Instinctively we as humans group together when we are most vulnerable. Hence, we come together when eating. Our goals were to ensure that people felt connected to each other whilst sharing a meal. By allowing people to make and pay for their own orders we believe we remove much of the conflict that arises from deciding and pursuing others for money.
The brief:
“Design a mobile app that improves and optimises the food ordering experience”
This was a group assignment. We all started research before meeting as a group. When first meeting to discuss the project we used a method called ‘note and vote’ in which we would write our findings/idea on post-it notes and use dot stickers to vote. The note and vote method helped us to very efficiently get our individual findings in front of us, sort through them and decide where we wanted to collectively focus. I believe that by using the post-it notes instead of talking we got ideas out much faster, people were able to think through their ideas before presenting them to others, and, it gave everyone the opportunity to have input.
Insights we collected from this exercise:
1. When I am ordering take away with my friends, I am frustrated with how long it takes as everyone has to pass the phone around to make their orders one by one. Some people take too long to decide and we often have trouble all deciding on a place. I wish there was a way that we could all order separately from our own phones without having to make separate orders.
2. After ordering food for a group I often have to chase people up for the money they owe me. This creates awkward situations and I hate feeling stingy. If only there was a way to split the bill from the app.
We were able to pick a couple of problems that had a similar theme and come up with the following ‘how might we’ statement:
How might we create a food delivery app that allows groups to collaborate with ordering food?
We then began listing as many solutions as we could think of on post-it notes. With the solutions, we organised them on an impact/effort matrix to decide on what solutions would give us the most impact but be fast enough to test in the short timespan. Dot voting was used to decide which solutions we should test.
With a solution in mind, we got the post-it notes out again to work out a possible user flow for our app idea. We talked about how the user would set up a party, invite friends and pay for their own meal. We then split up the work and wrote down the steps on post-it notes constantly revising each step as we went along. Finally, we translated that using larger post-it notes into a paper wireframe.
I facilitated and contributed to the initial design session which I believe gave us a great start as we went from just the initial research we had to an idea we all strongly believed in. My job as facilitator involved explaining the exercises, keeping track of time and ensuring people followed the process. We all worked together using post-it notes to create a user flow and wireframe. I then used the wireframe we made together to make an XD file that we could all use to do user testing.
After the first day, we had clear understandings of what our individual roles were. For me, it was to use the paper wireframe we collaborated on to develop the digital wireframe for us all to test. We then used the wireframe to individually run tests. I think we were able to collect data much faster this way but without a proper way of synthesising the data, we all became advocates for the people who we tested with.
Our moderation guide:
This is the moderation guide we used whilst conducting user testing.
Prototypes
First wireframe prototype
Second wireframe prototype
High fidelity prototype
An issue I found while working on this team assignment was the disruption of productivity by frequent "clarification" meetings. Whilst initial meetings during the planning phase were essential and very beneficial, subsequent meetings were frequently made when people were unsure of their roles or had minor misunderstandings, which took time out of the actual development of our prototypes.
We did, however, have some misunderstanding and some overlap of work. Meetings may have prevented this but I feel that it would have been better solved by structured check-ins. I believe that an Agile approach to clarifying roles and solving misunderstandings would form a better method of group communication on this project.
