FoodFob

FoodFob is a Newcastle University initiative that tops up a student's café wallet by 10% to help them save on campus food and drink. As an MSc Human-Computer Interaction student, I was handed one at the café — and immediately hit friction trying to use it.

The premise is genuinely good: spend through FoodFob, get 10% more to spend. But the experience around it worked against the offer. This case study is my attempt to redesign that experience so more students actually benefit from it.

Fig 01 · Context

The FoodFob was a physical card students had to remember to carry and present at the till. There was no way to see your balance and no way to track spending. There wasn't a companion app at all — students fell back on generic third-party rewards apps that gave them nothing for using the FoodFob. For a money-saving tool, none of the saving was visible.

I needed to know whether other students felt the same friction. The university was already running focus groups on FoodFob usage, so I joined one as a participant — then ran my own contextual enquiries in the cafés.

How I dug in

1. Joined a university focus group as a participant, validating the pain points I'd hit using the card myself.
2. Ran contextual enquiries — observing students paying in the cafés and noting where the FoodFob slowed them down or got skipped entirely.
3. Spoke to café staff and regular users. Staff confirmed FoodFob was ~5% of daily transactions; most students I asked didn't know it existed.

I identified the two key stakeholders — the baristas at the till and the students who used FoodFob regularly — and mapped how a purchase actually played out. Across a week of buying coffee, staff never prompted for the FoodFob unless I raised it first.

From those observations I built a persona, mapped the end-to-end journey, and sketched the first user flows and wireframes.

Fig 02 · Process

Fig 03 · Process

Fig 04a · Process

Fig 04b · Process

With the flows settled, I designed high-fidelity screens around four core surfaces — Home (balance + transactions), Rewards (progress), Cafés (where to use it), and Wallet (top up, balance, offers).

Fig 08 · UI

Fig 09 · UI

Fig 10 · UI

I tested the high-fidelity prototype with students, and their feedback drove a focused round of changes. In parallel I built a small design system using atomic principles — defining components and their properties so the UI stayed consistent as it grew.

Fig 11 · Testing

What testing changed

• Balance hidden by default. Testers were uneasy seeing their balance the moment the app opened, so the home screen keeps card details hidden until the student chooses to reveal them.
• Add to Apple Wallet. Students expected to carry the FoodFob in Apple Wallet — so the digital card gained an Apple Pay option under “My Card”.
• Reporting a lost card. Testers asked where to report a lost card, so the digital card screen now offers “Request a replacement” and a short “What is a virtual card?” explainer.
• Café cards reoriented. The café photo moved to the left to match natural reading habits and improve legibility.
• Rewards moved into Wallet. Available rewards were hard to find, so they now live under Wallet with a clear call-to-action, alongside a monthly spend-and-savings summary.

Fig 12 · Testing — Home

Fig 13 · Testing — Cafés & Wallet

Fig 14 · Testing — Rewards

If the app were taken into development, a few directions would extend its value to students and the university:

• Click & Collect. Order and pay ahead, skip the queue, and reclaim time between classes.
• Exclusive campaigns. Student-only discounts and offers personalised to dining habits and preferences.
• Smart inventory. Purchasing patterns inform stock — fresher ingredients, fewer shortages, a more sustainable operation.

I'll be straight about what this was: a student concept on an eight-week timeline. It was never built, and the value isn't a shipped product. The value is direction — and the direction has since been borne out on campus.

Newcastle University now runs UPAY, the app its catering team rolls out to students. The university describes it as a digital companion for eating on campus — pay across all twelve cafés, 10% off food and drink, loyalty points earned on every purchase, and tailored offers. It's a third-party platform (by Upay / Uniware Systems), not my design — but it lands on the same bets this case study made in 2024.

The same bets, now live on campus

• A mobile companion. The university frames UPAY as a digital companion for eating across all 12 campus cafés — the core move this project proposed.
• The saving, made visible. The 10% per-purchase discount now lives in an app students actually open, instead of sitting invisible on a card.
• Loyalty, built in. Points earned on every purchase and personalised offers — the engagement loop this case study argued was the way to grow daily active users.
• Even the future-scope bets. Order-ahead — the Click & Collect idea from the section above — is part of the UPAY platform.

I'm not claiming credit for an app that already existed and that the university chose independently. What I'll stand behind is the read: in 2024 this project identified the problem, the users, and the direction — and that's the direction campus dining took. For a student concept, being right about where the puck was going is the honest measure of impact.

UPAY on the App Store  ·  Newcastle University catering