High Level Analysis
Sarah is a 24-year-old graduate student at NYU studying Public Health who lives in Greenwich Village. She is vegetarian with lactose intolerance, making restaurant selection challenging. Sarah wants to find restaurants that accommodate her dietary restrictions and have good DOH sanitation ratings. She frequently organizes group dining events with friends who have various dietary needs but struggles with coordinating everyone's preferences and getting consensus on restaurant choices. Sarah needs to search and filter restaurants by dietary accommodations, view sanitation grades, read reviews from others with similar restrictions, and save her favorite restaurants. She wants to create dining events, invite friends, participate in group chats, and vote on restaurant options. Sarah values the ability to submit detailed reviews with ratings and photos to share her experiences. She is highly comfortable with web apps and expects a seamless, user-friendly experience for discovering restaurants and coordinating group meals.
Marcus is a 42-year-old owner of a Caribbean fusion restaurant in Brooklyn with 15 years of food service experience. He is proud of his restaurant's 'A' sanitation grade and wants to attract more customers, especially health-conscious diners and groups. Marcus needs to manage his restaurant's online profile, update menu information, specify dietary accommodations offered, and showcase his excellent sanitation rating. He wants to respond professionally to customer reviews to build a positive reputation and address concerns promptly. Marcus is frustrated by outdated negative reviews and limited marketing budget, so he relies on the platform to increase visibility. He needs to view statistics on profile views and customer engagement to understand his audience better. Marcus wants to offer special promotions and discounts for group dining events to increase revenue during off-peak hours. He has medium technical proficiency and prefers simple, intuitive interfaces for managing his restaurant's presence on the platform.
Jennifer is a 29-year-old HR manager at a tech startup in Manhattan responsible for organizing team building activities and social events for her 25-person team. Team members have diverse dietary requirements including vegan, halal, kosher, and gluten-free needs. Jennifer wants to efficiently organize team lunches and dinners that accommodate everyone's restrictions and stay within budget. She is frustrated by endless back-and-forth in group chats about restaurant selection and difficulty finding venues that can handle large reservations while meeting all dietary needs. Jennifer needs to create dining groups for recurring events, manage group membership, and schedule regular meetups. She wants to propose restaurant options, enable democratic voting, and moderate group chat discussions to keep conversations constructive. Jennifer values features that streamline coordination like event reminders, dietary preference tracking for all members, and the ability to filter restaurants that can accommodate multiple restrictions simultaneously. She uses various productivity tools daily and expects efficient, professional functionality.
Laxman is a 26-year-old software engineer who works as a platform administrator for Meal Swipe with a background in content moderation and community management. He is responsible for maintaining platform integrity and ensuring a positive experience for all users. Laxman needs to review flagged content, remove fake or inappropriate reviews, and moderate user-generated posts and comments. He must verify venue manager claims to ensure only legitimate restaurant owners manage profiles. David wants to resolve disputes between users and venue managers fairly while balancing free expression with content quality standards. He is frustrated by the high volume of content requiring review and difficulty distinguishing legitimate concerns from malicious reviews. David needs to suspend or ban problematic accounts, track moderation activities through logs and analytics, and communicate decisions clearly to affected users. He also ensures the system automatically syncs with Google Places and DOH/MH data sources to keep restaurant information and sanitation grades current. David has very high technical proficiency as an experienced developer and system administrator.
Users can manage the platform through a unified interface.
- As an Administrator, I want a secure, centralized entry point so that I can access all management modules (User Search, Moderation, Data Sync) in one place.
- As an Administrator, I want to restrict access to the /admin route using "Admin-only" middleware to ensure security.
- As an Administrator, I want a sidebar/header navigation with links to all sub-modules for efficient site management.
- As an Administrator, I want to view a main dashboard grid with overview metrics like Total Users and Total Matches.
Users can report inappropriate content for administrative review.
- As an Administrator, I want to review flagged content using a verification flag system so that inappropriate material is removed from public view while maintaining an audit trail.
- As an Administrator, I want a moderation queue that shows the flagged item, the reason for the report, and the reporter.
- As an Administrator, I want to be able to "Confirm" (Violating) or "Reject" (Safe) a report to control content visibility.
- As an Administrator, I want the system to automatically notify the content author when their content is removed.
- As an Administrator, I want the system to log my Admin ID, the action taken, and the timestamp for audit purposes.
Users can be looked up quickly for status updates.
- As an Administrator, I want to search for specific users using their email or username in the dashboard so that I can quickly find accounts to update their status or review their activity.
- As an Administrator, I want a search bar in the User Management view that triggers results after typing more than 3 characters.
- As an Administrator, I want to see a list of results containing Username, Email, and Account Status (Active/Banned).
- As an Administrator, I want a "Clear" button to quickly reset the search results and show all users.
Restaurant owners can submit proof of ownership for profile access.
- As an Administrator, I want to verify and decide on Venue Manager applications through a structured approval system so that only authorized restaurant owners can manage their profiles.
- As an Administrator, I want a dashboard view listing all "Pending" venue manager applications.
- As an Administrator, I want to review uploaded proof of ownership (e.g., Business License) directly in the UI.
- As an Administrator, I want the ability to Approve or Reject applications, providing a mandatory "Reason for Rejection" when denying.
- As an Administrator, I want the system to automatically grant "Edit" permissions for a specific Venue ID upon my approval.
The system ensures external data sources are synced and accurate.
- As an Administrator, I want to monitor and control the ingestion of restaurant data from NYC Open Data and web-scraped sources so that I can ensure the platform’s information is accurate and current.
- As an Administrator, I want a "Sync Now" button to manually trigger synchronization with the NYC DOHMH API.
- As an Administrator, I want to see a "Data Health" widget with the last successful sync timestamp and source info.
- As an Administrator, I want a "Diff View" to compare external data conflicts with existing database records before committing updates.
- As an Administrator, I want to access an Error Log to troubleshoot specific failure reasons like "401 Unauthorized" or "Rate Limit Reached."