Most people like to go to restaurants and have their food prepared and not having to worry about cooking. But do we really know what is behind this whole process?
This is where Yami and her project come in. Yami is an online platform that gives access to a wide variety of dishes to pick from the best restaurants near you, allowing you to save time and money every day. The customer books his food, pays for it on the web and picks it up at the restaurant at the time he chooses.
They detected a pain point with the restaurants that are part of their platform, so they asked us to create a mobile application to be able to solve the problems that I will explain later.
Currently the management of orders and information works through calls and text messages with Yami, that is why, among other things, Yami wanted to create an application to improve the experience.
My role.
As the UX Resarcher and Interaction Designer.
This project was done together with my colleagues David Tomaseti Gómez and Marc Petit.
Brief
The main objectives of this project were:
- Create a digital platform that makes it easier for restaurant employees to manage the orders.
- Improve the restaurant employees’ experience and make easier the order’s management.
- Facilitate the work of Yami’s workers, since currently the work they do, does not correspond to them.
Planning
We worked on a first 10-day sprint in which we had to create the MVP of the Yami platform for restaurant employees.
We create a Roadmap and a Backlog to be able to work in a more tidy way, with established daily objectives and in a more effective way.
The methodologies that we used were Agile y Design Thinking.
Investigation phase
Hypothesis
- It is difficult for restaurants to manage orders because they are made by phone and they do not have a platform for it.
- The workers of the restaurants have many difficulties when they have to do basic actions such as changing the schedule, managing orders and communicating with the customer.
Research objectives
Know and understand…
- The current management and communication between the restaurants and Yami. This objective is key to discover the main pain points in this area and also what is already working.
- The information that the restaurant needs to manage orders and items uploaded to the Yami platform. Very useful to know what data is essential for the restaurant in its management.
- The advantages and disadvantages of collaborating with Yami. This helps us to see which points the restaurants stand out as good or improvable from their collaboration with Yami.
- Managing orders and information for restaurants that work with Yami’s competitors. This point helps us to see which processes are already working in other companies and which are not.
Research Methods
Interviews.
We conducted interviews with 12 restaurant employees, 11 of them worked with the Yami platform and other competitors and 1 did it only with some of its competitors (Mr. Noow, Glovo, Uber Eats and Deliveroo).
We have focused especially on the restaurants that are currently part of the Yami platform in order to find the most important Pain Points and to improve their experience.
Competition analysis.
The competition analysis was carried out on Mr. Noow, Glovo, Uber Eats y Deliveroo.
We mainly focus on the platform that employees work with to manage orders. We wanted to know:
- How to they work.
- Which were their strengths and weaknesses.
- What can you do there.
Research’s results
Competitor analysis
We found that the competitor’s platforms had the following characteristics:
As a conclusion, we saw that the platform had to be agile, fast and as simple and understandable as possible.
Interviews
The main insights that we found fromthe interviews were the following:
- “I no longer offer the Gazpacho because it is seasonal, but I don’t know how to remove it from Yami’s platform.”
- “It’s annoying having to pay attention to WhatsApp in case an order arrives because sometimes I don’t realize it.”
- “I receive orders on my private mobile and when I am not in the restaurant, I accept orders without knowing if there is stock of that product.”
After the interviews, we carried out an Affinity Diagram to synthesize and visualize the data and problems we encountered. It helped us detect the needs and frustrations of the users, to focus the project in a clearer direction.
Definition phase
User Persona
Once the data from the initial research phase has been analyzed, we define Marina, our User Persona.
Frustrations
- Not knowing how to disable a dish on Yami’s website.
- Not realizing that she receives an order when the restaurant is full.
- Having to be aware of validating the order and communicating it to her employees.
Key phrase: “I like to collaborate with Yami because it gives visibility to my restaurant.”
Marina is the manager of a small restaurant in Barcelona. It is not part of any restaurant chain and has few workers in there. She currently collaborates with the Yami platform and she is the one who receives the orders on her personal mobile. She has a basic knowledge of technologies.
Problem Statement
We define the Problem Statement tospecify which problems we wanted to solve in this first sprint.
Employees at Yami partner restaurants need a way to manage orders and information displayed to customers more autonomously because the current process over the phone is slow and unsatisfactory.
Value proposal
So, What can we do to fix this problem?
Our proposal was…
A mobile app where restaurant employees, that belong to the Yami platform, can manage restaurant orders and information in a more autonomous and intuitive way.
Ideation phase
Jobs To Be Done and MOSCOW.
We used the Jobs to Be Done tool to know the needs of users in different scenarios and create functionalities to improve their experience.
Through this, we use the MOSCOW tool to prioritize which functionalities we would implement in this MVP.
Site Map
In order to define the information architecture of the app, we define the following Site Map.
User flow
These are the User Flows that helped us to understand the process that the worker followed with the application when performing two main actions during their day to day.
We develop two main User Flows through the new app:
Management of an order from the moment the user orders until they arrive at the restaurant and their food is delivered.
- Management of dishes when the restaurant runs out of an ingredient and must disable a dish from the platform.
Flowchart
We made a flow chart of the current situation and the new flow with the application integrated in the service. We did it both for the management of the orders and the management of the restaurant information.
It was useful for us to know the current status of these tasks and how it affected the restaurant and the customer in all possible cases. We found that the current flow was too long and slow for restaurants.
If you are interested, you can see the Flow Diagrams by clicking here.
Prototype and test phase
After defining the MVP functionalities with JTBD and prioritizing them with MOSCOW, we started prototyping.
We performed the low fidelity test on 8 users and the medium fidelity test on 5 users.
Here you can see the two most important iterations that we did.
Finally, we go for a tab bar with the two main actions that the restaurant could do in one day. Through the tests, we realized that restaurants needed an easy, agile, fast, effective and efficient interface.
Why?
Due to the context, since usually the restaurants are saturated, full of orders and with many people in the room.
1st iteration:
- Add a button to the order card to improve and clarify the interaction.
2nd iteration:
- Changing the name of the section from “Completed” to “To deliver” and moving the section from “order history” to restaurants because when testing we saw that users were confused because when they saw the name it was not clear that they were going to find in this section and after tap there, they were not expected to find both sections.
- We added more information to the order card, since the employees needed to see more information but in a clear, precise and schematic way to make orders quickly.
3rd iteration:
- We changed the button from to card because it was confusing.
High fidelity prototype
Finally, here you can see a video of the two flows that we have discussed previously.
Conclusions
Next Steps
- Add the option to cancel the order once accepted giving the reason. In this way, if the restaurant runs out of ingredients or an unforeseen event arises, you can cancel it automatically from the app without having to contact Yami.
- Button to stop receiving orders for a certain time, sometimes they are so saturated with work at their premises that they cannot properly manage Yami’s orders and prefer to stop receiving them during those situations.
Learnings
- Work with a real client. It has been a real challenge but an incredible experience, seeing how it works in real life makes you learn a lot
- Time and emotion management. With so little time and so much to do, it is key to organize yourself and not waste time as well as learn to manage your emotions and not collapse in case something does not go well.
- Make a research report. It was something new for us but really, unconsciously we had already been doing it throughout the Bootcamp.
Finally, thank Yami for giving us the opportunity to work with them and my colleagues, it was a pleasure working with you.
Thank you! If you want to know more about my work, I invite you to continue reading.
