SajhaMenu — QR code based food ordering system — UX Case Study
It was Late 2020 when the world was just recovering from COVID an idea came to our mind to develop a solution for restaurants. As we were seeking opportunities we got an idea to make a paperless menu by eliminating the physical menu with a digital one with the help of QR code technology. As this was touchless it was vital at that time for people and things to keep their distance from each other and not to use public used materials like menus.
Opportunity
Let’s imagine a situation, a customer comes to the restaurant, scans the QR code from the table, surfs all the food items, adds his items to his cart, and orders the food from the table. This is the solution that was to be given a life and I felt like a new level of ordering experience for a customer excited me more and more to dive into the project.
This was from the user side also we came up with other flows where the waiter gets the notification on his tab of the order from a particular table and prints KOT in the kitchen, also more orders can be done by the customer that gets accumulated in one order, finally, an estimated invoice could be printed and handed over to a customer for payment.
Challenges
Designing a product can be a challenge as it works on an ecosystem that can manage the admin, users, and client sides. We noticed that the number of items in a restaurant varies from 20–30 to 400 or more items. So it was a kind of design challenge on how to navigate users around those variable number of items in our digital menu. After all the research we came up with all these solutions for developing the project.
- Scannable QR menu.
- A Manger Application for updating menus and offers, viewing daily reports and all.
- An admin site for us to manage and register all the restaurant.
- A waiter application to receive orders, place Order and print KOT.
Approach
A UX process was integrated to achieve a solution which included Research, Problem definition, Ideation, Solution Derivation, Prototyping and UI Testing. All 4 platforms were designed under the same design process.
Research
Competitive analysis was done as this solution was already available outside our country which matched around 50% of our goals. I did a Research Campaign and sat with a few restaurant owners with a set of interview questions for proceeding. Also for the user side, I sat with a few foodies around my circle, and I collected a handsome amount of data for further proceedings.
Empathize
Both data driven and empathizing methods were applied to take all design decisions. I created some personas to imagine an ideal user who was going to use our application.
Define
After the problem was properly stated we shifted to the next step. We listed the possible solutions and focused on the most important ones. An Information Architecture was made which gave us better idea of all the available information to be included in our application.
User Flows
I made four user flows for waiter, admin, manager and users and I have mentioned manager user flow below.
Wireframes
I made both paper and low fidelity wireframes for all the platform. Wireframes gave me better ideas of generating the layout and managing the information. In menu layout it was a great challenge ho how to display items so that customers can easily navigate between the items. So we categorized items and almost all the actions could be completed in three clicks not more then that.
UI Design Style Guide and Prototyping
A set of Brand Guidelines were made to maintain the brand discipline. I made a brand guide that helped developers to better understand the UI. All important features were implemented that made the application more accessible and user-friendly to the customer and a design was made and prototyped in FIGMA for further proceedings.
Ui Testing
Other UIs were working fine but I had to do a lot of UI testing on the User Experience of the ordering system from the menu. UI testing was done and the layout was changed according to the user feedback and convenience. This process is still going on and changes are made according to the user’s response to the system
Conclusion
Hence in this way, a UX process was successfully implemented to find the solution to the touchless menu and food ordering system. This system is successfully running in well-renowned restaurants and hotels here in Butwal. It is expanding its market reach and being implemented in restaurants outside the valley and country too.
More conclusions to draw in the coming days.
Thank you for reading !!
