Serviette is an Order Management System designed to help restaurants manage customers’ orders, restaurant menu inventory, sales/activity infographics and the daily running of the restaurant facility on a broader scale.
UI/UX DESIGN
SERVIETTE
A Practical UI Design for Restaurant Order Management System
The Product
The Goal
To help restaurant owners/managers, waitstaff and kitchen staff streamline their workflow, manage their menu inventory and handle orders seamlessly through an intuitive and functional digital application.
Role
UX Research, UI Design.
Research
Adopting Lean UX Strategies
Starting from Existing Data and Research
The timeframe for this project was short, so in order to avoid compromising on user experience, I decided to adopt Lean UX strategies.
To do this, I started with secondary research from two existing order management systems: shopify and QuickBooks using Capterra where I got public user reviews that gave me quick insights on existing pain points and must-have features of order management systems.
To do this, I started with secondary research from two existing order management systems: shopify and QuickBooks using Capterra where I got public user reviews that gave me quick insights on existing pain points and must-have features of order management systems.
Interviews with Stakeholders and Industry Experts
I conducted user interviews with stakeholders, restaurant managers and chefs to get quality insights on the must-haves of a good order management system.
Lean Persona
Creating Lightweight user personas
Using data from secondary research and interviews with experts, I created simple, lightweight personas for the primary user groups (waitstaff, kitchen staff, managers) focusing on core motivations, pain points, and needs rather than deep psychographic details.
These lean personas allowed me and the team stay focused on main users of the product throughout the design process, even without full user research.
These lean personas allowed me and the team stay focused on main users of the product throughout the design process, even without full user research.
Lightweight Lean Persona
Lean Persona showing user goals and challenges. This persona helped centralize our focus on the user even with time constraints
User Painpoints
Some of the painpoints I got from research data included:
Slow order creation time.
Order Mix-up.
Manual record keeping
Assigning responsiblities to staff
Contextual Enquiries
I also visited a couple of restaurants to observe how their waitstaff handled customer interactions, which provided insights on how to design features that fit into real-world context.
Defining the users’ problems
Using feedback from experts and observations from field research (contextual enquiries), the next step was to get a full scope of who our solutions were targeted at, what their problems were and why it was important to solve those problems.To do this, I drafted a problem statement…
Bringing the team together to Ideate in a Design Studio
At this point, it was important to bring the design team together, for a Design Studio session. In this session, everyone sketched their ideas and solutions on paper. Doing this helped us think up different ideas quickly and put the team on their feet to think about user needs before locking into a solution.
Dealing With Constraints
Customization and Scalability
During ideation, we ran into some constraints. The first constraint was how to customize and scale the Order Managment System to suit the needs of various types and sizes of restaurants.
It is common knowledge that Restaurants come in all shapes and sizes, and so does restaurant inventory…from small cafes with few items to large ones with complex menus. We wanted the OMS to scale up and down to adapt to different restaurant’s needs.
To deal with this, we introduced features for menu customization and adopted flexible user flows to ensure that the OMS adapted to different restaurant inventory size.
It is common knowledge that Restaurants come in all shapes and sizes, and so does restaurant inventory…from small cafes with few items to large ones with complex menus. We wanted the OMS to scale up and down to adapt to different restaurant’s needs.
To deal with this, we introduced features for menu customization and adopted flexible user flows to ensure that the OMS adapted to different restaurant inventory size.
Data Accuracy and Syncing
Another constraint was how to ensure data accuracy when multiple users were interacting with our OMS (e.g., waitstaff taking orders, kitchen staff updating order status) at the same time, to avoid incorrect or duplicated orders and in extension, user frustration.
To deal with this constraint, we introduced features for timestamping, and a notification feature to alert users when data has been modified by another party.
To deal with this constraint, we introduced features for timestamping, and a notification feature to alert users when data has been modified by another party.
Some of the features I and my team came up with were:
1. Responsive Design
2. Offline Capabilities
3. Integration with existing Systems
4. Customization and Scalability
5. Pricing/Subscription Model
6. Data Accuracy and Syncing
7. Multi-Language Support
8. Intuitive Design for easy User Adoption
1. Responsive Design
2. Offline Capabilities
3. Integration with existing Systems
4. Customization and Scalability
5. Pricing/Subscription Model
6. Data Accuracy and Syncing
7. Multi-Language Support
8. Intuitive Design for easy User Adoption
The Design
Low Fidelity Prototypes
Having gotten a big picture of what to design and how to design it, I swung into action: creating low-fidelity prototype of some core features like Admin Dashboard, Oders page/creation, and menu inventory.
Guerilla Testing with small user group
As soon as I completed the low-fidleity prototypes, I tested them with some restaurant staff and managers,
in order to quickly collect valuable feedback.
in order to quickly collect valuable feedback.
High-fidelity prototyping
Using feedback from these users, I refined the low-fidelity prototypes; converting them into high-fidelity prototypes…
Admin Dashboard
High-fidelity prototype of restaurant admin dashboard, with dashboard customisation capabilities, infographics, notifications, messages, and recent orders table.
Waitstaff Dashboard
High-fidelity prototype of restaurant waitstaff (waiters, kitchen staff) dashboard, with dashboard customisation capabilities, tasks, running activities, notifications, messages, and recent orders table.
Other Screens
Outcomes/Impact
Seamless Restaurant Order Management!
The Serviette Order Management System helped eliminate manual order handling, records and inventory management in the Restaurant space, thereby giving restaurant owners, waitstaff, kitchen staff and restaurant managers a more efficient way of running their facilities without breaking a sweat.
Mobile app design also ensured a much more seamless way for waitstaff to easily take, create, and update orders on-the-fly, while attending to different customers.
Mobile app design also ensured a much more seamless way for waitstaff to easily take, create, and update orders on-the-fly, while attending to different customers.
Usability Testing/Feedback
During usability testing, 90% of participants gave positive feedback on the intuitive user interfaces of the Serviette OMS and were excited about adopting the app in their Restaurants.
Product Usability Chart
Product Usabilty Chart showing the Serviette OMS user testing results using key performance indicators (micro-conversions, user error rates, ease of navigation, time on Task and prototype crashes)