Case study: Redesigning restaurant experiences
Brief: Design a system for a restaurant in Mumbai
Restaurant chosen: Tea Villa Cafe
Disclaimer: This project is purely for academic purposes and is not affiliated with Tea Villa Cafe by any means.
Technology today is an indispensable part of all our lives. Industries have always embraced technology and continue to do so. Restaurants are no different. Many have creatively utilised technology in an attempt to create seamless interactions between the physical and digital space.
Exploring this seamless interaction is what led me to choose my brief.
Tea Villa Cafe
Understanding the restaurant was crucial in order to devise a system for them. It also heavily dictated the target audience of the system. This understanding helped me lay the foundation of my research.
About: All for one, one for all. Tea Villa Cafe is a chain of casual dining cafes. They offer a contemporary, warm ambience and judge themselves by customer satisfaction.
Target Audience:
Age group: 16-35 years
Location: Tier 1, Tier 2 cities of India
Income groups: Upper middle class
Genders: All
The Goal
.
After conducting extensive research on potential systems for restaurants, I decided to create a system for customers who visit Tea Villa Cafe. They may be visiting for dine-in or takeaway services.
Goal: To enhance the experience of visiting customers by integrating the physical and digital realms
SWOT Analysis
.
I conducted a SWOT analysis for existing systems in restaurants which utilise technology for dine-in and takeaway services.
A few examples of such systems: kiosk systems, digital ordering systems
Doing this enabled me to:
- Ensure I maintained the strengths of the system
- Identify the gaps and weaknesses in the system
- Identify areas in which improvement can be done
Stakeholder Mapping
.
I then listed down the stakeholders for my system.
This helped me understand the possibility of who could affect/ be affected by my system.
Competitor Analysis
.
To gain a better understanding of the current market and possibilities, I listed down a few direct and indirect competitors to my system. I then studied each of them in detail. A few aspects I looked at were:
- Location (s)
- Target Audience
- USP
- Application/ website experience: successes, failures
- User flow
- Navigation
The direct competitors I studied were:
- McDonald’s (kiosk system)
- Taco Bell (kiosk system)
- Domino’s (application)
The indirect competitors I studied were:
- Swiggy (application)
- Zomato (application)
- Prithvi Cafe (this is a very popular casual cafe in Mumbai)
Doing a competitor analysis allowed me to:
- Study the features of competitors
- Understand what may work and what may not
- Understand market trends
- Mindfully experience using a system and studying the journey first-hand
This served as a guide when I had to decide features for my system.
Persona Mapping
(+ User Journey Mapping + Problem Statement for each persona)
.
After understanding the audience and customers of Tea Villa Cafe and talking to people, I arrived at my personas.
Each persona represented a different section of people and thus gave rise to different user journeys and problem statements.
Note: In each journey map I have included two possibilities of ordering:
- If the user orders digitally, using the system
- If the user orders physically, to the attendant
This was done in order to understand and study user interaction with both the digital and physical space.
Persona 1
User Journey Mapping 1: This represents how Persona 1, Tanisha Grover, interacts with a food ordering system (in the physical and digital space)
Problem Statement 1: Tanisha Grover is a 20 year old Architecture student who needs clear information about her order because she does not want to keep asking the attendant for the same.
Persona 2:
User Journey Mapping 2: This represents how Persona 2, Varun Malhotra, interacts with a food ordering system (in the physical and digital space)
Problem Statement 2: Varun Malhotra is a 27 year old Product Analyst who needs a fast and seamless dine-out experience because he is busy and running short on time.
Persona 3:
User Journey Mapping 3: This represents how Persona 3, Ria Saxena, interacts with a food ordering system (in the physical and digital space)
Problem Statement 3: Ria Saxena is a 19 year old Psychology student who wants to kill waiting time at restaurants because she feels impatient and restless.
Persona 4:
User Journey Mapping 4: This represents how Persona 4, Manish Gupta, interacts with a food ordering system (in the physical and digital space)
Problem Statement 4: Manish Gupta is a 35 year old Civil Engineer who needs a food ordering system with minimal human interaction because he prefers to do his tasks independent of others.
Empathy Mapping
.
An empathy map helped me gain deeper insights into my user, their thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
The System
.
The system I created for Tea Villa Cafe caters to customers who visit the cafe. They may be visiting for dine-in or takeaway services.
My system aims to unite the physical and digital arenas while ensuring that all customers have an enhanced, seamless and memorable experience.
The system is designed for the following devices:
- Tablet
- Mobile phones
The Working
(of the System)
For dine-in services: On arrival customers will be provided a tablet by Tea Villa Cafe. This tablet will contain the created system. Once seated, the interaction with the system will begin.
While leaving, the customers will hand the tablet back to the restaurant.
For takeaway services: On arrival customers will be given a choice between:
- Ordering using the restaurant tablet
- Ordering using their own device. (Scanning a QR code will allow customers to go ahead with this option)
The Problems
.
After extensive research, observation, talking to users and persona mapping, these are the problems I identified:
- Dine-in customers in restaurants are not aware of their order status, this bothers them and leads to impatience
- Food menus are not very descriptive both, visually and informatively. They thus do not help the customer much while making a choice
- Not enough information is conveyed to customers in terms of preparation time, ETA etc. This leads to the customer being unwillingly unaware
- Some customers are hesitant to call the attendant multiple times. They would rather follow a process which gives them more control
- The waiting time in restaurants (waiting for food, for the attendant) is a cause of displeasure among several customers
The Solutions
(Features)
The list of features has primarily been derived from the multiple interactions I had with users. I studied and analysed their needs, the problems faced by them and came up with appropriate solutions. I incorporated these solutions as the following features:
- A technological system may cause difficulties to certain sections of the population. To cater to this problem, a constant option ‘I require assistance’ will be available to the user. This option can be availed at any stage of the process.
- To cater to the in-descriptiveness of food menus, the system will have clear and concise descriptions of dishes along with photographs for each dish. Customisation options will also be available for dishes.
- Once the order is placed, not enough information is provided to customers regarding their order status which bothers them. For this, an order tracking option will be available to users which will allow them to view the ETA of their orders. In addition, a kitchen camera feature has been introduced which will allow the customer to view their food preparation. This however, is an optional feature which can be turned on/off by the restaurant.
- Waiting time in restaurants is a cause of discontentment to customers. To cater to this, a ‘Leisure’ section has been created in the system. This section offers customers the opportunity to play online games (on the tablet), offline games (offered by the restaurant) and read physical magazines (offered by the restaurant).
- Customers are often served multiple dishes at once. This causes some of the food to get cold and is a major cause of dissatisfaction for customers. Moreover, in some cases, customers wish to have their food served in a particular sequence. To cater to this problem, the system offers customers an option to choose the sequence in which they would like their dishes to be served (if any).
- Incentives appeal to all customers. Thus, a reward point system is created for customers. These points can be utilised to avail discounts. In addition, customers are offered a 10% discount on their first order, 15% on the second and 20% on the third.
Information Hierarchy
.
The numbers denote the order of importance
Navigation Flow
.
Note:
- Both dine-in and takeaway services are listed in the navigation flow below
- ‘Dine-in and Takeaway’ is written to denote steps that are applicable to both services
- In areas where the process differs, a dashed line has been used to signify the takeaway process
- Additional information is added in the circles
