A dynamic
table plan for structure and overview
table plan for structure and overview
My Role
⤥ Responsibilities
Ideation, user flows, end-to-end
prototype & measure
Ideation, user flows, end-to-end
prototype & measure
⤥ Output
Design the table plan feature for Web app and iOS
Design the table plan feature for Web app and iOS
⤥ Team
Backend Developer, Front End Developer,
Product Director
Backend Developer, Front End Developer,
Product Director
The Challenge
Superb was growing until we hit a wall due to the lack of features, making us fall behind some of our competitors. One of them was a Table Plan. This was the first feature I would work on as a product designer. Besides this personal challenge, I also had to deal with the fact that our clients were always busy and unresponsive towards giving feedback and interviews for general questions.
I was anxious and blinded - Would I be able to learn what I needed to for this project? I spent time on stakeholder interviews, experimenting and failing. I learned the importance of collaborating with product management and involving engineers in research.
Would it be enough to succeed? Fortunately, it was. I learned about a new development process and created a much-needed solution in record time. As a result, we had an astonishing adoption rate in the first month of release and a feature that made potential customers much more likely to join superb.
I was anxious and blinded - Would I be able to learn what I needed to for this project? I spent time on stakeholder interviews, experimenting and failing. I learned the importance of collaborating with product management and involving engineers in research.
Would it be enough to succeed? Fortunately, it was. I learned about a new development process and created a much-needed solution in record time. As a result, we had an astonishing adoption rate in the first month of release and a feature that made potential customers much more likely to join superb.
The Design Process
Let's play The Sims
During the research, there was one saying from a stakeholder that stood out for me. 'Basically, what our customers want is to be able to play the sims inside our platform. So alright then, let's try to give that to them.
We have two main types of user cases for this feature: the manager and the waiter. For editing the table plan view, there will be a restriction for only managers; however, the table plan as an overview tool will be open for all users. There needs to be this differentiation inside the platform.
Splitting into
Iterations
Iterations
Since this was quite a heavy task for development, we decided to split the release in two due to the drag and drop solution and since it was a completely new feature. First, we would release the 'map' version, so restaurants could start 'building' their restaurants in the software and map where all the tables were.
The second iteration was a complete overview of the reservations, who is seated, who is coming, and which tables are available for potential walk-ins.
Future Possibilities
This feature is very scalable and allows many different views to be added in the future. An example could be which reservations are close to their end or which course the table is currently.
Besides new possibilities, we closely measure and analyze how the table plan is used and make usability improvements as needed based on recorded sessions, heatmaps, and analytics.
