Redesigned Mobile Ordering App for the Restaurant Industry

Overview

A longtime client requested our assistance with an internally built ecommerce application used by our client’s customers—restaurants and restaurant chains—to place orders for food and other supplies.

Our client asked us to conduct a usability review and then to enhance the both the user experience and the app’s functionality. Highlights included:

• Bringing restaurant ordering out of an office setting and onto iOS and Android to better serve owners/managers as they took stock of existing supplies
• Adding feature to anticipate what food and supplies may need reordering
• Adding multiple shopping carts to serve the wide range of customers—from a single owner to restaurant conglomerates with many locations—to enable users to shop around various vendors while maintaining orders on a location-specific basis
• Automating ordering of specific, routine items to save customers time.

Solution

The Concurrency project team, including architects, developers and user experience experts, used Xamarin throughout the code rewrite process. The team conducted usability reviews against the entire current application on both operating systems. Through workshops, we generated a framework on how users journey through the app, what services and settings they use and overall impressions. We then gathered recommendations based on the findings and feedback and worked with the development team to prioritize and create a multiphase plan to implement the changes.

The recommendations included some seemingly small and simple things—but with big impacts for users. Some of the visible and behind-the-scenes changes included:

• Transformation of the loading screen. We worked to spice up the standard loading screen instead to include candid phrases (i.e. “we’re baking the bread, hold tight!”) to keep end users engaged.
• Shorter loading times. Implementations were made for both the user experience and development standpoints by examining back-end code and updating as appropriate.
• More visually appealing colors and fonts. The company colors were strong and bold and there was not a secondary color palette to soften the tone of images. Instead of adding complementary colors, we developed an alternative strategy featuring pictures with splashes of the primary colors. The typography and size ratios also were updated.
• Larger buttons. We updated the sizes of buttons to accommodate the app solely being used on mobile devices.
• Accessibility features. On a system level, a setting was created for users with disabilities that automatically changed the viewing mode that adjusted font sizes and colors.
• Permissioning capabilities. Notification and location services were created to sync with the operating system’s settings.
• Offline mode. The project team worked closely with the client to discuss what they wanted to include in an offline version of the app.

After the recommendations were approved and made, beta testing was conducted for a select number of clients. We also conducted additional integration, security and user-interface testing. Throughout this fine-tuning process, we worked closely with both our client’s IT team and its sales force to ensure everything was customer-ready.

We also developed the code to include features that are ready for expansion, should the client wish to bring the app to Windows or extend it via a web-based platform.

Throughout the entire process, we were pleased to work closely with our clients’ internal teams, which enabled a rapid development pace with smooth and quick approvals processes.