MOBILE APP
SmartTable
SmartTable is a service app that allows the user to order directly from the restaurant/Cafe/Bar table using customer mobile phone without the need to wait in line or wait for service.
METHODOLOGY
Agile
ROLE
Senior Product Designer
YEAR
2019
COMPANY
naamtech
OBJECTIVE
To make a busy life easier by allowing the users to pre-order their food so that they can skip the queues and save time.
UNDERSTAND
The product was on the market since the time I started with naamtech in 2017. When I got called to work on this product in early 2019, I wanted to understand why this product was struggling to make a mark in the market. Then I took a deep dive in the app to understand the journey.
The app was not intuitive and user-friendly. It had usability and interaction problems. I wanted to understand the users perspective before I draw a conclusion. So I decided to visit the users.
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Since the app was already out in the market, I wanted to do small interview sessions with vendors who were already on-board and the customers dining in their venue. My lead and I interviewed vendors and customers. Based on the findings, I listed down the problems the customers were facing. My UX lead was in charge of the Vendor app, and I was not primarily involved in the Vendor app; hence, I will be detailing the Customer app below.
Problems in the Customer app,
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Customers were not able to understand the difference between 'Table Order' and 'Order Ahead' (Table Order is a process to be followed when dining in whereas Order Ahead was for takeaway/pick up)
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Customers were forced to choose 'Table Order' or 'Order Ahead' before exploring the venues
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Customers were not able to change their mind on 'Table Order' or 'Order Ahead' in the middle of deciding their meal
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Once customer scans the QR code in 'Table Order' there was no way to exit the venue or choose a different table without the help of the vendor
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Time-based menu validation was not smart which frustrated the customer
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There was no interaction that shows the user that the food has been added to their cart
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The cart was sitting on the top right corner which made customer ask for guidance or sighed when they found the cart
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Not many vendors to choose from
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In the tab bar, there were two menus called ‘Information’ and ‘Account’ which in my opinion were wrongly labelled with; irrelevant and redundant information
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FAQ’s, Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions layouts were inconsistent (this was a minor design inconsistency when compared to the other problems)
I facilitated a workshop with the Product Owner, Technical head and other relevant stakeholders where the problems were prioritised. We all agreed the priority was to fix the complete journey, right from launching the app, how the customer checks for various vendor options, to how they select and how they want to order their food and to check out.
DESIGN
I have created personas based on the information gathered from my interviews. I drafted two solutions and prototyped the same. I then went out to validated my solutions with actual customers.
SOLUTION A
In this solution, I wanted to test 'set time' for Pick Up/Takeaway at the end since the research findings were inconclusive.
I also validated the Dine-In journey.
SOLUTION B
In this solution, the user can set Pick Up/ Takeaway timing throughout the journey and also the Dine-In journey was validated
ITERATED SOLUTION
The solution was fairly successful with some minor feedbacks. Once I evaluated the feedback, I iterated the changes in the solution, which made it better.
I presented the solution to key stakeholders, and they liked most of my suggestions except the suggestion of moving the cart to tab menu since it would cost more to make the change. However, we found common ground by including micro interaction while adding the items on the cart. Once approved, this story was added in development backlog.
After that, I went on with the next problem, which was consolidating the Tab Bar menu. Like I stated in the problem statement, two of our tab menus were labelled wrong. One was ‘My Account’ and the other one was ‘Information.’ it was redundant, and the content inside the menu was not in hierarchical order. So the user had to think where the information would be or worse they had to tab between the menus.
Since I had done the research already, I went to my whiteboard and drew quick sketches. I came up with two solutions which needed validation. I went out to validate the solutions with real users.
Solutions are below;
SOLUTION A
SOLUTION B
The 'Solution A' performed much better than the 'Solution B', with that I presented the solution to the stakeholder and moved the solution to developer backlog
IMPLEMENTATION
These solutions are now being developed, and quality tested right now. We will continue to measure, validate, iterate and evolve.
Let's make Life Easier
