Enhancing Restaurant Apps with Data
Completed at Northwestern University, 10 weeks, team of 3 designers.
This project was completed for a corporate client. The details are omitted for confidentiality.
How might we leverage location data to augment the restaurant app experience?
Final Design
Based on user and segment research, our solution focused on providing timely, relevant discounts with a social connection. It was designed as a supplement to existing apps that offer delivery and pickup for multiple restaurants, such as DoorDash, Grubhub, and Seamless. This design has the ability to scale to a variety apps, providing our client with opportunities to expand.
Features include:
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Notifications for discounts at relevant restaurants
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Suggestions based on routes
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Customizable notification frequency and subject matter
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Ability to send discounts to friends
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Opt into group discounts
Skills and Strengths
Skills Gained
User Flows
Prototyping
User Flows and Prototypes
Interpreting User Research
Working With Technical Constraints
My Strengths
My Strengths
Advocating for the User
Project Management
Information Hierarchy
Exploratory Research
1
Current App Research
We researched restaurant apps and looked into what kinds of data were currently being used. Among other observations, we noticed that location based discounts and promotions were becoming increasingly prevalent, but for aggregate apps (like Grubhub) they were focused on delivery.
We also walked through the user flows of the highest rated apps. We noticed that these apps had a focus on order customization and pleasing visual design. They made it easy to make repeat orders and get to the purchase.
2
Interviews to Understand User Motivations
After we had a better understanding of the lay of the land, we prepped interview guides to understand our users' motivations for using food apps, as well as their feedback on the apps they currently used. We did this because we were looking for ways to add value. We asked the people we interviewed to walk through their experience using an app and asked questions about app usage.
We noticed people often use restaurant apps only in the moment they want food. This led them to usually share location only "when using the app" than "always". Another key learning was that promos and rewards were consistently the top reason they used the apps. Users did not see these apps as fun or exciting, but rather utilitarian.
The Opportunities
We synthesized our insights into 3 main design opportunities for how we might improve the restaurant app experience through location data sharing.
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Focus on providing opportunities to save money.
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Encourage continuous engagement rather than event-based usage to justify data sharing.
Ideation and Concepting
3
Leverage delight as a differentiator.
With these opportunities in mind, we ideated over a span of two meetings across a few days. We found it worked well to ideate separately, then come together and discuss. We added more details to our ideas and then completed the same evaluation process. After evaluating ideas with a variety of frameworks, we ultimately narrowed to three concepts and presented these to our client.
Our client was clear about which concept they thought was most promising, but we did a careful analysis of how the concepts met user and business needs before deciding to move forward with their favorite concept.
User Testing
We wanted to learn if users would value the features we designed and dig deeper to understand under what conditions they would provide data permissions. To do this, we showed concept storyboards and asked open ended questions. We asked them to sort and rank features, and asked them to sort screen shot prototypes into an order that made sense to them. We also asked questions around the value versus the cost of needing to provide data.
We found that while users were initially drawn to discounts, the social aspect differentiated the product and generated excitement. Importantly, we confirmed that notifications for discounts can be appreciated but need to be personalized or they would feel annoying. We also saw a great response to our lighthearted party theme.
Learnings and Implementation
The first introduction into the service was designed to be visual, show simple steps, and take up the entire window. This was after a first iteration of an entire paragraph of carefully worded text in a small pop up window.
Our second page was a request for location sharing permissions. I learned that this worked best to put before any additional screens (like preference setting) so that users would not be frustrated by putting in effort only to decide they don't want to share data. It was important to capture the users on the fence by confirming their data would be safe, and using a paragraph here was ok because users on the fence were willing to read.
We found users wanted control over when and why they got a notification. Our original page contained as many settings as would fit, but we quickly found this was overwhelming. We cut back to only the essential settings, added pre-selected answers, and allowed users to either save this step for later or dive further into details in an additional settings page.
If users click on a notification, they will be brought to the app. While people were not using food apps ahead of time, we learned in our second round of interviews that some users wanted their notifications far in advance so that they could plan. We added a save for later feature and repository of saved discounts. Expiring soon coupons are marked as such.
Users were really excited by the idea of sharing discounts with friends or group discounts. This would help make the experience more social and fun. We added a feature to share discounts via SMS or QR code in the event that their friend was physically with them.
Feedback and Next Steps
Our clients were excited by the design and appreciated that we expanded our solution beyond the target apps originally included in their brief. Our solution can apply to a variety of different app experiences to bring additional value to both the app company as well as our client.
Our next steps would include designing for additional considerations, such as a "do not disturb" for driving feature and increasing the benefit to the base app through focusing on new restaurants. We would also like to do more extensive user testing to solidify the specific copy writing and visual components.
