RESEARCHING THE PROBLEM SPACE

With many of their client’s restaurants on pause during the global pandemic, WAND wanted to use this as an opportunity to step back and critically think about their next steps. Cue, WAND stakeholders approaching our design team. We were tasked with evaluating the current software and proposing solutions to help the software become more user-centric.

As their client base continues to grow, how could WAND more strategically approach modifying their software to meet new client needs, without sacrificing those of their current clients?

What are users struggling with the most? What do they need to succeed?

I’ll bet that most people reading this haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about digital menu signage. While it’s something that for many goes unnoticed during a visit to Caribou Coffee or Auntie Anne’s - some of WAND’s clients -  the software behind it is incredibly robust and intriguing. There’s much more that meets the eye (and stomach!).

Following the kickoff meeting with WAND stakeholders, our design team divided and conquered. I conducted deep secondary research, a heuristic evaluation, competitive audit, along with remote interviews (with chefs, WAND internal staff, and franchise corporate marketing managers), and collaborated on surveys. Having gotten our hands dirty by diving in, our team empathized with the scope and depth of the problem space for both clients and WAND internal staff.

1. Most users are franchise owners or chefs with a middling degree of tech experience, and minimal free time to spend learning a complicated platform. We found that all new users significantly struggled to learn the software, finding the language and overall layout unintuitive. Many users needed approximately 6-8 weeks to understand it, frequently having to reach out to WAND staff for additional help and training when they got lost. 

2. Since WAND has grown its client base, there are now several different types of users (within the corporate and quick serve/fast casual groups) accessing the same menu software, each with several different sets of needs for their digital menu boards.

3. For a number of users, the digital menu board software also requires integrating data from other products: WAND’s point-of-sale and back office accounting, or with other 3rd party softwares (such as Webtrition, which integrates FDA-required nutritional info). This creates a lot of moving parts for chefs and franchise owners to interact with in order to keep their dining location(s) cohesive.

Our team determined that these items could be grouped into tiers of actionable solutions, as they begin to strategize the future of the software.

• Visual design clarity (short-term goal)

  1. Add help modals to reduce customer service help

  2. New, more intuitive terminology

  3. Rework UI according to usability interviews

  4. Create separate user levels

• Modify client interaction models/flows within the software (mid-term goal)

  1. Tabbed task flow

  2. Expand training documentation to reduce customer service help

  3. Progressive disclosure

• Centralize data (long-term goal)

  1. Customizable dashboard

  2. Modularity in services/features

  3. Streamline menu data (smartsheet equivalent)

  4. Connect POS and menu board platforms

All of these items are included in the Findings and Recommendations Report and Phased Roadmap. Here, WAND has a clear outline for how improve the product in targeted, digestible chunks. Starting with small targeted changes now, slightly larger ones next, and giving time to prepare for more sweeping adjustments in the long term.

Even though our team’s involvement on the has project is ending, I wanted WAND to be able to keep up the research and design momentum from the report. To that end, also I provided a research and testing protocol framework to ensure that it is easy for WAND to be able to continue this work.

CONCLUSION

Once users got up and running in the software, everyone we interviewed was extremely satisfied with it. This is a tool that’s proven to increase profitability and improve the customer experience. The vast majority of pain points and general confusion happened only when users were initially introduced to the software. The takeaway? As one chef put it, “we speak food, not computer”. The learning curve was too steep, and the software didn’t match their mental models.

With this in mind, it was our goal to focus on strategizing ways of making this tool just as clear, usable, and delightful for its users on the service side, from the beginning of a chef or franchise owner’s interaction with it.

On top of this, it was also equally important for us to be mindful of the time and effort WAND had already invested in building the software. It’s rare for a design team to be able to start a project from the ground up. So, our solutions incrementally target the problem areas, keeping what works for their clients, while gradually transitioning their longtime clients through phased changes to a new and improved user-focused software. While it was a challenge to work within the tech constraints of such a complex legacy tool, learning how to navigate within them was an invaluable (and realistic!) lesson as a designer.