Part I: Restaurant Description
Established in 1958, Mike’s Crab House restaurant is a renowned restaurant that endeavors to offer a mouth-watering waterfront eating experience on the shores of the stunning South River. The restaurant proudly serves the crabs in the best Chesapeake Bay Tradition for the client’s optimum dining pleasure. The restaurant is situated in Riva, Maryland, a few minutes from Annapolis. In 2012, the restaurant launched Pasadena restaurant. The restaurant offers catering, banquet amenities, and a wrapped goods store accessible to both sea fearers and land lovers. Patron demographic groups comprise single, middle-income grown-ups between the ages of 21-35, wedded middle-income grown-ups between the ages of 30 – 55 with children, and married, retired, middle-income grown-ups aged 60-75. Mike’s has plenty of car park spaces and unrestricted yacht dockage accessible to the consumers.
Making orders online is effective for the demographic clientele of Mike’s restaurant to increase loyalty and alleviate overcrowding at the restaurant. The website consists of a clean and fresh presence which may need to be preserved within the ordering system to make users feel less overwhelmed. The existing menu on the website consists of colorful pictures of every dish that provides an attractive interface to the clients. However, placing orders may be interjected by low network connectivity and continuous adjustments in the menu prices. This paper will focus on developing a strategy to develop the restaurant’s own online food ordering system rather than a third-party vendor. Consumer needs and prospects should be comprehended through research before applying changes to the site.
Part B: User Research Plan
The potential users of the online ordering system would relish easy reservations and rapid, safe supplies at any location. The common aspect amongst users is understanding the internet and therefore would easily circumnavigate and place orders online. Because we are in a technological age, it is important to develop a site that maintains a client’s interest to prevent loss of interest. It is important to acknowledge the type of gadgets clients use in placing their orders.
The restructuring of the restaurant’s website should be attractive and allow clients to place rapid and secure orders. By conducting research, the users’ requirements are identified. Second, it is important to identify weaknesses and strengths based on data entry at the restaurant. The system should enhance the communication between the server-side and client-side while minimalizing the time used to place orders. Therefore, a user research plan is vital in developing the fundamental steps and deliberations while generating a user system. It offers a distinctive description and breakdown of the prospective system user and, at the same time, minimalizing probable occurrences of bugs.
Various research mechanisms would be integrated to obtain sufficient data. Foremost, surveys to the user base would be used to acquire additional information regarding their experiences. This survey would be a great aide in creating the persona and consumer prospects. The review would comprise of the following queries:
How often do you visit Mike’s restaurant?
How often do you order online from other restaurants?
Considering other food online orders, do you prefer ordering through the mobile application or computer?
Did you experience any concerns with your order?
What kind of expectations do you have when placing an order online?
This data will aid in creating a persona that would define the user with additional detail to advance comprehension further when designing the interface. Twenty participants would be engaged in gathering data that would aid the development of a persona. The persona would ascertain every user, objectives, and way of life to comprehend the target market completely. Receiving similar data from numerous users would allow reviewing and restructuring the queries to obtain sufficient knowledge. Integrating the information obtained from the personas would play a significant role in acknowledging the best individuals considered as representative users (Goltz, 2014). Representative users would be founded on their demographics and responses provided in the surveys and conversations. Lastly, the crucial information would be stored to be incorporated as a knowledge base. The information would be stored in Microsoft’s SharePoint, cloud computing to facilitate data safety and future reference.
Part C: Design Strategies
The restaurant’s existing website requires an urgent design to enhance user intuitiveness. To maintain easy navigation amongst users when placing orders, it is important to integrate appropriate visual frameworks. According to Johnson (2010), it is important to execute the guidelines based on graphic design as indicated in the Gestalt principles. The Gestalt standards define individual’s perceptions regarding online ordering systems. To provide the finest experience, the system would mean integrating various Gestalt standards. The system would consist of principles such as figure, ground, proximity, and similarity. Components such as similarity and proximity may be combined to initiate the organizational structure in the system. Similarity may group comparable fields, for instance, names, addresses, phone numbers under contact information, while proximity provides the tags to combine them. Within the restructured system, a new ordering system would be integrated away from the main page, minimizing the level of interruptions.
