Challenge: Create a company, that can help people with severe food allergies live an easier life.
- Timeline: 2013-2015
- Type/Setting: Start-up
- Team: Anfinn Garðshorn, Hanus á Bøgarði, Ian Thomassen Jacobsen, Tummas Jóhan Sigvardsen
- My role: I was the CEO of the company, but my role mostly consisted of UI/UX, funding and team organization.
- Tools: Adobe Photoshop
- Skills: Concept Development, Visual identity, Idea generation, SoMe, Entrepreneurship
One of my dearest friends had recently been diagnosed with gluten intolerance. One day, we were having a conversation, and he asked, “Why can’t it be as easy as pulling your phone out and taking a picture of the food you are about to eat?” something clicked in me. This was the idea for a start-up that I had been waiting for.
What would you do if you were told that the food you enjoy eating is bad for you? We want to make sure people with food allergies don’t avoid social situations. We created a mobile application, Youly, that allows the user to scan a barcode and know within seconds if they can consume the food item. We believe that it is important for anyone to have accurate, timely information about their dietary requirements, so that they can have peace of mind. Dip your chips in the perfect salsa without worrying about whether you can eat them. Just scan the barcode on any product with your smartphone and gain instant access to reliable information about that item.
This was the first time I tried user interface development for an application, and this is also noticable when looking at the different iterations, as well as the tools that I used for designing. Instead of using something more suitable for creating prototypes, such as InVision (Figma wasn’t released back then), I designed the app in Adobe Photoshop.
The app design went through five iterations, but you can only imagine the time it took with Adobe Photoshop, so not all the iterations got a finished flow.
The five iterations of the login screen:
The five iterations of the app design can be seen below. I started out designing an app, that looked pretty standard for the time of development and as the design progressed, I added a lot more blur/transparency to the design and eventually ended up with a more luxurious overall feel:
Solution
