One week design sprint, analyze data, ideate, research, and develop a product with a minimum of three charts and a “drill-down” for at least one chart. The charts and graphs will be in an information dashboard. Tasks were to define terms, explore three potential audiences, and use proto-personas to create an epic story.
Role UX/UI Designer
Tools User testing, Empathy mapping
wireframes, Paper prototypes, Hi-fidelity mockups, Proto-Personas, raw data.
The first challenge would be to make sense of the data with over 4900 lines of data that included 41 restaurants and 33 food categories. While some nutritional value data existed, It was incomplete, ruling out an app targeted for health or diet purposes.
I discovered in my research that the restaurant industry grouped restaurants into categories;
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Quick Service Restaurants (QSR)
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Fast Casual (FC)
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Casual (CD)
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Fine Dining (no fine dining restaurants were included in the original dataset)
Fast Food/ QSR
Offer limited menus, no table service.
Entrée average price: $8.00
Examples: Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, Taco Bell
Fast Casual
Limited table service, upscale menu. Counter orders with a dine-in experience with food delivered to the table.
Entrée price: $8 to $12
Examples: Chipotle, Panera Bread, Shake Shack
Casual Dining
Full table service, lengthy menu, relaxed atmosphere
often serves alcohol
Entrée price: $12 to $25
Examples: Applebee's,
Bonefish Grill,
Cheesecake Factory
The restaurants in the data set were local and national franchises, commonly found around major intersections and highways across the country.
Continuing my research, I focused on how menus and food items are organized. I simplified the original data from 33 categories to 9, eliminating condiments and combining like food items. Categorized by traditional restaurant structure. I further grouped restaurants by their industry definitions (QSR, FC, CD). My user story began to take shape and with some additional research into travel trends and how travelers use technology.
A family on a road trip. It’s getting dark, and the kids are getting restless and hungry. Little Susie is allergic to just about everything, and Michael just wants pizza and is fast approaching the meltdown stage. Mom and Dad need coffee and a sanity break. Wouldn’t it be nice to choose a restaurant by menu items or a variety of menu items or how much time you wanted to spend? My proto-persona could have easily been anyone in the car on a road trip but for my story, Mom would take the lead.
My initial idea had 3 main features.
1.) Select a restaurant based on location and time one could spend or wanted to spend stopped.
2.) Allow user to select entrees for each person in their entourage, and the app would select a restaurant that featured all the required food. EX- pizza, burgers, fish, and chicken fingers
3.) Allow user to search what restaurants have the most menu items that might fit the needs of all people in their travel entourage. EX -- restaurant A has 20 entree items and 5 kid menu items, sit down style with clean bathrooms , Restaurant B 5 entree items 3 kid meals, drive though or quick service, bathrooms and playscape
I used percentage completion graphs, also known as progress doughnut charts to show the percentage that a restaurant matched the users' filter request. They also served as buttons to drill down to menu options, however, this did not resonate with users.
To meet the original requirement, I settled on an interactive bubble graph. Each bubble would indicate by color the type of restaurant and would show the total number of food choices. Clicking a bubble would lead to a clickable bar chart that gave specific categories of food. I admit this is where I found that a team would have been helpful. Having another perspective on a solution helps evolve ideas and make stronger products.
Successes
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This is the crazy random project that makes you really think creatively to get a solution
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Learning about the Restaurant industry
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Sussing out the data into a usable product.
Surprises
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I can be pretty independent, but I would have really liked a team
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Dashboards
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With a proto-persona and min user feedback, it was difficult not to insert my experiences into the product.
Take-Aways
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The requirement can make a huge impact on outcomes both positive and negative
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There is always a way- it just takes more effort when the path is not clear