Cafe Ivy, nestled in the suburbs of Colombo, Sri Lanka, has long been a favorite among locals and tourists alike for its diverse menu offerings. From refreshing cocktails to mouthwatering pizzas and delicious nibbles, the cafe provides an eclectic dining experience.
Due to its delicious food and ambience, the cafe quickly won my heart, and I became a regular customer at the time I was attending university.
Whenever I go to the cafe around 5 or 6pm after lectures, I found that I had to wait 5 to 10 minutes in the queue to find a table, then another 5-10 minutes for the staff to come and take my order. All in all, a good 15-20 minutes were gone just to order the food, and this is before the food even arrived!
Contexual Inquiry
I visited the cafe during both peak and off-peak times to see how they operate, spent time observing how customers make orders, and analyzed their current paper-based menu.
I was able to understand the communication flows, sequence of tasks, the general wait times for orders and the general environment.
User Interviews and surveys
Interviews with Cafe Ivy customers and stakeholders yielded valuable information about the current perception of the food and drinks menu, ease of use, the general wait-times for food ordering and other pain points.
Surveys showed that the main user group was between 25-40.
Average time to order during peak times is 12 minutes and off-peak times is 7 minutes.
This target user group was identified as middle-high income earners, with over 90% of the survey participants owning a smartphone.
How can I create a mobile experience for Cafe Ivy that is useful, enjoyable and relevant?
I designed a mobile app experience for Cafe Ivy customers with clear visuals, user flows and easy navigation. The new app experience also included high-quality images of food and drinks, food customizing options, nutritional information and easy app layout.
I held interviews with 8 customers and 2 stakeholders to clarify the problem. The cafe did not have any previous insights, so I had to make full use of the interviews and the contextual inquiry. I incorporated the insights into 2 proto personas: Chathurie and Nimal.
The ideation process began with sketches, then moves to low-fidelity wireframes, and finally to the high-fidelity prototype.
I then created interactive digital low-fidelity wireframes and shared with key stakeholders and end-users to collect feedback.
After a few rounds of usability testing, I discovered that this app has a few more issues:
Unable to customize your order - Early on in user interviews and user research yielded that users prefer to customize their order, but this was not implemented in this first version, which is non-compliant with rule no:7 of Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics: flexibility and efficiency of use.
Cannot see if an item has been added to the list from the home page - Once a user adds an item to the list, there are no visual cues to let the user know that a certain food or drink item is already added to the list, which is non-compliant with rule no:1 of Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics: visibility of system status.
Unable to edit the quantity from the order list page - there is currently no option to change the quantity of an item from the list page, and users faced difficulty navigating back to the item page to edit the quantity. This was non-compliant with rule no:3 of Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics: user control and freedom.
Unable to view the bill total: there is currently no option to view the bill total when browsing other items, which is non-compliant with rule no:1 of Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics: visibility of system status.
🍔 So what happened next?
Wait times for Cafe Ivy reduced by more than 15%.
Satisfaction scores for the cafe increased by 10%.
Cafe revenue grew by more than 10%.
As the need for printed menus is eliminated, the cafe saved costs on design, printing, and frequent updates.
Menu changes can be made instantly within the app.
As the orders placed through the app go directly to the kitchen, it reduced manual errors and freed up staff to focus on service rather than order-taking.
Future versions of the app could allow customers to make pickup orders by processing payments digitally.
That’s it. Thank you for reading. 😇
