Problem

Working professionals are annoyed by sloppy experiences at food trucks

Food trucks are one of the places where things can be chaotic, which causes inconveniences. Whereas, working professionals with young families are looking for ways to optimize time and improve experiences.

The soluation

Streamlined and informed services with faster checkouts

My approach

Five steps design thinking process

I started with User interviews

My users are more likely to buy from food trucks if they can avoid long queues and experiences are predictable

Insights from user interviews

Users like a product that is uncluttered and help them have a great experience

Major insights

I synthesized the collected data from the interviews and, created an affinity map to form key insights.

building Persona from user interviews

“I am always busy with my work and family, so i look out for smooth and rejuvenating experiences.” - Abeba

Analyzing if exsting products solves user problems

The competitors are not offering guest checkouts

As a next step, I wanted to figure out if other products in the market solve the problems of my persona. I observed that my competitors don’t offer guest checkouts. On the other hand, my user persona does not want to share any personal information or take any extra steps in processing an order. This appeared as a unique opportunity! I thought about providing a faster checkout and allowing users to experience the product before registration.

Market and technical research

I had several ideas to solve problems of my persona but also needed to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of my approach. So I conducted literature and market research, and here are the key findings.

Guest checkout

I hypothesized that a guest checkout will:

Payment processing feasibility

I did feasibility checks by:

Authentic reviews

Independent, validated and trustworthy reviews can increase sales by as much as 270%

To ensure a quality experience, it is critical that my users can find good food trucks. One of the ways this can be made possible is through authentic reviews. One BrightLocal study shows that 87% of people read reviews and 79% trust them as much as they would a personal recommendation. Further, a recent Northwestern University study suggests that having at least five quality product reviews can increase the likelihood of purchase by 270%.

A potential solution for fake reviews:

Design

Transforming insights into a solution

My persona has three broad features:

1. The user is a busy working professional who values organization and consistency in experiences

2. The user enjoys outdoor events during the weekend

3. The user is generally with family and friends.

I explored if the right product will be a website or an app. It was further considered if the product should handle food delivery or just food pick up. Since the persona's location is not fixed, the product should manage the food ordering and pick up. Second, since the persona doesn’t always have a laptop, a smartphone app will be accessible to more users. Hence, I decided to proceed with designing an app.

I further experimented by designing information architecture, user flows, paper wireframes, and low-fidelity mockups.

Usability testings & improvements

Iterating the design after feedback

I conducted two rounds of unmoderated usability studies using low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes with 8 users (2 males and 6 females between the ages of 24 to 60). Each study took 15 to 20 minutes and it was conducted remotely. After synthesizing the collected data from usability tests and an affinity map, I have made three improvements to the design.

3 Improvements in design

Hypothesis validation 

Participants validate the guest checkout and authentic reviews

During usability testing, I have asked questions to validate if the key features are effective. The approach I used is that if the features are removed how many users will be directly impacted.

1. Will you still use the app if we remove the guest checkout?

The final screens 

The final product

Clickable prototype

Style guide

conclusion

Final thoughts and takeaways

This was my first UX design project ever! While it was overwhelming at times, it has been a phenomenal journey to learn every new step of the process. With this said, here are my key learnings:

• Empathy and problem solving: A very important learning for me is that as a UX designer, my objective is to design products that solve a user’s problems. It is very important to empathize with users and stand in their shoes to really understand their pain points. Only a deeper understanding of the user can help us create meaningful products.

• Removing biases through user research: I absolutely loved the research part of the project and cannot emphasize its importance enough. With carefully designed questions, we can remove biases and really gather insights to build a product for the actual user and not for us. Thorough research at the early stage also reduces the number of iterations at the later stages of the usability testings.

• Feedback and iterations: Another important learning has been that we should be open to feedback and even criticism from both users and mentors. For a designer, feedback is a very important aspect of learning, improvement, and personal growth. The strategy is not to take those feedback personally and objectively convert it into product improvements. Feedbacks are also key to the agile and lean methodology where useful products are developed with reduced wasted efforts and resources.

This endeavor has also taught me how to work efficiently on future projects and these are my takeaways:

• Planning with smaller milestones: It helps immensely to build a plan for the project at the beginning and execute on that. Various steps of the project can be quite confusing and can take a lot of time. However, achieving smaller milestones keep things organized and motivated for the project.

• Structure and organization: It is very important to prepare design components and organize the project for multiple iterations. This helps in rapidly implementing user feedback in the design.