AD Partner App
AppeDine
AD Partner App
AppeDine is an app that offers dynamic discounts at renowned restaurants. To merchants, it increases branding and awareness while securing customers who pay deposits to reserve their seats.
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Deliverables
Merchant Mobile App
Problem Statement
The Product
AppeDine is a F&B marketing app that attracts customers via off-peak hour vouchers. This is a win-win situation, allowing customers to earn discounts while restaurant owner gain additional income.
Requirements
I was tasked to design the business-to-business (B2B) partner app. This would allow restaurant owners, managers and staff to create vouchers and manage reservations from the app. The mobile app has 2 main features:
Vouchers
Merchants create vouchers for customers to purchase and reserve seats at their restaurant.
Manage
Merchants could track, confirm and prepare for upcoming reservations.
Exploring
Gathering Information
To understand the both diners' and merchants' needs, I assisted in carrying out the following:
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3 focus groups with a total of 12 diners.
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7 in-depth interviews with existing and new merchants.
Next, to understand the business landscape, I carried out:
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Competitive analysis of 5 companies' UI, usability and product features to understand business needs.
Creating Understanding
The results of all the research was synthesised into a merchant persona, Chris. I presented these findings to the AppeDine team to create empathy and a shared understanding of the merchant's needs.
Research Outcomes
From the persona, I sketched out a storyboard of how a prototypical merchant would interact with our product. With a clear path forward, it was time to create prototypes and test them out with users.
Creating Understanding Among Stakeholders
Competitive Analysis, Persona, Storyboard
Iterating
Prototyping
To visualise and test the usability of the mobile app, I created these prototypes:
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Sketches to show stakeholders and modify designs.
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Wireframes for first usability test.
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High-fidelity prototypes for next 6 usability tests. I used Figma.
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Style Guide
I created a simple style guide created with the goal of unifying AppeDine's B2B app, B2C app and their website. This included:
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Colour palettes
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Typography
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Interaction states
Usability Testing and Research Outcomes
I conducted usability tests with 7 merchants. Further below I write more detailed findings, but here is one of the problems we faced:
Merchants initially found the reservation statues too limiting as there were only 2 options - "upcoming" and "completed". To fix this, I decided to add "cancelled" and "postponed" statuses. However, this created another problem - the 4 icons became more difficult to recall and recognise, something staff had to do quickly during rush hours. To solve this unforeseen problem, I replaced the icons with simple words and combined it with a colour-coding system. This helped staff and owners quickly identify the statuses at a glance and they reported finding it much clearer.
Low- to Mid-Fidelity Prototypes
Sketches, Wireframes
Research Outcomes: Series of Changes to Designs
For confidentiality reasons, please find the detailed explanation here and send me an email for the password if needed.
Added search to reduce scrolling
Manual Entering of Address
In case restaurant not registered on Google Business
Manual Entering of Address
In case restaurant not registered on Google Business
Added Phone Numbers on Main Page
Final Design
Conclusion
Key Takeaways
Through interviewing many merchants, I gained a lot of insights into their lives. They had different priorities from me, making it challenging for me to empathesise with their needs. Referring back to the persona helped a lot. It was also challenging to balance technical and UX needs at once, but I feel that it has come to a satisfactory outcome.
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In Hindsight...
In hindsight, I would have incorporated more accessibility standards into more user interface design. Some of the designs would fail to meet today's standards. Also, I would create a softer and less saturated colour palette and increase the breathing room for the design.
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Future Plans
AppeDine is currently under development, and is set to launch in early 2021.
