The Coop
The Coop
Wedding planning is overwhelming and involves many moving pieces. Ordering food for weddings is often not consistent across venues which leads to confusion and stress for customers. To solve this issue, The Coop, a catering app for a rustic wedding venue, was created to mainstream the food-ordering process and provide customers with maximum customization and visuals of their food.
My Role: UX Designer | Responsibilities: Interviews, ideation, sketching, prototyping, accessibility, usability, evaluation
Design Question:
How might we improve ordering platforms for customers when creating and placing food orders for their weddings?
User Research Summary:
I created and utilized empathy maps, interviews, and observations to deeply understand the needs of the users that this app is intended for. A primary user group identified through research was users who were involved in wedding planning.
Persona Development:
Using the research, I mapped out two personas for a bride who is currently planning her wedding, and the father of a couple who is trying to help plan his son and fiancé's wedding. User journey maps were created for both personas.
Ideation:
The ideation process was started by brainstorming answers to design questions revealed in user research.
Drafting iterations of early ideas of each screen of the app on paper allowed for a quick, visual way to address user pain points. Stars were used to mark the elements of each sketch that would be used in the initial digital wireframes.
Wireframes and Prototyping:
Usability Studies:
Two rounds of usability studies were conducted before moving to the next step of the design. The first study helped mold the designs for mockups and the second study featured a high-fidelity prototype for users to experience the flow of the app.
Usability Finding 1:
Users want to be able to customize and confirm selections before adding it to their cart so I turned visuals of the options into buttons where users can click each option, customize it, and then add it to their carts.
Usability Finding 2:
Users wanted a search feature to quickly find desired menu items so I added a search function in the navigation window.
Accessibility Considerations:
Next Steps:
Next steps include conducting more user research to determine any new areas of need and more usability studies to validate whether pain points have been addressed. Finally, adding P3 recommendations from usability studies into the design.
Takeaways:
The Coop app allows for users to have clear expectations and mainstream communication with ordering catered wedding food. It brings transparency and ease to ordering.
What I Learned:
While designing the app, I learned how many steps and revisions were required in order to truly understand the user that will use this app. Peer feedback, research, and usability studies greatly influenced the design of this app.