Project - USeat

My role: Function Design

What is USeat?

USeat is a mobile app that aims at helping users to find out where to dine on campus Smartly, Quickly and Efficiently, shortening the waiting time for food to improve user experience.

UI Prototype

How did we get started?

Needfinding

We have taken the contact approach and constructed 10 semi-structured interviews based on these 5 questions.

1. Have you ever heard of any intelligent facilities in UST?
2. What do you wish to be more intelligent in UST (e.g. technology, equipment, etc.)?
3. What are the existing solutions?
4. Are you satisfied with the current approach?
5. What improvements would you suggest?

The results show that intelligent facilities are often overlooked. The main reason is either they are too niche for average users, or the so-called “intelligent facilities” are too dumb to be considered intelligent.

What did we brainstorm?

Mindmap

After analysing the needfinding results, we have constructed a mindmap to organize and visualize the user's needs. Catering service is the need that we have summarised. Therefore, a dining app will be designed and prototyped.

POV: User Persona

We have created 3 user personas - student, staff and canteen manager. These help us to understand deeply the user's needs in terms of different aspects.

POV: Ideals & Constraints

1. Students and staffs need to finish their meal within a controllable time

2. Students and staffs want to spend their lunchtime efficiently

3. Students and staffs want to find the available or favorite canteen quickly

4. Students and staffs want to find out places for gathering easily

5. Restaurant operators want to do better estimation on their preparation work before peak hours

6. Restaurant operators want to fulfil customers' orders as soon as possible

GOMS

We initially thought of 3 methods for achieving smarter catering service in UST. They are: developing a Mobile App, installing LED Screens or Ticket Machines in front of every restaurant.

These methods act slightly differently in terms of their operators, for example, a ticket machine needs your mobile phone to work with, while LED Screen requires all users to check restaurant status on a particular big screen.

Ideation

Ideation mindmap of a solution that provides a more intelligent dining experience on campus.

Storyboard

It is very hard to find available seats at peak times. But by using our app, you can easily find where to dine.

Verification

Speed Dating

We have conducted speed dating with interviewees. Most of the interviewees appreciated that the app helped find a canteen with fewer people. Here are the comments received from interviewees.

Thoughts about USeaT:
1. Helpful and easy to use, finding a canteen in a smart way.
2. Showing the percentage of occupied seats may not be helpful, it might be more issues on efficiency - the time spent in queueing for ordering and grabbing the food.

Existing Solutions:
1. Just use personal items to occupy seats - but have a risk and inconsiderate to others
2. Just avoid peak hours - but bad for their habits, and may not be feasible for staff

Possible Improvements:
1. Difficult to find seats even when knowing there are seats left, and some said: “I just want to go to that canteen!” - so we need a seat booking system
2. We need an expectable, perhaps faster time for getting the food - so we need a pre-order function

App Design

UI Design

Home Screen

Canteen Screen

Map View

Map Navigation

Notification Screen

Setting Screen

Features & Functions Design

Real-time Canteen Status

1 - % Full
2 - Seat availability
3 - Order waiting

Canteen Searching

1 - Map (location)
2 - Name
3 - Category

Canteen Sorting

1 - Location
2 - Availability
3 - Rating

Menu & Order

1 - Menu
2 - Link to order
3 - Contact No.

Rating & Reviews

1 - Taste
2 - Services
3 - Hygiene
4 - Price

Notifications

1 - Updates
2 - Announcements
3 - Promotions
4 - Discounts

What I have learned?

Reflection

Interactions between computers and humans should be as intuitive as a conversation between two humans. Therefore, what do we need to know so as to create an intuitive user experience is a purpose of taking this course.

We started this project by finding the need of HKUST students, collecting their perspectives to generate our final solution is the way of understanding and learning from the user. The goal of our project focused on how to improve the user experience through low-cost and sustainable development, fulfilling the users' needs and expectations would better achieve HCI.

This project provides a comprehensive interpretation and perception of the user’s catering need to me, which helps me to think as a user instead of a developer. As the development is totally dependent on the end-user, we need to accurately design every step to make sure the user can get benefit from it. In this case, helping the user to find out the most comfortable place to dine in a short time is what we care about and a goal to achieve.

Finally, I took part in the function design in this project, turned the ideation into function through our brainstorms. However, we could not implement such kind of product without the beautiful UI design and team cooperation. Thanks to our teammates, we can keep our team spirit continuing in future projects.