BRIEF
Create a restaurant app where customers can browse the menu and place orders easily, with a focus on accessible and clean UI. The diversity of Brooklyn neighborhoods makes for a wide range of user backgrounds (see personas below), meaning that the app will need to be simple and streamlined.
MY ROLE
I completed all parts of this project, from ideating, to research, to design and prototyping. I was the lead/sole designer. Everything you see I created myself.
TOOLS
Procreate, Pen and Paper, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Excel, Figma
RESEARCH: CREATING USER PERSONAS
It was important to create diverse user persona's for this app, as it will be used by many customers from diverse neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY.
As illustrated through the persona information, every person has a different background as well as goals and frustrations.
A quick round-up of user traits can be seen at right, while more fleshed out and detailed personas can be seen below. It is important in this case to get a good sense of what the target users are looking for in a restaurant app, as well as what usually frustrates them about similar/competitor apps.
COMPETITIVE AUDIT
For the competitive audit, I researched aspects of different restaurants and their interfaces (for the purpose of this demonstration, some are made-up restaurants). It was very important for me to research and record the features and layouts of apps or websites that I found very easy to use- this is the main goal of PoodleMan's app.
STORYBOARDS
I felt this was a good opportunity to map a user's journey through the product, how they might be driven to seek out an easy ordering experience and once they find a suitable app, how they might feel at various points during his experience.
It's very important to me to identify pain points that may drive a user to seek out certain products or experiences. From here, I like to imagine and brainstorm ways that I can improve the user's experience, and greatly diminish or eliminate the pain points they previously experienced.
WIREFRAMING
I defined the flow and what screens were needed, then proceeded with creating the wireframes to explore the experience in more detail on a screen-by-screen level. The main focus was a quick ordering experience, which I tried to emulate through making the menu and past orders/favorites easily accessible, and streamlining the payment process.
HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUP
For this stage of the app design, I leaned into a simple, easy to use approach. I changed the details on some of the pages compared to the wire-frame once I realized more fleshed-out features that would benefit the users.
HIGH-FIDELITY USER FLOW
For the flow-through aspect of the app, I made sure to first and foremost create a home button, in a traditional location that would be easily accessible on any device. This app is not supposed to be complicated- the main goal is to take the (probably very hungry user) from point A to point B, i.e. quickly and efficiently find a meal that fits their craving and have it ordered ASAP.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Overall, the goal for this design was to create a simple and fast way for people of the community to order food from a locally-owned restaurant. I believe that through market research and comparison with other restaurant apps, PoodleMan's mobile app allows for the intended use to show through and be successful.
CHALLENGES
Some challenges for this design were finding apps within this niche (neighborhood restaurants in the specific target area) to compare my design to. because of this, I really leaned into bigger restaurant chains (as seen in the comparison table above). as with many other apps, the process of fitting all of the desired features without making the app seem too overwhelming required a lot of brainstorming and re-working.
PoodleMan's splash page loading screen, created and animated by me
