Con Amor
Con Amor is a fictitious restaurant in Nagoya, Japan who wants broaden their customer base and let them make reservations without having to talk to anyone.
The Goal
Design a website and app that will let customers make online reservations.
My Role
UX researcher and designer
Project Duration
8 weeks
Background
This project was an assignment for the Google UX certification program. The project objective was to design a mobile app. It was carried out without a team and the theme was chosen through a random theme generator.
Challenges
Language barrier
Users have varying degrees of English or Japanese language abilities.
Information overload
There needs to be a balance of having and putting information into the app without overwhelming the user.
Responsibilities
User research
Conduct interviews
Create digital wireframes
Prototype
Conduct usability studies
Iterate on designs.
Research
Competitive Analysis
My goal for the competitive audit was to compare and analyze multiple Spanish restaurants businesses in Japan. Specifically, I wanted to see how the online reservation process was like for their target customer and what advantages and disadvantages they had in their process.
Besides focusing on the online reservation process, the profile created for each company also included notes about the website content, navigation, and target customer.
Discover:
What are concerns when making an online reservation?
How do you navigate through a site that’s not in your native language?
And understand:
How might we create the flow that doesn’t require a user to know the language?
How might we add include all the information the user needs into the app?
Interviews
For this project, I interviewed adults living in Japan between the ages of 24 to 47 who have either moved to Japan or were born in Japan.
Building Empathy
Using the data from the interviews, I created 2 personas, Risa and Jordan, to target different groups and to empathize and prioritize goals according to what they need.
The Design
Wireframes
After collecting data from the competitive analysis and interviews, it was time to start creating wireframes.
Low Fidelity Prototype
After choosing which wireframe design worked for the client’s needs, low fidelity prototyping began.
Visual Design
I took inspiration from the Spanish flag for the color palette and incorporated accent colors to go with it. Once the colors were chosen, I began choosing fonts, designing buttons and fonts, and gathering images.
User Testing and Iterations
The main take away from user testing were:
Including a special requests section in the reservation section.
Include a confirmation page after booking the reservation.
Have an incentive to download the app.
After the low fidelity prototype was completed, participants were gathered for an in person usability study. I wanted to test how users interacted with making a reservation and if there were any functions they felt were missing.
User testing led to adding a rewards system into the app.
Outcome
In order to distinguish Con Amor’s app from other online restaurant apps, additional features and information needed to be added. One of those features was a reward system for users when they user the app. The completed app will allow users like Risa or Jordan check restaurant hours, browse the menu details, and complete an in-app reservation with special requests.
Lessons Learned
Countless restaurants and companies have an online reservation processes. Completing this project made me grow and learn lessons along the way. Some of those lessons include:
The importance of incentive
All of the information for users to know about a restaurant and easily make a reservation is useless if there is no incentive for users to download the app. If there is no clear distinction of service between you and the competitor, there will be little reason for users to change old habits.
Double check what is needed
When trying to simplify the reservation experience, key components that seemed trivial turned out to be important in supporting user’s needs.