How would you improve the restaurant search?

Candidate: Restaurant search is a very common acitivity; is the buisness goal to create a more helpful google by improving the restaurant search experience for the customers?

Interviewer: Yes

User segments

A) Users with visual/hearing impairment

B) Food bloggers

C) Regular restaurant-goers

I would prioritize the biggest user segment to drive the most impact, therefore I would prioritize the regular users

User journey:
Open the maps -> Search for the restaurant by location/cuisine -> Select the restaurant -> Order online/go to the restaurant to eat-> pay for the food

Identify the pain points:

A) Restaurant search is today just based on either the location or cuisine but customers cannot search for the restaurants based on the receipes. For example, customer cannot search for all the restaurants that offer a particular kind of pasta.

B) Customers are unable to know the restaurants safety ratings that are assinged by the local governments after the inspection. Safety ratings reflect the cleanliness of the cooking process and restaurant set up.

C) Customers cannot know from the restaurant search itself if the restaurant provides the calorie information on the menu or not

D) User ratings of the restaurant is useful in general but it is also influenced by several factors such as the user state of mind, mood, non-food related experience, etc. So it is not purely indicative of the quality of the food.

E) Customers cannot know if the restaurant offers the parking or not. If it offers parking facility, customers cannot know the whether parking slot is avaiable or not.

Brainstorm solutions

A) Receipe-based search: Build a new feature that allows the customers to search for the restaurant based on the receipe

B) Safety rating information: Capture the safey-ratings assigned by the local authorities to the restaurant in the search results

C) Calorie information/Nutrition facts: let the users know if the restaurants menu carry the calorie information. Also, empower the users with additional information on the nutrition facts about the receipes on the menu. This will help the customers to develop a healthy eating habits.

D) Editors choice: Hire experts that would taste the food and provide a unbiased review of the food in the restaurants, this will go a long way in giving high quality information for the users to make a good restaurant choice.

E) Live-parking tracker: Build this feature to let the users know about the restaurant parking situation

Prioritization

Solution	Cost	Benefit
Receipe based search	moderate, need to factor in the restaurant menu in the search	moderate, this feature would delight customers
Safety rating	moderate, need to ingest additional data point and update them when needed	high, key to improve the health of the society
Calorie/nutrition facts	moderate, need to ingest additional information from the restaurants owners into the search results	high, important feature that would nudge users towards healthy eating
Editor's choice	high, need to find food experts and need build and update the rating	high, professional reviews tend to be unbiased and thorough
Live-parking tracker	high, connect with satelitte signal to know the live parking situation	moderate, useful for customers to plan their trip to the restaurant

Based on the prioritization exercise, if i were to select only one, I would choose feature that gather additional key pieces of information such as safety rating and calorie/nutrition values that would nudge the customers towards healthy eating.