Credits - Personal project (Madklubben)
Activities - Sketching, wireframing, prototyping
Tools - Illustrator, Marvel, Principle
Initial thinking
Recently, on my way to an interview, I passed Grill Royal and I saw this man get out of his car. The man's name is Anders Aagaard Jensen, and he is the owner the restaurant chain Madklubben.
When I saw him, I started thinking about Madklubben's digital appearance. Why does a successful company, like Madklubben, not have a more interesting and exciting website experience? The current one is functional - yes - and does what customers need it to do. It is more or less responsive - yes. But why don't they put an effort into showing what kind of food they have to offer and make it really easy and seamless to book a table? DinnerBookings booking system is not very exciting to interact with. So I started working on a new experience, trying to give the user a more simple and easy accessible website to interact with.
First stab
Iinitially I thought about two challenges relevant to making the experience better: 1. How can we represent all the restaurants in one experience? 2. How can we make content and table booking more accessible for Madklubbens customers? In order to meet those challenges, I wrote down some key principles to have in mind creating a new experience:
Visual representation
Simple navigation (horizontal and vertical)
Easy accessible and simplified content (e.g. menu)
Getting thoughts down on paper
I started sketching out some ideas on paper, and eventually I made a simple prototype. Using Illustrator and Marvel App, I was able to test the idea of vertical and horizontal naivgation and a booking overlay. To me it seemed like a good way to simplify the interaction and seperate the restaurants from each other, still maintaining fluent a experience.
Second round
Another interesting part of this case is the fact that Madklubben has several restaurants concepts with different identities and menus. That means they face a challenge in making each restaurant stand out, but still have to let them be a part of the whole Madklubben universe. This also applies to other chains Like Cofoco or Retour, which have different restaurant concepts as well. So I started working on a way to show that difference visually, but still keeping it under one roof.
Visual recognition
The idea is to give the restaurants a visual recognition along side with their current logos. Inspired by grid based illustrations and Google street view, I created simple illustrations of the restaurant fronts. Giving this kind of subtle illustration, could help people recognize the restaurants on the street and provide a different visual touch as well.
Mobile first?
Constantly reflecting on this case, I realized that I should be designing for mobile. As Google implies, users enter websites from mobile more than ever. This inspired me to create a new and more intuitive mobile prototype using Illustrator and Principle.
At Great Works we contacted Madklubben to suggest a collaboration. They declined. We therefore wrote Cofoco instead, which gave me the opportunity to try out the idea for another restaurant. So i created the prototype using illustrations from a selection of Cofoco's restaurant fronts.
So what now..?
After spending some time ind the lab, it's time to get in touch with some potential users and hear what they have to say about my ideas. The next thing is to let potential users try out the Principle prototype and prepare some questions about their general restaurant experience. Insights from interviews and tests, would enable me to start working on more specific user flows, and thereby expand and specify the site.
Additionally I have some considerations for future work that would be relevant to look at. I listed some questions below that I think need to be answered...
Present
What kind of customers are using the website and what are their needs?
What is a user looking for at a restaurants website?
When are customers using restaurants websites?
Future
What is the future restaurant experience going to look like?
What is the digital landscape for restaurants going to look like in the future? 2, 5, 10 years…
What are customer’s relationship with restaurants in the future?
To be continued...