Choosing where to eat shouldn't be stressful. But it is.
Across Malaysia, Singapore, and Melbourne, people spend over 10 minutes deciding on a restaurant for a single meal — and even longer when they're choosing for a group. The options are endless, the information is scattered across half a dozen apps, and by the time you've finally picked somewhere, the whole experience already feels exhausting.
This isn't a food problem. It's a clarity problem. There are too many options, no personalisation, and no guided path to a decision. Users are left to scroll through hundreds of listings that don't account for what they actually like, what mood they're in, or who they're eating with.
The result: decision fatigue, wasted time, and meals that start with frustration before anyone's even ordered.
Before designing anything, I needed to know whether this was a real problem or just a personal frustration. I ran a survey with 47 participants across Malaysia, Singapore, and Melbourne, aged 20–34.
One line guided every design decision:
Reduce the time to decide on a meal to under 3 minutes, by creating a restaurant discovery platform that's curated to each user.
This meant the product couldn't just be another review app. It had to understand the user — their taste, their history, their context — and use that understanding to cut through the noise.
<aside> ✅ It solves the issue of decision fatigue and wasted time when choosing where to eat—especially for urban Malaysians who feel overwhelmed by too many choices, generic ratings, and unreliable reviews.
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<aside> ✅ The app tackles the frustration of lengthy group discussions, endless scrolling through restaurant lists, and the anxiety of picking a venue that might not satisfy everyone, transforming the stressful process into a single-tap, intelligent recommendation.
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Onz can be used by anyone, but I focused the design around three personas that represent the core frustrations: