Feature 1: place order in advance and manage orders in real time
With the Jonquils App, customers could get information about the real-time inventory of cakes, place orders in advance, and reduce their waiting time at the store.
Jonquil's Cafe and Bakery is renowned for its eye-catching cakes, crafted with care into unique shapes that stand out from other bakeries. It attracts many customers every day, but the shopping experience is often less than ideal due to the long lines that form while waiting to place orders.
Jonquils APP is made for Jonquils Cafe & Bakery that gives customers a better ordering experience. With the app, customers can:
With the Jonquils App, customers could get information about the real-time inventory of cakes, place orders in advance, and reduce their waiting time at the store.
Enjoy your cake and get rewards! Never worry about losing your Jonquils punch cards.
Jonquils App helps you record all your personalized order needs. You can customize your favorite coffee taste through the app and add it to your favorites, so it's easier to re-order next time.
As the sole designer on this project, I've taken charge of multiple responsibilities.
To improve the customers' experience, a mobile app could be developed to enable them to place orders ahead of time and track their order status in real time. This would reduce the need for customers to wait in line and make the store more pleasant. Therefore, the question becomes: what kind of app design can lead to a positive customer experience?
During the time period I observed, 90% of the customers came in groups of two or more, 24% of the customers left after entering the store due to reasons such as the cake was sold out and the waiting time was too long, and 81% of the customers choose dine in. I conducted interviews with Jonquils' manager and 10 customers. After that, we are able to summarize overlapping issues and define our user groups.
The exploratory interviews allow me to better understand our users. I conclude a key persona to design for and create her journey map, which is not only useful as general guidance but also as reference for my wireframe design in a later stage.
Based on user feedback about Jonquil's original online order system, I identified four major issues:
After discussing with stakeholders and users, I developed the information architecture and two design layouts. Then I conducted a follow-up interview with those users to test user flow and get their feedback about those two layouts. Interviewing users revealed Layout 2 is the most popular option, as many found the excessive extra information in the app (Layout 1) to be a hindrance to the ordering process.
In this steps, I create many draft wireframe based on the Layout 2. I shared the initial wireframe with the client and a group of potential users to get feedback on the design, and then I evaluated the feedback received and identified the areas that needed improvement.
Based on the feedback and insights gathered from usability test, I revised the prototype to address the identified usability issues. This process involved making changes to the design, functionality, and layout of the prototype to improve its overall usability and effectiveness.
Business Value and UX
During my work on this project, I realized that while design thinking is essential, it's also necessary to strike a balance between user needs and business requirements. This balance is particularly important when deciding on features for Jonquils APP, as conflicts may arise between the user and stakeholder perspectives. In such cases, it's critical to prioritize and determine which features take precedence, keeping both user needs and business goals in mind.
Team collaboration and sunk costs
As the developers have entered the project after the design process, significant changes are required for our design and interaction method. I learned the importance of considering sunk costs when making decisions. Sunk costs are expenses that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered, such as the time and resources invested in a design process that ultimately proves unsuccessful. To minimize the risk of sunk costs, it's important to break down the design process into smaller steps or phases. At each step, team members should clearly communicate their thoughts about the product, evaluate the design's effectiveness, taking into account the sunk costs incurred so far, and collectively decide whether to continue with the current approach or pivot to a new one.