woobly | smarter dining experiences

How might we reimagine the future of dining?

Enabling luxury restaurants to provide best dining experience to the diners and better able to manage operations.

My Role

User Research
User Interviews
Journey Mapping
Sketching
Wireframing
Screen Flows
Visual Design
Interaction Design
WaiterLITE Concept
3D Prototype

Platforms

WaiterLITE Application - GUI for Raspberry Pi
ActionCENTRE Dashboard - Web Based
3D Printed WaiterLITE Shell

Year

Mar 2018 - Present

RESEARCH

WHAT DOES THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE LOOK LIKE?

We at woobly wanted to get a clear picture of how our primary users went about discovering the restaurants for their hangout journeys. In order to get a better understanding of their behaviors and motivations, here are some research techniques I used for the redesign.

METHOD #1:

QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE DATA

By performing in-person interviews and conducting surveys, I learnt existing user behaviors for restaurant discovery and management at restaurant side. Some of the learnings are shared below.

METHOD #2:

ONLINE USER REVIEWS

I sifted through hundreds of reviews and comments left by users on Google and Restaurant booking Apps , and further categorized them under buckets and highlighted them in terms of importance. This was some crucial feedback that helped me identify various pain points and areas of improvement.

THE PROBLEM

01. Do you wonder what’s exactly happening in the restaurant?

Is service up to the mark?

How well is each waiter performing?

How efficiently are we running the show today?

Are the diners happy with their experience at my restaurant?

02. The two main reasons for the diners not coming back are

Service Delays and Poor Service

Food quality not upto the mark

03. For restaurants, it is very hard to track the dining experience of the guests in real time.

Woobly does this all by replacing dumb lamps with WaiterLITE on the table for diners and ActionCENTRE for the restaurants.

Synthesis: Journey Mapping

Based upon data from in-person interviews, surveys and user reviews, I organized my observations using a customer journey map.

This helped me expose pain points and areas for improvement in the app along the entire user journey. It also helped spark discussions to help close knowledge gaps and acted as a catalyst for idea sharing and generation between team and stakeholders. Furthermore, I identified various touch-points by intent and task including aspects such as emotions and expectations.

BALANCING USER NEEDS WITH BUSINESS GOALS

The initial user research uncovered various areas of opportunity & for providing ultimate hangout experience to the diners we required:

Restaurant Side :

Our UVP

woobly aims to help restaurants elevate the guest dining experience, by bringing standardization in service and operations through technology.

X for Y

ALEXA for restaurants

WaiterLITE - A digital assistant for waiters & guests

A ActionCENTRE Dashboard

A Smart Watch for Servers

Hangout Kit - A hygiene essential kit for your guests

Certified Waiter Training - A unique empathy & etiquette training for your waiters to serve guests

User Side (Diners) :

Our UVP

woobly helps to save your time and energy by making your hangout experience predictable, standardized, personalised & end-to-end.

X for Y

UBER for hangouts

WaiterLITE - Your new waiter in restaurants

Hangout App - A Mobile application for the diners (Android/iOS)

Hangout Kit - A hygiene essential kit to refresh you

Smart Valet - Hassle-free check in check out

Top notch trained Waiters - Makes you feel like a “muckamuck”

However, for the MVP, We kept in mind the business goals and organizational capacity and decided to enter the market from Restaurant Side only.

and for MVP we only picked up :

WaiterLITE - A digital assistant for waiters & guests

A ActionCENTRE Dashboard

Goals for MVP

SETTING UP THE STRUCTURE

I refined the concept with research outcomes in-line with our business goals and went through a few rounds of iteration using hand sketching to digital prototypes. I also came up with a revised and simplified information architecture that focused on providing hassle free dining experience to the users from restaurant side.

Storyboard

User Journey with WaiterLITE

(Slide : 00/22)

Waiter map the Device with table

(Slide : 01/22)

Device is ready to use

(Slide : 02/22)

Guests will Check-In

(Slide : 03/22)

Waiter will introduce WaiterLITE to the Guests

(Slide : 04/22)

Guests will intract with the device

(Slide : 05/22)

Guest will Tap on the screen to call the waiter

(Slide : 06/22)

WaiterLITE will change its color to send signal to the waiter for attending the guests.

(Slide : 07/22)

Waiter will attend the guests and close the service call.

(Slide : 08/22)

Waiter giving the food menu to guests as per their request.

(Slide : 09/22)

Guests checking current running deals of restaurant at WaiterLITE

(Slide : 10/22)

Guests using Mobile Charging Feature

(Slide : 11/22)

Guests using WiFi Hotspot

(Slide : 12/22)

Auto Service Delay Alert

(Slide : 13/22)

Manager will come to assist the Guests

(Slide : 14/22)

Waiter serving food to the Guests

(Slide : 15/22)

Guests asking for the bill by tapping on the WaiterLITE

(Slide : 16/22)

Waiter giving bill to the Guests

(Slide : 17/22)

Guest asking for QR code to pay the bill

(Slide : 18/22)

Guest paying by scanning QR code at WaiterLITE

(Slide : 19/22)

Guest providing Ratings for there journey

(Slide : 20/22)

Manager getting the data on ActionCENTRE Dashboard

(Slide : 21/22)

Manager knows everything about the Waiters Performance through ActionCENTRE Dashboard.

(Slide : 22/22)

IDEAS TO ACTION

I sketched countless ideas and brainstormed various possibilities with my product team and created low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes to test

WaiterLITE

WaiterLITE is a digital assistant for guests that takes over most of the waiter’s tactical functions to improve efficiency and elevate the guest dining experience at the table.

Diners simply interact with waiterLITE for any assistance and based on their interaction the waiters, managers can respond if it requires some action without diners breaking their conversations

WaiterLITE UI Flow

First low-fidelity UI Flow of WaiterLITE

UI Design

High Fedility Design of WaiterLITE GUI

3D Design of WaiterLITE

WaiterLITE is a smart IoT device which looks like a lamp. During ideation and brainstorming about the WaiterLITE design we observed that :

01. In most of the premium class restaurant they placed a dumb table lamp on the tables which is just to enhance the ambience and mood.

02. In few restaurant we found some mobile powerbank companies are placing there charging devices on the table.

03. There are some tent cards for Reserved Table, Chef Special, Deals, Discounts and so on.

All the above things are taking almost 40% to 60% of table space. So we decided to create a smart device which will replace all the above unnecessary things and will provide all the required information as well.

Hardware Breakdown

Final 3D Renders

ActionCENTRE

ActionCENTRE is the hub to access all the restaurant’s analytics captured through WaiterLITE and intelligently identifies faults and suggests actionable improvements for better guest retention