Smok’d
Local BBQ delivered right to your doorstep.
Project: Smok’d
Role: Sole UX/UI Designer
Duration: Jan. 2023 (1 Month)
Project Vision
Smok’d is a food ordering app designed to allow users to easily order food from a local BBQ restaurant. For this case study, the user’s main problem was lack of mobile ordering to this restaurant. Users can only call in to order and have no way to track their order.
Challenges
1) Design a seamless on-boarding experience for familiar and unfamiliar users
2) Create a unique visual experience for the user while maintaining products as the focus
3) Ensure a linear and easy purchasing experience
User Research
Pain Points
1) Call to Order Food
Currently, a customer must call the restaurant to order food. This is not accessible to people who cannot talk and must use a more inclusive medium.
2) Accessible App UX
Some mobile ordering apps do not offer accommodation to people who are color-blind, creating a difficult user experience.
3) Inefficient Ordering
Users mentioned the time wasted either re-entering their payment/address information, would like to see faster alternatives.
4) Bad Order Tracking
With a user’s busy life, waiting around for their order to arrive wastes time. They would like to see a more transparent and efficient tracking system.
In this project, I focused on users’ potential biggest pain points, which proved to be very effective in designing with user experience as the focal point. The main research methods that were the most useful were competitive analysis and constructing personas. I began by asking myself some key questions about user pain points before beginning the design process.
Meet The Users
Jamie is a very busy mother of 3 that is finishing her nursing degree. She has very little time to make food at home and finds herself ordering food most nights. Jamie is tired of the same restaurants on popular apps and wishes for something new. Since she is so busy, she wishes that food ordering apps were more streamlined.
Name: Jamie
Age: 43
Education: In Nursing School
Family: Married, 3 children
Occupation: EMT
PRIMARY
Trevor is a new father that recently started his consulting firm. He has a varying schedule and does not have much time to dedicate to making food. Trevor is color-blind and finds great difficulty with apps that do not provide accommodation. He would like an app where he can easily order food for him and his child.
Name: Trevor
Age: 31
Education: BS in Civil Engineering
Family: Single, 1 child
Occupation: Consulting
SECONDARY
“I love how easy it is to order food for my kids, but I get tired of the same 5 places to eat.”
“I miss having authentic BBQ, I don’t have time to make it myself at home.”
Competitive Analysis
I researched two potential competing companies, one direct and one indirect. Smok’d has the opportunity to capitalize on the food app market by bringing local authentic food without users feeling overwhelmed by options.
While the majority of features between competitors were similar, there were still a few notable differences:
Clear Brand Identity vs. Lack of Identity
Over-cluttered Confusing Interface vs. Overly Minimalistic Interface
Lack of Food Sorting Options vs. Cannot Browse Food Casually
Too Many Screens vs. Simplistic Interface
Exploring the Journey
I constructed a user flow of what a simple start to finish journey looks like when ordering food. This helps me understand how users can navigate through the app and allow me to understand user goals from their perspective.
Wireframes and Flow
After crafting preliminary paper wireframes and deciding what works well and what doesn’t, I iterated on how to make the user’s flow as seamless as possible. Deciding what was the best user experience took a lot of time, but led to a worthwhile outcome.
Usability Study
Three questions that were asked during the usability study were:
“What frustrated users most about navigating the app?”
“How long does it take a user to order food from the app?”
“Are there any parts where users are getting stuck?”
Round 1 Findings
Users do not want redundant icons
Users want more confirmation with checkout
Users want more visual indicators
Round 2 Findings
Users had a hard time reading with the current colors
Users want an onboarding screen
Before Study
After Study
Challenge 1
Despite Smok’d focusing its primary audience on frequent mobile ordering users, those who rarely or never used a similar app should still feel comfortable using it. By implementing intuitive gestures and common iconography, I believe I have achieved that.
An Intuitive Experience
Challenge 2
I wanted the app to provide a distinct and memorable experience, while not distracting users from the products. By utilizing a bright purple background and negative white space, the users are still drawn to the product without everything feeling bland.
Fun, Colorful & Focused
Challenge 3
By condensing payment, address and delivery time into a single screen, the user does not have to waste time confirming their information in checkout. This allows for a much faster checkout.
Streamlined and Simple
Style Guide
Diverting away from overly simplistic food ordering apps, I wanted to highlight how memorable and distinct an app’s experience can be for a user. BBQ food is full of flavors and vivid colors, and I wanted to capture the essence of that. To ensure the user does not get too distracted, major sections of the app have negative white space as a background.
Takaways
As someone who loves supporting local businesses, the idea of Smok’d was something I really wanted to get perfect. I wanted to highlight that something as simple as ordering food can still be a bright an colorful experience. This project was the first time I used goal-oriented design process, which I think proved to be very useful. In future works, I definitely will be using that process again while focusing on user personas and journey maps. Its important to not think of how to design an app based around how much the business will profit because at the end of the day, the users are what keep an app alive.
Check out the process deck below to see the full Smok’d creation journey!