Enabling luxury restaurants to provide best dining experience to the diners and better able to manage operations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The initial user research uncovered various areas of opportunity & for providing ultimate hangout experience to the diners we required:
Standardization in service and operations through technology
ALEXA for restaurants (a smart table top device)
Digital assistant for waiters & guests
ActionCENTRE Dashboard
Smart Watch for Servers
Certified Waiter Training
woobly helps to save your time and energy by making hangout experiences predictable, standardized and personalised
UBER for hangouts
WaiterLITE - Your new waiter in restaurants
A Mobile application for the diners (Android/iOS)
Smart Valet - Hassle-free parking
Well trained Waiters
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.
I sketched countless ideas and brainstormed various possibilities with my product team and created low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes to test
WaiterLITE - 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
Click to preview in full screen
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.
Imagination to images
We did a small-scale preliminary test of a WaiterLITE with a limited group of real users, aiming to find flaws, test feasibility, gather feedback, and refine the design to prevent major issues.
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
Overview of sales, service and real-time ratings
Analyse service calls, response time & revenue generated
Monitor real-time occupancy & ongoing experience of guests at each table
Track faults & suggest improvements
The ultimate solution for Smarter Dining Experience
Solving the chicken & egg Problem