Brief
I have been living in the U.S. for about 6 years. Most people might assume I know everything about American culture since I'm living here that much period. However, I still question a lot of things, and tipping etiquette is one of them. The country, South Korea I came from doesn't have tipping culture at all. I sometimes struggled and felt awkward in a certain tipping situation since I had a lack of experience. I often witnessed some folks from different countries, struggle how to tip in certain situation. We can't blame those people because tipping etiquette knowledge should be taught and accumulated naturally and gradually while folks are grown up in the community.
So, I thought it would be very useful if there is a tip calculator educating foreigners like international students, workers, or travelers in the U.S. for various tipping scenarios. Eventually, 2 designers including me and a developer are remotely collaborating and developing the android app for the solution.
Market Opportunity - Tipping culture around the world
We discovered that the most countries in east asia and the south pacific area don't have much of a tipping culture. It was very interesting because other continents tend to share the similar tipping customs.
Narrow the target audiences
We wanted to check if there would be enough numbers of users who are in the U.S who come from those east asia and south Pacific area. I researched which countries sending the most people to the U.S. We found out that mostly east asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, are on the list. This validates that there is a market for our new product. Since, our target audiences come from mostly emerging countries, we decided to make the product base on the android platform which is the most popular OS in those countries.
Concept Validation & User Research
We wanted to validate if this conceptual idea applies to the audiences from those countries, China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. With that said, we conducted a Google form survey with key questions on 67 people from those countries to get the quantitative data. We found out that many people, such as travelers, international students, and foreign workers want to understand for American tipping etiquette and they would use the app if it educates them.
Tipping Scenarios Optimization
We figured out the 4 tipping areas, which are Restaurants, Transportation, Hotels, and ETC base on the quantitive data we got from the 67 users. We optimized the top 4 services user picked under each 4 areas.
Restaurants : Table service, cafe, take out, and buffet
Transportations : Taxi, Uber, shuttle bus, and valet parking
Hotels : House keeping, room service, front desk, and limo driver
Etc : Hair dresser, nail shop/spa, home delivery, and tour guide
App Flow
Once the new user opens the app, they walk over location permission and quick tutorials. Geo-location permit helps automatically embed the sales tax on the tip calculation depends on the region.
Then, a user is driven by prioritized scenarios & categories, and then type the subtotal of the service, and then it brings the tipping amount convention to the 3 different types of summary pages reflected from various tipping scenarios. Also, the user can change the tip amount by moving a slider. If a user wants to learn more about the tipping etiquette of the service, they can go to Tips for Tips page.
Style Guide
We applied 6:3:1 color rules base on the dark theme for more sufficient color contrast.
Primary 60% : Dark Green 02, #121617
Secondary 30% : Dark Green, #1E2223
Accent 10% : Money Green, #00FFB4
This rule improves the legibility specifically for this type of heavy number driven design (There is proven research). Sufficient color contrast between foreground and background help the user to read the numbers easier. Also, carefully designed the outlined- iconography to get along Montserrat font for the overall design consistency.
We have 3 different types of summary pages depends on the scenarios. The type A includes the total output and the suggested tip amount slider. The type B has the suggested tip amount ranges. The type C has the suggested tip amount slider. They all link to the Tips for Tips page.
Simple user flow and the intuitive interface designs improve the seamless tip calculation in a wide range of tipping scenarios.
Next Steps
Our next goal is monetization from the app. We are researching possibilities for opportunities. There are number of things we try to add like viewing exchange rates with a preferred currency, tip etiquette for the different countries, and etc. We are keeping all the processes recorded as well, so that we can use the strategy and method for future iterations and other projects.
Thanks for looking! 🚀🚀🚀
