UTrucks
The client
University students on campus do not have much time to have lunch at the restaurants and tend to order food from the food trucks.
Platform
This mobile app is designed for University students. This mobile app is designed for iPhone.
Sector
Food Truck Industry
Overview
Tools
Paper (Paper prototype)
Balsamiq (Mid-fidelity prototype)
Xtensio (Persona)
Adobe XD (High-fidelity Prototype)
Role
User Design
(mainly in charge of primary research, secondary research, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, ideas generating, mid-fidelity prototype storyboard, high-fidelity prototype)
Skills Developed
Research skills: conducting primary and secondary research
Analytical skills: synthesizing and analyzing information and data collected
Team-working skill: cooperating with other three teammates and learning from each other
Design insights: learning from other experienced teammates about design principals and applying the design concepts learned in class into real project
Methodology
Double-Dimond Design Phase:
Diverged (discovery)--Converge(interpretation)--Diverge(ideation)--Converge(experimentation)
Iterative Design:
short design period and iterative feedback from usability testing
Current Problems about Food Trucks on Campus:
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changing locations and opening hours
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only accept cash payment
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only accept food orders in person or by calls
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unknown wait time for food
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too many options but unsure about quality and tastes
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hard to compare the prices from various trucks
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hard to know how busy the trucks are in advance
Based on these issues, we have come up an idea to design a food truck app to better help students at University of Toronto.
This is a group project. All the research, design work and results presentations are the efforts from my other three group members and me. Since this project is also a demo project in the course, some of the ideas also come from our prof and other fellow students.
Discovery
Research Goal
1. Define the standard process of food ordering
2. Learn about the existing food truck apps and their features
3. Identify the areas that can be improved
4. Understand how users are using the apps
5. Define common behaviours of university students who order food from the trucks
6. Understand students' needs, frustrations and pains when ordering food from the food trucks.
Primary Research: Interviews
Eight interviews were done by group members and me. Participants were found on campus in the libraries.
Primary Research: Questionnaires
Questionnaire consists of ten close-ended questions and ten scaling questions and received over 40 responses through facebook groups, Wechat groups and finding participants on the street.
Secondary Research: Market Research
Then, we did a market research to understand what are the existing mobile app of food trucks ordering and what are their features
Secondary Research: Comparative Analysis
We did a comparative analysis of three existing food truck apps we had found in apple store and through talking to people.
Quantitative Analysis
Interpretation
We generated graphs in Excel from the results of our questionnaires and we could clearly see the patterns that:
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Students wait for food at the trucks for a fair amount of time
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Most students vote for "more payment options" and "current wait time" as their preferred food truck features
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Students who regularly have classes on campus go to the food trucks really often
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Students choose food trucks by locations
Qualitative Analysis
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Affinity Diagram
Five major themes:
Convenience
Students think the locations of food trucks are convenient
Students think that with food trucks, they do not have to walk for a long time in order to find food
Money
Some food trucks are cheap
Some students would like to compare the prices among different food trucks
Students would like to know if there are promotions of some food
Time
Students complain about long wait time for food
Students would like to know the operating hours
Students would like to know whether the food trucks are busy or not in advance
Menu
Students can't see the menu, the font is too small
Students who have food restrictions have hard time reading the menu
Students would like to have more explanations on each food item
Food Quality
Students would like to know if the food item tastes good or not in advance
Students think that the food quality is not good enough
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Persona
Comparative Analysis
The essential features from the following three food truck apps:
1. Location and operating hours
2. Menu details and favourite cuisine option
3. See the photos of the menu items
Sam-Soon's Typical Day in School
Sam-Soon wakes up by the alarm and prepares for school.
Sam-Soon arrives at University of Toronto and starts her morning class.
Sam-Soon finishes her class and the weather outside is so bad and cold.
She is thinking of where to eat.
Sam-Soon looks up the map and is indecisive. She would like to go to somewhere close to her so that she will not be late for her next class.
Sam-Soon is lost in such a huge campus and finally finds the food truck.
Sam-Soon starts to look at the menu and omg there are so many items and she does not know which one to choose.She does not want to have something that has a bad taste.
Finally she orders the food. What? She has to wait for thirty minutes? She is cold and hungry.
Sam-Soon finds cash to pay and forgets to bring cash. So she borrows for someone else's cash to pay.
Sam-Soon gets her food and eats quickly in order to catch up her class.
As-is Scenario
Ideation
Needs Statements
Empathy Map
1. Sam-soon needs a way to locate a food truck nearby so that she can have more time to line up and get the food.
2. Sam-soon needs a way to know how long food truck's lines are so that she isn't late for her class.
3. Sam-soon needs a way to know the menu in more details and in advance so that she doesn't waste her time on deciding the food.
4. Sam-soon needs a way to know the payment options so that she can prepare for cash or credit card in advance and pay more quickly.
Ideas generating process
Sam-Soon's Pain Points:
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hard to locate the food trucks
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hard to know the options and hard to see the menu
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unsure about the taste
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no cash
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long wait time
Based these four main pain points of Sam-soon, we have generated several ideas to better solve her issues.
Ideas summary
Here are the main themes we have come up together as solutions for Sam-soon.
1. Advance ordering to avoid lining up
2. GPS locating the food trucks and navigations
3. User generated menu to tell their reviews and recommendations
4. Ingredient information of the menu items
5. Wait time reporter to tell the current wait time
6. Campus Food delivery option
7. Update the status and any related information by texting
8. Payment options (credit card, Apple Pay)
9. Membership so that students can pay a bundle price in advance
Vote for the most impactful and the most feasible ideas
Prioritization Grid
Based our votes, we have concluded the following critical ideas that have the most votes on both aspects(feasibility and impact):
1. a user-reported wait time update
users can report their current wait time so that others will know the wait time for the food trucks. The app will calculate the average wait time based on users' feedback and the flow of people around the specific areas.
2. a membership option
users can pay for a bundle price to become a member of the food trucks. Membership includes a certain amount of meals which users can order with their membership.
3. order in advance
users can oder in advance and come out to pick up the food whenever it is ready. This reduces the wait time outside.
Besides the ideas above, we have also other brilliant ideas, but some are not feasible for us to design. For example, "delivery option" is hard for us to design, since we have to consider how to connect the drivers and relevant issues.
Experimentation
Now we have a rough idea how to help Sam-soon solve her issues. Let's start prototyping a little and test to see if our ideas are working!
Sam-Soon's Typical Day in School (with our fantastic app)
befor
She can see the current wait time and whether this truck is busy or not.
Sam-Soon opens the app and sees the nearest food truck. She can just order through the app and she does not have to order the food in person. She can also pay online and does not have to bother finding cash.
Sam-Soon finishes her class and the weather outside is so bad and cold.
She is thinking of where to eat.
Sam-Soon arrives at University of Toronto and starts her morning class.
Sam-Soon wakes up by the alarm and prepares for school.
Sam-Soon gets notification when her food is ready. She receives navigation to pick up the food as well.
Sam-Soon gets food more quickly and she does not wait for food in a cold winter. Yeah!
Low-fidelity Prototype
Based on our hypothesis above, we have come up with a paper prototype in order to test user feedback on our initial assumptions.
Basically, we identified three key features to solve students' problems with the food trucks.
1. Map to locate food trucks and to look for up-to-date wait time information
2. Payment methods
3. Get notification when the order is ready.
Usability Test
For our paper prototype, we had four usability tests done on campus. We found the participants in the library and made sure they were students on campus.
Here are the suggestions we gathered from the four participants:
1. "Oh, I don't know the food truck icon is clickable!"
2. "Emm, the colour and the layout are hard to read."
3. "Can I have a clearer navigation to the food truck?"
4. "The colours are confusing."
Based on their suggestions, we decided to make the icon look more realistic and make the layout more readable. We also chose to make a legend for the colour codes so that the colours are not confusing.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
In our next step, we used the previous suggestions to generate a mid-fidelity prototype using Balsamiq. We made the layout much clearer and also the fond readable. This time, the participants suggested more meaningful features.
Usability Test
1. "This icon is not clickable" (after modification, the icon is still not clickable for our participants.)
2. "I would love to have a star rating so that I can know what tastes the best."
3. "Maybe a photo of the food would be good, since there are too many words on one page."
4. "I need a shopping cart."
5. "Would there be Apple Pay?"
Based on the information above, I created a high-fidelity prototype using Adobe XD.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Evolution
Limitations
In the evolution phase, our group came together to think through what we have done and if there are areas we should improve. First, I would like to thank the efforts taken by my group member and also me. Without my three group member, we could not have generated a lot of ideas and we could not have come to this far. I really enjoyed working with them and brainstorming with them. I appreciate their expertise and their commitments.
However, we do have areas that we have not done well during this project.
1. In designing the homepage where the food truck icons locate, we have not considered the fact that users might not be able to recognize that the icons were clickable. We took it for granted that users might know how to look for information of the food trucks.
2. The food truck app needs the collaboration from the owners of the food trucks as well; however, in our design, we have only created persona and journeys for the customers. More importantly, we need the food trucks owners' ideas and their opinions.
3. The number of surveyed participant was not large enough because of the time limit. Since this was an in-class project, so we did not have enough time to research large sample of participants.
Next Steps
Based on our limitations above, in the future, we could consider to develop from the food truck owners' end. We could also do more research and find a larger and random sample. We could create multiple persona and journey maps to explore the role of food trucks played in different people's lives (students, professors and food truck owners.) In the future, we could also consider develop various payment method.
In the future's group work, we should also learn to empathize with our users and do more iterative testings. We should not take anything for granted.