A Solution to All Those Pre-Dinner Group Feuds
This post is part of my UX/UI boot camp at Ironhack. This project was done individually.
The Brief:
Add a feature for group voting to OpenTable, from conceptualization to pixel perfect in 4 days
The Outcome:
Seamless feature integration delivered in a clickable Hi-Fi Prototype
The Objectives:
1- Mimicking the design by taking a closer look at the atomic design used in composing the app
2- Locating the most suitable structure of adding this feature without interfering with the application flow
3- Assessing whether this feature is a good fit within the app and if it should be implemented
The Brand
OpenTable is an online restaurant-reservation platform offering clients reviews, menus, and some more details regarding their chosen restaurant. It is also integrated into Google Search, facilitating online table booking in big cities.
OpenTable’s data suggest that the average user books a restaurant 4.8 times a month.
The Problem
Very often than not, group outings turn into lengthy discussions when it comes to agreeing on the place to go to for dinner. Whether choosing a specific cuisine or one desired restaurant, convincing others is always the customary path.
Here are some of my interviewee’s interventions on this matter:
“My friends and I have a decision-maker app to help us choose peacefully between different options.”
“It can be irritating to decide, especially in larger groups.”
The Research
After conducting some quick qualitative and quantitative evaluations to understand the ‘Why’ of the user, I had a clear path as to how I was going to approach this new feature.
I created the User Flow to guide my Low-fidelity wireframes. After having them prepared in a fairly sound manner, I put them to the test.
The insights I received, from my 6 testers, were focused on the proper representation of the winning restaurant at the end. And, how the host could eventually track the voting progress.
The Result
After some testing and further iterations, I arrived at the following:
The Prototype
In this clip, we can see a typical way of creating a poll and adding several options to it. You can check out the interactive Invision prototype by clicking on the image.
My Assessment
I believe that this feature would work really well with registered OpenTable users by facilitating their social interactions.
This key feature could potentially also attract a new market segment that never considered creating an account because reserving a restaurant on Google could easily be achieved as a Guest.
But,
In order to achieve a fair result by avoiding multiple votes by the same individual, each attendee should be required to sign-in to finalize the task.
This additional action would certainly influence the participation level due to the reluctance towards creating more and more accounts and subscriptions.
My thoughts towards this experiment would be to have this feature added to Google Search instead. A broader audience would be targetted, and booking would remain via OpenTable, integrated to Google.
Learnings and Reflections
- Had I had a bit more time, I would have designed how the interaction would be with the person invited to vote, their own user flow.
- Even though OpenTable displays its own strong brand identity, I still noticed some irregularities within the app with everything related to the fonts used.
- I really enjoyed working on this project and learning how much more there is to develop.
