäk (street + snack) started as a passion project, including an ex hamburger-kiosk chef. Initial idea of Streetkäk has been locating and finding food-trucks in the city before they were out in the wild. The time was scarce for street-food lovers, as well as the limited supply of good-taste to be chased.

Our contextual observation has shown the importance of 'communication' in street-food culture. Street-food can be thought as a storytelling process, involving the chef, the story of the food, and participation of street-food lover. In Nordic cities, there are regulations about time-interval, location and schedule of sales for food trucks. Communication within the street-food community depended on 'happy coincidences' and social media, without a specific platform. Often times, food-truck chefs run a 'one man show', making it harder to manage social-media updates while cooking at the same time.

Streetkäk provides a complete solution for the food-truck community, with an agile platform and a Check-in App for food-truck owners to start with. Street-food community loves some genuine 'small-talk' to learn about the other side of the story. Streetkäk's idea has been creating a platform, that removes the distance created by limitations.

Streetkäk Team has been in close contact from the early era of food trucks in Stockholm (first 10 trucks) up until the number has grown up to 3-digit numbers of trucks in Scandinavia. The research process included participatory workshops with truck owners, surveys, recollection of test-event data. Test-events also helped food-truck lovers to answer our questions, which helped prioritisation of problems to solve and building features accordingly. The research phase created emphasis on communication and personality of food-trucks.

Ideation process of the ecosystem has started with mind-mapping, for being able to name the possible features surrounded by what street-food culture could be. Early iterations of the App-features would focus on the 'communication' aspect, connecting different dots of the ecosystem. Empathy maps helped us see the differences between tech-savvy and cooking-focused food-truck chefs. On later iterations, the focus has shifted on improving simultaneous order management & cooking processes.

Findings of the research showed different results for street-food lovers and the food-truck chefs. In earlier iterations, the design processes were moving on two single-tracks as two developers worked on iOS & Android versions. However, with the implementation of Streetkäk's payment feature, simultaneity became the most important function. The process started with defining information architecture, sketches and continued with wireframes, flow diagrams and ended with the delivery of prototypes (Principle App) assets through Zeplin to developers.

Our team had the chance to collaborate with PayPal, Nike and Universal Studios (Sweden) to organise focus-group events where working-prototypes built on staging environment were tested. Cash payment, phone-call, disabling menu items during sales, have been developed with the feedback received from the trucks. The system was designed to be scalable and autonomous, which later have been used outside of Stockholm - the birthplace.

Field tests of Streetkäk have improved agile-cooking, making it simple to handle crisis situations such as 'sold-out' or 'cancelled-order' and made communication easier. Final run of field-tests has taken place in Way Out West festival in Gothenburg, Sweden before release. The pre-released versions were tested out at a pop-up food-court where discounts, iOS & Android and web products were tested. User-experience, onboarding and bug-fixing were made possibly by final field tests. The development stage has been completed with two consults and one internal team-member, where a part of the work has been conducted remotely. Testing, data collection and decision of agile sprint-scopes have been challenges that our team had to solve until the final release.

Streetkäk has evolved from a simple digital street-food map to a holistic product that solves problems of street-food habitat in Scandinavia. It has been featured on several international media outlets, creating an organic growth that has led to 6-digit number of downloads - mostly in Stockholm. I have learned a lot from the whole process - how to brand, build, scale a product, as well as conducting research and solving problems in a set-timeframe. Even though, the product has made its mark to the street-food culture, further improvements are necessary to maintain a sustainable growth: