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Gather is a new mobile app concept that will help users save time from the whole gathering process – from organizing to dining in to making payment experiences. This app is expected to help both customers and merchants to improve their overall experiences. In short, this app not only helps customers save time but also helps restaurants increase table turnover rate. However, this project will only be focusing on the customer side.
In this modern society where everyone has lots of different responsibilities that they need to fulfill, being able to save some time from something for personal leisure or recreational activities is getting harder and is becoming a luxury.
With the help of an all-in-one event planning app, organizing gatherings with coworkers, friends, and family will become simplified and less time consuming because organizers can send out invitations to guests with restaurant options for guests to choose from. And customers’ dine-in experience will become better by being able to make a reservation to skip the line, order food in advance, inform the restaurant for any dine-in or special needs, get served right after arriving at the restaurant, and make/split payments all through one platform.
The goal for this project is to :
To better understand the event planner and reservation markets in general and consumers’ concerns and behaviors, we want to:
Three research methods are chosen to conduct the user research:
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After an in-depth competitor research, the findings are:
Having assumptions for the demands and needs for this app is not enough and this is when the secondary research comes into play to prove and back those assumptions. While doing my secondary research, I had to split the research into two directions. One research went towards the demand of the event planning apps and the other one went towards the reservation apps. This is simply because the app concept for this project is the combination of both markets and there is no such app existing in the market at the moment.
In this section of the research, the most straightforward way to find out whether there is a need and demand for this kind of app and what pains customers have with event planning is by checking out the reviews of the existing apps from the app store and how those apps have helped make their life easier. Below are the screenshots of reviews from the event planning apps – Doodle and NeedToMeet.
In these reviews, 100% of users who use these event planning apps are to save time and avoid hassles. They have mentioned that planning for group events or gatherings in a traditional way takes a lot of time to coordinate as they will have to call, text or email multiple people back and forth just to agree on a date and time. They said that these event planning apps have helped them coordinate more efficiently and effectively and saved the coordinating time from hours to minutes, which is a huge time saver as users can focus on things that are more important to them.
Features that users like: in-app messenger, custom link, proposed locations, and voting polls.
In this research section, I have found some very reliable sources from the food ordering system vendors – Social Hospitality, UpMenu, and GloriaFood. These vendors have stressed how reservation apps with pre-ordering food features will help improve both customer and restaurant experience.
On the customer side, busy and hungry individuals will be happier as they no longer need to wait for table/food/check, they can enjoy real restaurant food at a fast food restaurant speed, and they can use the extra time they have saved for themselves or for something important. As a result, customers will have higher satisfaction with the overall dine-in experience.
On the restaurant side, restaurants can benefit from increased table turnover, more orders fulfilled, and more customers’ expectations met. As a result, business profit increases. This is because when restaurants know ahead of time what customers need and when they are coming, servers and chefs can plan ahead, organize tasks, address any issues in advance, and are, thus, well prepared. So when customers arrive, they will be served right away, personalized quality service is provided, no more overstays, and more happy customers. This is especially helpful when there are large group customers during busy hours.
Here are the valuable findings derived from the 1:1 interviews:
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Since Gather is a concept company and my personal idea, I am thinking of coming out with a brand message that is easy for users to remember and recognize. A brand that is efficient, trustworthy, thoughtful, reliable, optimistic, and modern.
The design inspirations I got are from words such as forgather, gather, what's up, and hi 5.
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My final choice of the logo is the one that has four symmetrical arrows pointing towards the same direction with the circle located in the center indicating that people are heading to the same place for a meetup. I also came out with two different versions where one is stacked on top and the other one is side by side for different purposes of usage.
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I began by referring back to my testing notes and grouped every note based on similarity to create this Affinity Map. In order to easily identify each participant, they all have their own Post-it note color. By having this Affinity map, I get a bigger and clearer picture of which iterations I need to prioritize and what can be next.
Based on the usability testing report, I have created a prioritized iterations list:
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The hardest part of this project is unquestionably time management. Having to finish the project within a self-set timeline while also maintaining the quality of the user research and UI design is challenging and lots of self-discipline involves. While completing the project within the timeline is crucial, but I find that the quality of the product is always the ultimate in a product design. When a product is hurriedly designed, it most likely has issues and will take extra time to go back to get it fixed. Thus, it is conversely a waste of time. On the contrary, taking an extra time to take care of every small detail from start to finish will not only save the overall output time from unnecessary reworks but also subsequently empower the product to behave consistently as it is designed and to serve its purpose.
Led in conducting UX research from scratch, redesigning all of the apps and the website previously poorly developed by a third-party company, and overseeing the entire development process after handing off designs to developers.
Made Doordash a fully one-stop platform by seamlessly adding in-demand features such as 'Favorite restaurants and orders', 'Leave a review for both restaurants and drivers', and 'Save orders' into Doordash’s iOS app.
Worked with a local home bakery owner to create and design the company’s branding and responsive sites for desktop, tablet, and mobile screens.
Identified users’ current pain points, needs, and goals for time traveling, and solved their problems by creating and designing responsive layouts for desktop, tablet, and mobile screens.
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