Design 01: Order Up!

ASSIGNMENT PART ONE

I wanted to learn about the potential uses of a smart watch from the perspective of businesspeople, so I interviewed the following people:

[Subject #1]

Title: 25-year-old Business Analyst at Accenture

Pseudonym (for anonymity purposes): Andy

Phone: Motorola X (Android)

Andy stores his Motorola in his pocket at all times; if you take look inside his smartphone, you’ll see that he’s a fan of utility-based apps (e.g. Any.do Task List, Venmo, BART App). He likes apps that are relevant and impacts his real life (no gaming apps). Andy is also very particular about aesthetics and design when it comes to using apps on his smartphone. For example, he hates apps with inconsistencies in font, icons, and color. As a matter of fact, he wants all of his apps to have one common theme/appearance in a centralized hub, because he hates switching apps to perform different tasks (e.g. clicking one app to calculate tip, then clicking another app to send payment).

One specific pain point he has with his phone is loading his Bible app in which all he has to do is click the icon and text will appear. This app is simple in that it only contains biblical text, but its load time is disproportionate to the content it provides. Andy’s rule of thumb is that if an app has only one or two main functions, like the Bible app, then it should load instantaneously.

Andy describes another task he performs on his smartphone: calling people. He first clicks the phone app, types in the name of the person he wants to talk to, and clicks the call button. When asked how he’d do this on a smart watch, he said he’ll simply talk to the watch and say: “Call Paulina.” Ideally, there will be no delays and he won’t be required to say a predefined phrase before saying the actual command itself, like “OK Google Now.”

Andy also schedules events on his Calendar app on a regular basis. He does this on a smartphone through a series of steps that he finds tedious: clicking the Calendar app, clicking “New Event” on the top-right corner, filling in the event details, and clicking “Done.” He imagines doing this on a smart watch through a simple voice command, such as: “Coffee with Paulina at Starbucks on March 6^th, 2:00pm.” Then the smart watch automatically creates that event on his calendar without Andy ever having to press a button.

Overall, Andy envisions a world where smart watches are purely voice activated and the information displayed on smart watches are summaries of the top 10% most relevant information on the owner’s corresponding smartphone (obtained through machine learning). He believes smart watches also have the potential to be gesture-based; for example, two smart watch wearers who just met for the first time can automatically exchange contact information just by shaking hands with each other.

[Subject #2]

Title: 24-year-old Digital Associate at MEC, a media agency

Pseudonym (for anonymity purposes): Mellie

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S5

Mellie’s job requires her to talk to different clients at different places, so she’s always on-the-go with her smartphone tucked in her purse. Her biggest pain point with her smartphone is when she’s unable to connect to the Internet. Other pain points include annoying ad popups and her finger accidentally clicking on the wrong button because the screen is too small. Her most used apps are Facebook, Camera, Kakao Talk, CandyCrush, Bejeweled, News, and Yelp.

The task Mellie most frequently performs is sending a text message, which she thinks requires more steps than necessary. She does this on a smartphone by clicking the Messages app, entering the number of the person she wants to text (or continuing an existing conversation thread), typing the message, and clicking the send button. On a smart watch, she imagines doing this with a simple voice command, such as: “To Paulina: I’ll be a little late tonight.”

Mellie is also addicted to playing Bejeweled on her phone. She does this by clicking the app icon, waiting for the game to load, pressing “Start Game”, and playing by swiping jewels in multiple directions with her finger. She imagines that playing Bejeweled on a smart watch will entail the exact same finger swiping movements as done on her smartphone. She’s willing to play Bejeweled on her smart watch if it was offered, but she anticipates the difficulty in swiping her finger on a smaller screen. Mellie would also like the ability to take a selfie with her smart watch, but she couldn’t imagine a way to do so other than physically taking the smart watch off, extending your arm, and aiming the display screen on your face (which is pretty inefficient).

Summary

A commonality that both Andy and Mellie share is their desire to perform voice activated functions on a smart watch. Mellie believes the smartwatch is limited in its ability to provide high-quality user experience through touch, and Andrew wants to avoid engaging with his smart watch through touch altogether for convenience and ease-of-use. They’re also both businesspeople who are always on-the-go and have an appreciation for convenience.

ASSIGNMENT PART TWO:

Next, I brainstormed 14 ideas for new smart watch applications (most of which were outlandish but fun to think about). 

Out of my 14 ideas, I selected the smart watch app for baristas or food preparers that displays a customer’s order. Take Starbucks, for example: imagine there’s a cashier, a cash register for inputting orders, and a smart phone next to the cashier. When a customer walks up to the cashier to say her order (e.g. “Caramel Frap”), the smart phone will detect this voice input and log it as a pending order in the database. The phone will then talk to all the smart watches that the Starbucks baristas are wearing. There are usually 2-3 baristas behind the counter at a time, and each handles a different order. The order will appear on their smart watch and they have an option of “claiming” the order (which means they’ll make it) or doing nothing (which means one of the other baristas will make it). This app is meant to simplify the slow process of passing orders from the customer —> cashier —> barista via an illegible receipt or verbal announcement. Instead, baristas can multitask more efficiently and know which drinks to make just by glancing at their smart watch. This app can also be used in food places, such as Specialty’s Sandwiches. 

I called my smart watch app “Order Up!”. There’s a mobile app on the Google Playstore of the same name, but that app is different in that it allows you to order delivery from your favorite restaurants. Your order reaches the restaurant (on a cashier computer screen or touchscreen, I presume) — but I imagined the smart watch version of the app to sync with the restaurant’s other devices, as well to act as a queue management and food/drink preparation helper tool.

Next, I prototyped my app using construction paper, tape, velcro, and a plastic toy wristband.

I went to Smart Alec’s (a burger and sandwich place on Telegraph) to test my prototype. 

One of the food preparers, Diana, eagerly volunteered to test it.

Diana is a sophomore at Berkeley High School and has been working at Smart Alec’s for about 8 months. She’s very familiar with the food ordering and preparation process that goes behind the counter at Smart Alec’s, so she was the perfect test subject for my prototype.

Diana had never owned or used a smart watch before, so there were some times where I had to prompt her on what to do on my fictitious app. 

Here are some major insights I gathered from watching her interact with the watch:

1. On the “Next Order” screen, it’s not obvious that the user has to click the picture of the food in order to “claim” the order and start preparing it. Diana thought she could just go ahead and start preparing the food, so she suggested that there should be a square border around the picture of the food to make it more obvious that the user has to click it.

2. The order tracking system Smart Alec uses is synced to the cash registers and a big screen at the back of the kitchen. Diana said her neck often hurts from having to look up at the screen all the time to see pending orders, and she would find it much more convenient to look at the information on her wrist instead.

3. Diana really liked the “Statistics” screen. She thought it was useful information to know how what her average prep time is because her manager asks her and the other employees to track it.

Currently, Smart Alec employees track their average prep time by going up to the big screen at the back of the kitchen and pressing each food icon that they finished preparing. But often times, the employees will forget to go back to the screen and press the icon to indicate that they’ve finished that order, especially when the place gets busy. This results in inaccurate calculations that Diana’s manager ends up dismissing. Diana thinks that my app will be more accurate in calculating prep times because the timer is readily available on your wrist and you need to clear it before you can see the next order.

4. Often times, customers at Smart Alec’s will ask for custom orders. Instead of the custom order being readily available to see on the big screen at the back of the kitchen, the food preparers have to go to the cashiers and ask them to verbally describe the custom order. This is inefficient and prone to human error. In addition to my app being able to show step-by-step instructions on how to prepare the order, Diana suggested that the instructions should dynamically change to reflect custom orders.

5. At Smart Alec’s, each order shows up color-coded by type on their big screen. For example: salads, drinks, soups, and sandwiches each have their own color. Diana wanted the smart watch app to also be color coded by food type, which I hadn’t thought of before.

6. Diana liked the “Settings” page of the app. Since I didn’t make additional paper mockups for that feature, I asked her what settings she’d like to change. She said she wanted to be able to adjust screen brightness and choose whether to get vibration or tone alerts for incoming orders. These are features I can implement in a future redesign.

7. At Smart Alec’s, there’s a designated employee for each type of food to prepare. For example: one person prepares all the salads, the cashiers prepare the smoothies, and another cook prepares the burgers/sandwiches. I realized that my app could be modified to account for these designated roles by routing particular orders to the smart watch of the person in charge of making that particular type of order, rather than displaying the order on all of the employees’ smart watches. Diana said that when it gets really busy, the designated roles disappear and everyone just tries to take on as much as they can. This inspired me to add a “Busy” button on my app, in which one of the food preparers taps it to disable the routing mode and as a result, all the orders get routed to every employee’s watch (since they don’t have designated roles anymore during peak hours).

8. Diana initially thought that the app was for customers who wanted to order food at Smart Alec’s. The home screen of my app doesn’t make it very clear that it’s for people who work behind the counter, not the actual customers themselves. That made me consider redesigning the home screen and possibly changing the app name.