UX/UI Designer and Researcher

Lance Nichols

Mai Nguyen

Julie Clarke

3 Weeks

Figma, Miro, Invision and Trello

Many popular restaurants in the CBD are walk-ins only but this creates difficulties for staff and frustrations for customers. Qup app is a queue management system that increases table turnover by providing the best waiting experience for customers and host staff.

-Help customers to be able to use their time more effectively while waiting for a table.

-Cuts the time-consuming task of crowd control while streamlining the process of queue management. 

Direct Competitive Analysis 

my partner and I did 5 user interviews to understand our users’ experience lining up at restaurants when they didn’t plan ahead and reserve a table. we found out that: 

 - Users feel frustrated while they observe a long queue in front of the restaurant that they intended to dine in, especially during covid when people are more aware of social distance nowadays.

 - The weather conditions alway influence users’ decision on whether or not they would like to queue outside the restaurants.

- All of the users prefer to have the choice to queue online so they can use the waiting time to walk or shop around.

We also did a survey and got 40 responses. Among those responses we found out that:

- When people try to get a seat at a restaurant, except for online booking and reservation, there are a great number of customers with (66.7%) of them choosing to Walk-in the restaurant for their dining experience.

- The maximum waiting time people are willing to spend queuing at a restaurant is 20 mins.

- When talking about Notification Methods, 43.6% of users are willing to download an app for Push Notification, Nearly 90 % of them are comfortable providing their Numbers for Text Notification, and only 28.2% of the users would like to Physically Wait in line.

Helena is studying her bachelor of communication at the moment and she also works part-time as a receptionist in the busy Melbourne CBD area. Helena has a very busy life working, studying, and trying to enjoy her personal life. Therefore time management has always been her goal and she likes to be organized and efficient in order to save time.​​​​​​​

Qup! will be designed to achieve an easy flow and efficient method of virtually queuing up when waiting for a table at a restaurant for Walk-In customers.

We have observed that people prefer to utilise their time more effectively by having the option to not be physically present while queuing in line at a restaurant.

How might we improve the current experience to help our customers better organize their time while waiting for a table?​​​​​​​

as a busy office worker, Helena only has 1hour for her lunch break, and she has been very frustrated wasting so much time lining up for a table during lunch hours. But things had changed until she discovered Qup. With Qup, Helena only needs to scan the restaurant’s QR code, enter her basic information with just 3 easy steps and then Qup will tell her how long she needed to wait and she could actually leave the restaurant and use the waiting time to do some grocery shopping. Helena is very happy with her Qup experience and she decided to download the Qup app for an easier and more efficient experience next time.

After brainstorming with the I like, I wish, and What if Method, in order to make a fast and easy experience for our customers, we came up with the solution to first build up the website version of the Qup system to encourage customers to scan restaurants’ QR code to book and queue online with Text Notification. The users also have the option to view the menu while waiting virtually and they are encouraged to download the Qup App for easier future experiences as well.​​​​​​​

After conducting 5 usability tests on our low-fi wireframes, we found the following issues:

- Breadcrumb is confusing, would prefer a progress bar instead

- Users dislike pop ups

- Would like to be able to view the menu while waiting 

- Design requires more iconography

- Key information needs to be bigger

- User asks for a logo and title

- Confusion on webpages and text screens

- Likes the display of popular menus, thinks it’s the highlight of the pages

- Design lacks UI components, appears plain

We've used HTML, CSS and jQuery for our responsive web page for business users.

- We would like to developing Qup app version customers 

- Have the option to select menu with payment option

- Working on a user flow for businesses and further develop Qup for business