Idea
Open Table is an app that allows users to access, reserve, and rate dining spots and are looking to empower users even more by making their restaurant billing process easier. The goal of this concept project is to turn Openable into the go-to payment by adding a feature that provides the ability to budget and pay for their meals and drinks through the OpenTable mobile app.
My Role
- User Research
- UX Strategy
- Axure Lead
Methods
User Research, Competitive/Comparative Analysis, Persona, User Flow, Task Analysis, Prototype, Usability Test
Research & Discovery
Our process began with understanding users and marketplace
The Target User
What We Found from User Research
- Diners tend to have an expected amount set in mind before going out to dine, while it’s hard to manage budget through dining.
- Longtime waiting for serving can be a major pain point for diners, especially when they are in rush.
- The process of ordering, splitting and paying the bill while going out for dinner with a group can be overly complicated.
Define Business Opportunities
- Potential of Mobile Payment. According to mobile payment survey released by 2015 National Restaurant Association conference: people chose the restaurant industry as the most likely to widely adopt mobile payments in the near future.
- Gap in the market. We looked out companies out there has similar apps, may be seen as competitors of OpenTable. Most apps are not available in Vancouver and not able to budget as they are going through the order process. It can be a great opportunity for Openable to get ahead of competitors in west coast area.
Plan & Ideation
Our goal is to create a seamless experience for users
Our goal of design is to expand OpenTable original user journey by integrating new features into a single straight-through user experience, in which users can manage their orders and split bills with dining companies.
Persona
We captured the voice of the interviewees and potential users, and created a persona from that information.
StoryBoard
Creating a storyboard allowed us to situate these UIs in the real-world contexts in which they’ll be encountered.
User flow
It demonstrates the step-by-step elements required to allow the user and the business to accomplish their objectives.
Design & Testing
We started from low fidelity sketch to fully polished prototype, while running over 5 usability tests before moving to next design stage.
We found that dining is not only about delicious food; atmosphere of restaurant, warm welcoming from server, and conversation with friends also add delight to a dining experience. People were amazed by the idea of managing order through the phone, however they concerned about relying on mobile too much might ruin the pleasure of dining.
So the biggest challenge for us is to design an app can actually enhance user’s real-life dining experience. We came up with five main solutions, to merge user’s mobile experience with real life dining experience.
Solutions
