Alebrijes Oaxacan Kitchen
Mobile App
UX/UI case study
June 2021 - December 2021
Overview
AOK is a family-owned food truck catering to local neighbors, college students, office workers, and weekend patrons. AOK strives to deliver a taste of Oaxacon food not found anywhere else in the Bay Area. Although their menu may be limited, the focus is on their food quality. To reflect the same authenticity and simplicity, their new app must deliver the same expectation. AOK can expect orders in advance and communicate more closely with its customers with a dedicated mobile app.
I am the only designer for the 6-month duration of this project.
User downloads the app and then places a group order for checkout.
Challenge
Some people are busy and don’t have time to cook for themselves. Some people simply are not interested in cooking and prefer to order out. Whichever one may be, we need to figure out a way to make it easy for them to order food quickly. Ordering food should not be a stressful thing to do.
Goals
The app needs to be intuitive and visually pleasing while acting as a tool to build connections between the customers and the staff at AOK.
Users:
Easily choose what they want to eat
Quickly place a pick up order
Business:
Increase sales and retention of customers
Process
Determined to create a smooth ordering process for the users. I have interviewed a total of 6 users who frequently order from food delivery apps to understand their ordering process better. After hearing their frustrations, I have come up with a few ideations. Still, the best way to test the effectiveness of my designs is to run usability studies with real potential users. From 2 rounds of usability studies, I uncovered seven different pain pains that need to be improved to create a smoother user experience.
Option to choose own pickup time
Users have expressed they would like to choose a specific time for pickup. From the initial user interviews, I have discovered many of AOK’s customers are local office workers making bulk lunch orders. Creating a function to allow customers to choose a time for pickup will also help the business to anticipate for large orders to help minimize backorders and low inventory.
Accessibility issues resolved
Text size and font colors have been updated to meet accessibility issues. It was mentioned the text was too small and hard to see on some of the pages.
“Most Recommended” reworded
Even though the menu isn’t very long, many of the users didn’t notice the most recommended dish because it didn’t stand out with the rest of the content. They also expressed the exclamation point carried an aggressive tone which cause repulsion. To avoid the wrong impression, I have reworded the Most Recommended to Weekly Special, used a different font color, and placed each menu item into a card to make it easier for users to scan.
Faster checkout
The initial wireframe only showed a limited amount of information on the menu. I have taken advantage of the short menu to allow users to check out faster. I added descriptions to each item and a button on each card so users can add the item directly without clicking on each item individually.
Removed button group
Many users expressed they had a hard time finding the reviews. They think "reviews" and "customization" should be placed separately, so I decided to remove it entirely. Users can read the reviews when they click on the star rating instead.
Button fuctions are clarified
During the first usability study, users mentioned they didn’t understand the ‘Duplicate’ button; therefore, I changed it to ‘Save’. The idea is to save the customization for that specific user for future orders which can be found under the Favorites tab in the bottom navigation. In addition, I revised the remove button and added an ‘individual total’ as an extra feature.
Navigation labels renamed
Confusions were raised with the bottom navigation bar. Some users thought the “order” button was where they checked out. I have changed the “order” button to a “favorites” button for quick access to the user’s most liked items and for previous items that they have “saved”.
My takeaway
Throughout this project, I learned that our designs would constantly change and that I shouldn’t be too attached to our initial ideas. What we thought would work ends up being scrapped, and it’s okay. In addition, the feedback we receive from usability studies is extremely valuable because it optimizes our app’s design and allows us to see what we haven’t considered before.