At a conventional sushi restaurant, we often use menu book to order dishes. In Genki Sushi, we use an iPad. Then, instead of a waiter, a mini-train travels across the resto to bring the food to our table.
Genki Sushi uses Self-Service Technology POS system as its unique selling point that makes ordering sushi faster and more exciting.
What Can Be Improved?
Genki has a mission to deliver delightful experience in each plate served. The owner wants the customers to feel joy and happy eating plate by plate. This covers the quality of making the food, and also the quality of serving the food.
So, while putting aside of Genkiās delicious taste of sushi (I love its garlic cheese sauce by the way), in my opinion the ordering system actually can give a more exciting experience, especially for new customers who want to try Genki for its ordering way.
Impressing new customers when they got in touch with your product for the first time is important. It is to give them a memorable experience that will make them come back again in the second time.
Gathering Insights
Desk Research
According to this journal, Genkiās customers felt that the POS app is convenient to use (high functionality), but they didnāt enjoy it enough (low enjoyment). This is a convincing reason to improve the system.
Interview
I did ask a friend about her first experience eating at Genki. But she hasnāt been to Genki for a a long time and she forgot about her first time experience.
Contextual (Field) Study
While maybe interview is ineffective to dig a new customerās insight, a contextual study might be the suitable method for this case by seeing what new customers do with the product in a real environment.
So, I decided to watch some vlog videos of people trying Genki for the first time.
I observe:
- Their whole journey from entering the restaurant until paying bill to cashier
- Their emotion state (amazed, have fun, confused, disappointed) using the POS app
- Pay attention to what they say and do, find out more about it
And also I include my own first-time experience too eating with my friend.
Diving Into Customersā Mind
Building Empathy Map
From prior research, I tried to map out what I learned into an empathy map just to see the big picture of who I observed. I put everything the user saw, said, heard, thought, and felt.
User Journey Mapping
From the empathy map, I tried to map a user journey to understand what makes them unhappy and what delights them in each phase of ordering Genki sushi currently.
And now, weāll have Jon here, a new customer who came to visit Genki with his girlfriend. We would try to explore ideas how we might reduce his pain and boost his gain.
According to the user journey map, we saw Phase 3 (when Jon done ordering until heās eating) generates fluctuating emotional states. This phase will become a decision point whether Jon wants to come back or not.
Many factors playing out in this phase 3. It can be how he interacts with Genkiās POS app, it can be by the quality of service or it can be the food, primarily.
Pains Detected
š āI have no idea of how any of this will going to workā
As a customer who came to the resto for the first time, Jon does not know anything about how he should order with the app. He only get it from a short explanation by waiter. The rest is learning by doing.
š āI really hate cucumber. I only want to order dishes that are free from cucumber.ā
Yey, the Salmon Aburi he ordered has arrived! Butā¦ ugh, how upset he is when he knows that it has cucumber in it! Had he knows the ingredients before ordering, he might avoid any kind of food loaded with cucumber.
š āThis dish has mayonaise topping, and I hope itās not given too much.ā
Based on his last experience eating at other sushi restos, he once ate sushis with excessive mayo topping thus he didnāt enjoy. He doesnāt want it to happen again.
Gains Recognised
š āHow cool it is to order this fast!ā
He was very amazed about how convenient ordering in Genki is. He just make some clicks on a screen then voila! Food coming right at his table.
There was a small light that turns on when the dish is coming by the train. He supposed to turn it off after taking the dish. The problem is, he didnāt aware of the light. He usually get surprised when his order suddenly arrived. Then in panic, he removed dishes from the train.
Then, how might we maintain and boost that amazing feeling of ordering food without interruption?
Begin Solving
Current POS App Interface
Below, you can see the interface of existing POS app:
To give you context about the current app flow, here are few wireframes of the current interface. It has only 2 main screens:
- Dashboard screen that has many actions: to find dish, confirm order, call bill, and view bill; and shows information about your table number and the time you have spent eating.
- View Bill screen: contains the status of food (waiting or sent), its price, and the details of how much you have to pay. When you are ready to pay, click āCall Billā
Pain Killers
Based on the user journey map, we can bring ideas about how we can address the problems of each phase.
Pain #1: Users has no guide to order sushi in Genki
We know that Jon get confused as a new customer because thereās no enough guide to introduce him about ordering system in Genki.
There has been several ideas to address this:
- To make onboarding screens with explained illustration
- To make a video tutorial, or
- Just simply make coachmark guides.
But then I thought about how customers are hungry and just want to eat right away, they donāt want to spend much time just to swipe some onboarding screens or watch a video.
So, maybe we could show some coachmarks when the first time they open the app. All coachmarks are shown without steps, so users can just skip easily and if they miss it, they simply can click āSee Guideā menu again.
Pain #2: Users donāt have enough information about the dishes ingredients
At the story above, Jon was surprised when the food came because it has cucumber that he hates.
While ordering in a conventional sushi restaurant and we donāt know about one food, we can just simply ask the waiter who take notes of our order. In Genki where everything is run by SST, it is quite inconvenient to ask waiters because there are just a few of them and they are busy with something else. Because the point of SST is to cut human resource, right?
So, how can we provide enough information to customers before they make a decision to order a dish? We can add a list menu on item card that indicates ingredients contained.
Note: After visiting Genki Sushi for the 4th time, I just found out that in the current POS app, we can long press the item product card to show ingredients. But there is no cue to this functionality and user may not aware of it.
Pain #3: Users canāt customise their orders
In the mentioned journal above that discuss about how SST run in Genki Sushi Surabaya, some customers would like to customise their order by asking the waiter directly. That tells us that SST in Genki is not that efficient because it still requires employees to get involved in customerās ordering flow.
In this redesign, we provide note-taking feature so they can customise each order based on their preference.
Gain Boosters
What gains happiness for the first customers is by seeing their orders coming by a mini-train. As mentioned above, they usually get surprised and panicked when their order suddenly arrived because they barely see a blinking small-size light bulb (the only sign their food is coming is).
Currently, the status of food āWaitingā and āSendā is hidden in View Bill menu (as seen in picture below).
- How about we add āOn Trainā status rather than just depends with two statuses āWaitingā and āSentā?
- And how can we make it more visible?
So here, I separated food status from customerās bill so user can quickly know if their dishes are being prepared, on the way, or sent.
Another advantage for showing food status and bill separately: We eliminate the conditions for customers to regularly check the bill, so it reduces worries and encourage them to buy more.
Lessons Learned
Designing for a POS system is fun and challenging. And I just learn that to test a POS app, you got observe directly how users operate it in live environment. You canāt just invite users to your office and try them out. Because user experience of POS system might be affected significantly by distractions, noises, and circumstances in the retail store.
Thank you for reading! If you guys have any opinion, please write in comment below. š
