Eat Unbound Dashboard
Helping restaurants serve customers with dietary requirements
4 MINUTE READ
ROLE
UX Research Lead
TIMEFRAME
2 weeks
April 2023
TEAM
Project Manager, UX Lead, UI Lead, UX Research Lead
TOOLS
Figma, Zoom, Trello, Miro, Canva
PROBLEM
A startup that provides menus for people with dietary requirements needs a dashboard to allow local restaurants to update their menus and view customer analytics.
SOLUTION
Making a web application that’s easy to learn and quick to use will help busy restaurants meet the needs of customers with specific diets.
OVERVIEW
Dining out can be complicated
For those with special dietary requirements, going out to eat can be exhausting. As a vegetarian, as soon as someone suggests a place to eat, I'm comparing menus and counting how many ordering options I'll have.
Our client was the Founder CEO of Eat Unbound, a startup that provides menus from local restaurants to help people with dietary requirements find where and what they can safely eat.
While the public-facing side of the platform was already live, the CEO needed a dashboard that would give restaurants the control to upload and update their own menus. He wanted a high fidelity prototype he could market to potential investors and restaurants to help them understand his vision.
RESEARCH
How can we get restaurant owners on board with a new platform?
In our first meeting, the client acknowledged how busy restaurant owners are and emphasized that ease of use would be key for the restaurant-facing side of the platform. He also explained that this side of the platform would create a sense of ownership for restaurants by giving them control over their menus.
Our team thought that making the dashboard similar to online ordering platforms might make it easier for restaurants to learn, so we interviewed restaurant owners and managers who had experience maintaining online menus.
The people we interviewed about maintaining online menus
After collaborating with the UX Lead to write a script, as the Research Lead I conducted 5 of the 7 interviews we secured.
We were surprised by how many of the interviews preferred using desktop apps- 80% of those who had a preference chose desktop over mobile.
Before the interviews, our team thought that restaurants might prefer mobile platforms for convenience. But when we looked for patterns in the responses, we noticed brick-and-mortar restaurants preferred editing menus on a larger display.
Our initial research had indicated that our client was focused on brick-and-mortar restaurants. At this point, our team decided to prioritize the desktop version of the dashboard over mobile.
IDEATION
Our vision for the dashboard
We conducted a design studio workshop as a team to sketch out ideas before beginning wireframes. The main elements we decided to keep from the design studio workshop:
A “Quick Add” section for easy access to the most used functions
Highlighting menu photos throughout the platform rather than being too text heavy, to reflect what the customer will see on their side
A pill design for the dietary restriction tags
Three elements we kept from the design studio workshop
DESIGN
What does efficiency look like?
The UI Lead created a dashboard that prioritizes efficiency for the restaurants' most common tasks.
She designed filters for dietary restrictions that the restaurant can apply while viewing all the items they've entered into their menu. It included a feature to show additional information about a dietary restriction as a quick reference for the restaurant.
The filtering system was inspired by the customer-facing side of the platform that our client had already developed. Once a customer indicates what dietary restrictions they have, the platform will filter out any item they're unable to eat.
Wireframe of the dietary restriction filters within the Menu Editor
PROTOTYPE
Key features for restaurant owners
The prototype was focused on showing the dashboard’s three main tasks:
1. Editing the current special
2. Adding a new item
3. Filtering items by dietary restriction
USABILITY TESTS
What if none of this makes sense
The UX Lead and I conducted usability tests focused on the prototype’s three main tasks. We maximized relevant insights by reaching out to friends in food service and UX design, conducting sessions with:
A former vegan food truck owner
A UX designer
A UX designer who used to be a restaurant manager!
We got some great feedback about the ease of use:
Plus, we had a 100% success rate for all 3 tasks across all 3 participants!
Our testers also gave us a lot of helpful feedback. The vegan participant pointed out that if the vegan dietary label is highlighted, then the vegetarian, egg free, and dairy free labels should all automatically be highlighted.
The vegetarian, egg free, and dairy free labels are now automatically highlighted along with the vegan label
One tester pointed out that filling in the dietary labels to highlight them actually ended up having the opposite effect and emphasized the only label that isn’t actually highlighted.
“Peanut free” is the only label NOT applied to this item but it was probably the first label that caught your eye!
This was the kind of observation that made complete sense when the participant pointed it out, but it hadn't crossed our minds despite how much time we had spent analyzing the design.
And finally, the vegan participant pointed out that while most people already know that meat, eggs, and dairy aren’t vegan, there are common cooking ingredients that a lot of people don’t realize aren’t vegan, like honey, gelatin, lard, and ghee.
So we listed those out to provide more quick references without the restaurants having to click on anything for additional information.
As Research Lead, I gave a client presentation explaining the usability testing findings and our design iterations. The CEO related to how much the testing feedback changed our perspective, having experienced the same thing himself while developing the existing side of the platform.
NEXT STEPS
We’re not at the finish line yet
The client plans to form a non-profit to help educate restaurants on food allergies, so further iterations of the dashboard could incorporate more features that provide clear, quick explanations of dietary needs.
Until then, we’re excited about the future of the Eat Unbound dashboard!
