An app that provides data driven solutions for small scale restaurant owners
Background
The area of focus for this project was owners of small scale restaurants. Such restaurants are numerous but do not individually generate a lot of business. Moreover, virtually none of them are listed on common Indian food aggregators such as Swiggy or Zomato. Potoba offers a way to help these small business owners strategically expand their sales and customers with a data driven approach.
Persona Story
Rajeev runs a small restaurant and just manages a small profit each month. Even the smallest of waste at the end of the day hurts him. He currently writes down his orders on a small notepad.
He lacks a formal record of his daily sales.
Since he does not keep records for daily sales, he knows only notionally which of his dishes sell well and only has a very rough estimate of how much sales he manages in a month. Over the course of a year it is hard for him to tell if his restaurant is doing better over time or worse.
He lacks any long term insight in his business.
He lacks any long term insight in his business.
He wishes to one day expand his shop, by buying his own space instead of renting. He is saving money every month to this end but does not know how or where he would open his new shop. He plans make this decision based on what little his friends and associates can tell him.
He has no information for his future plans.
He has no information for his future plans.
Problem Statement
The project started as an open ended search for possible design intervention to help owners of small scale restaurants. The exercise was not biased by looking to make an app for the owners but to help enable them through whatever means possible. Based on user interviews and observations, problem areas where design intervention could be made were identified and a three step design solution was proposed.
Design Solution
The design solution was categorized into three steps each corresponding to a different aspect of the same overarching problem facing small restaurant owners, each new step in the solution builds on the previous enabling the user more as he continues to use the app. The three steps are as follows.
1. Organize
The first step for these small business owners needs to be organized. They lack information because they lack organization. The simplest intervention we can make is to have digital records of sales.
2.Understand
The next step in the proposed solution is to enable the users to understand their business. Once digital records of sales exist we can easily show historical data to the users to help them understand trends in their sales.
3.Expand
Finally we address the long term ambitions of the users, who want to buy property for their next or new restaurant by showing them relative sales of other users and associated property rates by area.
Wire-Frames
Branding
Prototype
Users can organize their sales by using Potoba’s simple order management system. Taking a customer’s order is as simple as tapping the dishes ordered and confirming the order,
Users can understand their sales over time with a simple dashboard showing their monthly sales and dishes sold over the month. Using historical data to track growth helps users understand their business better.
Users can view aggregated data from all users on a map interface along with property rates to make data driven decisions on where the best place to open.
On-boarding Experience
As the app would potentially cater to users who may not be smartphone savvy, the on-boarding experience was especially important. The First Run Experience introduces users to the three sections of the app and helps them understand the benefits to each section. Moreover a run-through of the organize section is simulated upon opening it for the first time.
