Research

User Interviews

I conducted five semi structured interviews to learn about behaviors, likes/dislikes, and thoughts about eating together at restaurants.

Frustration–Sound, ordering and paying distracts.
Noise makes group conversations particularly difficult and bill splitting feels like a hassle, distracting from what matters, talking.

Desire–An experience without interruptions.
Not having to wait for a table, a great atmosphere where long conversations happen, and service so good it goes by unnoticed.

Goal–Social bonding, connecting over food.
Eating together presents an opportunity to hang out over an extended period of time, ultimately to grow closer and bond.

Personas

I utilized interview insights to create the Social Sarah persona, while Teamlead Tim was added to represent an opportunity — attracting businesses.

Social Sara is an overworked marketer longing to reconnect with her friends.

A terrible chef but curious about new foods, Sara prefers restaurants over hosting at home, but feel that restaurants are often nosy and too hectic, depriving her of serenity she needs to recover and making deep conversations with friends difficult.

Team-lead Tim want his team to relax, hang out and bond.

Wanting to foster a sense of community in his team, Tim’s tried team lunches but people seem to stressed to relax and fully enjoy their time together. He’s looking for an activity people will remember and make people relax.

Service Blueprint

I utilized user interviews and collaborated with an experienced waitress to map what a typical visit entails for customers and staff. Aiming to better understand the context needed to identify causes and spot product opportunities.

Service Insights

Customers spend 20% of their time distracted.
Customers spend one fifth of their time distracted, deciding, ordering or paying. Time that they’d prefer relaxing and talking.

Service Staff intervenes six times per table.
Service Staff scutters between tables, taking orders and checking in with guests. Often returning six-seven times per table.

Kitchen Staff stress due to demand guesstimates.
Kitchen Staff tracks inventory and anticipated demand, and prepares food, -activities that are manual, sometimes stressful, and mostly guesswork.

Ideation & Testing

Mindmapping

I explored ways to generate maximum value for customers while also wanting to create a more sustainable food service. Key areas explored:

-Can pre-ordering food add to the value proposition by bringing people closer together?

-Can pre-order data be used in conjunction with third party restaurant software to create a more cost effective and sustainable business model?

Design Objectives

Nudge towards three meals and drinks

Research shows the best way to increase profitability is maximising spend-per-guest. Currently happening through upselling (Refills?) and nuding (Dessert?).

UI should build excitement and anticipation

The visual design needs to signal modernity and confidence, while, inspiring positive anticipation and excitement.

UX should make ordering simple and clear

Minimal effort needed to create menu worth looking forward to, and clear so users know what to expect from their pre-order.

Design System

Mockup

A quick journey from account creation to payment confirmation. -And how to remove menu items.

Adopt patterns to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Next time, I'll spend more time researching and adapt established ux-patterns before designing new solutions, often ending up similar or inferior.

Spot faulty assumptions earlier by sharing ideas.

Not sharing the full idea with interviewees to avoid creating biases was correct but blinded me to my own faulty assumptions. Next time, I'll spend more time brainstorming with people before the initial research phase to spot biases and assumptions.

Momentum beats perfection

When designing, I sometimes got stuck moving pixels to perfect details rather than making real progress. Moving forward, I'll remind myself to not get stuck in details but to prioritize progress over perfection.