2. Wireframing
1. Goal
2. User Flow
3. Primary Research / Solution
4. What Was Learned / Future Iterations
Duration: 2 weeks
Role: UX research, wireframing, visual design
Initial Approach
We started with field observations and user interviews, where we gained some insights that helped us progress our research into conceptual mobile application. This mobile service app, which does not currently exist in the real world, would benefit users by giving full control over how they reserve a table at this restaurant, and what kind of information they can view about that reservation. This app would alleviate any stress of anticipation for when your table will be ready. If the customer wants to make edits to a reservation, they can do so on the spot, and not have to physically talk to an employee. The idea was that the customer should be in the know at all times, and should not be a slave to extremely long wait times!
Primary Research
Din Tai Fung is a popular restaurant based out of Taiwan. Currently, it’s physical locations here in the USA are scarce, and with their soup dumplings in high demand, they have grown notoriety for there immensely long wait times which we found to be an average of 1:30 - 2 hours through user interviews.
Some key observation notes:
- Seating reservations can only be made in person.
- Very limited seating outside of the restaurant. Most people are standing around, many on their phones.
- Most waiting are groups of 2-5 people. Age demographic ranged from children to seniors.
- First time visitors are easy to spot due to hesitation and confusion about where to line up.
Below: Upon glancing inside the restaurant entrance, we counted three lines, none of which are clearly labeled. We observed quite a few people going up to the reservation kiosk to ask a question. I'm not sure how the employee at the kiosk feels about acting as the primary source for questions as she seems busy enough dealing with reservations. On her desk we spotted an seemingly simple, time estimation chart for seating.
This was an interesting comparison to be made. Boarding a flight requires you wait in a particular area for your call to be made. Your are given a boarding time, and know when to be ready to board your flight. Flight updates can be checked throughout the airport on a FIDS (flight information display system) as well as on your particular airline’s mobile app. Maybe our app can alleviate of that stressfulness.
Our Solution
Our proposed mobile application would ideally alleviate the stress of long times by making the reservation process more engaging and convenient for the user. Within the time of the project, we could not develop any detailed conceptual features other than the primary flow which is detailed below.
User Flow
This is the finalized wireframe flow that demonstrates how the user would:
1. Choose a location - in this case, the Orange County location.
2. Create a new reservation - this would be her first time ever doing this through the app.
3. View the status of the reservation - her new reservation will be displayed on the home screen.
4. Cancel the reservation - edits to a reservation can be easily made from the home screen. In this case, the most recent reservation will be canceled.
Conclusion
This was our first group project in the program. I instantly learned how difficult gaining a valuable insight can be. We interviewed quite a few different patrons, and they all agreed that a reservation app was a great idea and they would for sure use it. This seemed too obvious. It was a solution that doesn't exist, for a problem that does exist.
I think this boiled down to the questions being asked on my end. Maybe with further user testing on later iterations, we could've tapped into some insights for specific features within the app. The guerrilla method was good for getting a good idea about how well received this app would be, but for most of the patrons, the wait was worth it. The food kept them coming back for more, even if they had to wait 2 hours in line. Our reservation app would hopefully alleviate this, and give the user full control over their reservation. With our app, customers could "unmoor" themselves from the vicinity of the restaurant, without fear of straying to far and missing their open table window, and if they felt like the wait was too long, they can cancel right away without feeling any guilt.
One interesting observation that was noted for future iterations, was about a group of customers who chose to order take-out, and proceed to eat aside a planter within the mall. This is definitely an option to avoid waiting even longer for a seat inside, but how much time was actually saved? We couldn't make an accurate guess.