Treeats: Rebuilding Student Trust in Campus Dining Info

It's 6:30 PM, and you're a college student juggling classes, clubs, and a looming deadline. But when it comes to dinner... where do you even start? Choosing where to eat on campus feels like a gamble.

I read through Fizz, the app 95% of Stanford students use, and looked at the two existing dining sites. The same questions kept coming up: what's being served, when the specials are, and what's in the food. The official site was outdated, and the student-run one had no real-time busyness, so the answers weren't there.

Treeats is a campus dining app where students share real-time busyness, browse menus, and earn Acorn Points for keeping each other informed.

Before

Official R&DE site + Stanfood

• Outdated or inaccurate menus
• No real-time busyness
• Few ways to contribute
• Hard to scan: missing photos, buried specials
• Web-first, not practical on the go

After

Treeats

• Menus, ratings, and community in one place
• Real-time busyness levels reported by students
• Easy ways to contribute and earn real dining dollars
• A clear, accessible UI with specials up front
• Mobile-first, with a dynamic home screen widget

View and Update Busyness Levels in Real Time

Check dining hall busyness in real-time and update it with quick, intuitive sliders while you’re there.

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Customize Dining Hall Menus to Fit Your Preferences

Filter menus by dietary needs, meal times, and distance to discover the perfect dining option for any day or meal.

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Rate and Review Dishes and Earn Personalized Badges

Leave feedback on your dining experience and unlock unique badges that showcase your dining habits.

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Engage with the Community

Participate in polls to share your opinions on dining hall menus, send feedback to staff, and post shoutouts to celebrate your favorite moments.

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Climb the Leaderboard and Earn Dining Dollars

Track your acorn points and see how you rank among your peers on the leaderboard. Top contributors at the end of the quarter are rewarded with dining dollars.

Access Daily Specials on Your Home Screen

In a rush? Quickly check today’s specials and find nearby dining halls with the least traffic using the app’s widget—no scrolling required.

I analyzed posts from Fizz, a social media app used by 95% of Stanford students, where food is a trending topic. Many students voiced frustrations over the lack of transparency in dining hall information.

These posts revealed a clear student pain point: dining feels disorganized and inefficient.

Official R&DE site

Works great!

• A week of menu items for each dining hall
• Filters for allergens

Could be improved

• No photos, and no labels for specials
• Outdated design and inaccurate menu listings
• No real-time busyness

Stanfood (a student-run initiative)

Works great!

• Photos for some items (taken by students!)
• Allergen filters and student ratings
• A modern layout and a social tab

Could be improved

• Missing photos, and specials aren’t centralized
• No real-time busyness or wait-time data
• Few reviews and little community engagement

Between them, one had menus students couldn't trust and the other had no live info. Neither could say how busy a dining hall was.

Stanfood was the closest attempt at delivering student-driven dining info with student-taken photos, ratings, and a social tab. But reviews were sparse, and the social tab was mostly its founder posting on his own (-‿-").

That made me wonder: If students cared this much about dining info, why weren’t they pitching in?

so, i interviewed 6 students. this is what i heard.

• Hard to tell what's good on any given day
• Always in a rush, just want to eat in peace
• Like seeing where friends are

With the insights I gathered from user research and competitor analysis, I moved into the ideation phase to sketch out a lo-fi prototype focusing on the four main navigation pages and their associated tasks:

Gamifying engagement with campus spirit

I incorporated gamification into the app by creating an acorn mascot, drawing inspiration from the many squirrels on Stanford’s campus (after all, acorns are their favorite treat!). This addition aimed to enhance the campus experience with a playful, cozy touch, motivating students to engage with the app and earn Acorn Points and custom dining badges as rewards.

After testing the mid-fidelity prototypes with students, I implemented three key changes based on their feedback, transforming the design into its final high-fidelity version.

1.Busyness had to show more than wait time

Before

After

Feedback

• Wait time alone missed seating in buffet-style halls
• The bar graph was hard to read without numbers

✓ Change

• Merged wait time and seating into one status
• Swapped the bar graph for a live mood-changing mascot that indicates status
• Made “Help Update Status” more prominent

2.Ensuring accessibility standards are met

Before

Failed all WCAG accessibility standards

After

Passed all WCAG accessibility standards

Feedback

Hard to read certain text and graphic-heavy screens.

✓ Change

Darkened the primary color, raising contrast from 2.83:1 to 7.3:1. It now passes all WCAG standards.

3.Students wanted real rewards, not just badges

Before

After

Feedback

Many students reported wanting tangible rewards over levels and badges.

✓ Change

Added a quarterly leaderboard where the top 10 contributors earn dining dollars, with Acorn Points tracking progress.

about the timeline...

This app’s initial concept was born in my DESIGN 11 class, where I created a mid-fi prototype with basic features (it was the first app I had ever designed solo!). After working on various projects and refining my design skills throughout the year, I decided to revisit and revamp this project. The process of reevaluating my initial iterations, essentially reworking every element of the app, and adding a gamification component with an illustrated mascot was a challenge I hadn’t anticipated. I never considered myself much of an artist, so stepping into this creative territory pushed me outside my comfort zone. This project taught me the importance of embracing experimentation, getting scrappy, and realizing how much fun the design process can be when you allow yourself to explore.

If you’re curious, I’ve embedded the original promo vid (opens in a new tab) I created during the final class showcase for a preliminary version of this app called “StanFork” during my Freshman year above. While the design and some features have definitely evolved since then, I still think it’s worth a watch!

Phew that was a lot! Thank you so much for sticking around ;D