Cafe Turko, a Turkish restaurant, café, and catering establishment founded in 2012 by Gencer and Süreyya Gökeri, is a cherished family-owned culinary enterprise. Situated in the vibrant city of Seattle, Washington, Cafe Turko specializes in offering delectable Turkish cuisine and pastries. Our team has been entrusted with the project of enhancing the website's user experience to ensure a more seamless and enjoyable online interaction for our valued patrons.
Project Duration: 2 month
Responsibility: UX - UI Designer
Design Process
Discover
Define
Develop
Design
Deliver
HI-Fid Prototype
Ideation
Sketches
Wireframes
Usability Tests
Iteration
User Flow
Card Sorting
Site Map
Problem & Solving
Persona
User Research
Heuristic Evaluation
Competitive Analyses
We conduct user research through three concurrent processes. Ultimately, our goal is to engage online customers and draw them to our website, prioritizing the fulfillment of user needs and, notably, resolving current user issues. In our quest to identify shortcomings in our current website, we employed a well-regarded heuristic evaluation. Furthermore, we undertook competitive analyses to assess restaurant competitors and devise strategies to ensure the restaurant's sustained competitiveness in the market.
Usability test
Users were allocated minor tasks to track their progress and collect feedback on their emotional responses during these activities.
Order for pickup
Users were instructed to utilize the website for food orders, but their progress was interrupted when they encountered a banner displaying a phone number, which prompted them to call the restaurant for online ordering assistance.
Search the menu
The search for the menu constituted another key task assigned to users. While they were expected to locate the menu, an excessive amount of information led to a sense of ambiguity regarding its contents.
Catering order
This task leads our users on a perplexing journey as they encounter a lengthy form requiring them to input various information.
Following a usability test with potential users, several challenges became evident. Users struggled to locate the specific information they were seeking, encountered issues while navigating the menu, found the instructions for "Pickup" and "Catering" to be unclear, and grappled with an excess of information to sift through. Moreover, users expressed concerns about the excessive amount of reading required, the scarcity of pertinent information, and the unattractive presentation of food photos, as highlighted in their feedback comments.
Heuristic Evaluation
In addition to the usability test, our team has incorporated Jakob Nielsen's principles to assess the user experience on digital platforms. It has come to our attention that certain content and their presentation on the current website do not align with the guidelines established in the heuristic evaluation. Below, we have outlined five specific instances where these deviations are observed:
Competitive Analyses
We selected analogous websites and businesses to discern the strengths and weaknesses of our current websites, aiming to gain insights into the strategies we need to assess. The table presented below illustrates the outcomes of our research.
During our research, we discovered user comments on Yelp, which provided valuable insights into the challenges our current users face. Consequently, we opted for an empathetic approach to better cater to our users' needs. We have determined the path to address these needs, with a specific focus on enhancing the pickup process as part of our design improvement strategy.
The findings have directed our attention to certain weaknesses. First, from a functional perspective, the menu appeared to be redundant, and our pickup process lagged behind that of our competitors, with reservations primarily conducted over the phone. In the second aspect, on the visual front, issues encompassed color choices, excessive and irrelevant text, and subpar imagery on the websites.
Our business research has provided insights into the core activities of the café. This investigation has allowed us to identify two primary services: catering and take-out, in addition to reservations and delivery. Recognizing that users encountered challenges with the pickup process, we addressed this issue and proceeded to define a refined pickup process to enhance the overall user experience. Following this definition, we entered the ideation phase.
Persona
Following our interview-based research on food ordering with potential users, we have crafted a more empathetic persona who embodies the users' experiences. Allow us to introduce you to Yusuf.
Yusuf, a 34-year-old nurse residing in a Seattle apartment with his girlfriend, has a strong affinity for savoring high-quality cuisine. His deep appreciation for Turkish cuisine is rooted in the nostalgia it brings from his childhood spent at home.
User Story
They were regular patrons of Café Turko, their beloved and budget-friendly Turkish restaurant, in the past. However, since the onset of the Coronavirus outbreak, their dining habits shifted, opting for takeout instead of dine-in as they used to.
Yusuf's girlfriend, not being Turkish herself, couldn't prepare Turkish meals every time Yusuf craved them. Additionally, after a long day at work, calling Café Turko, placing an order, and scheduling a pickup via phone became rather inconvenient.
However, Yusuf's anticipation grew when he received an email announcing Café Turko's website update and the exciting new features it offered:
"Starting now, you can conveniently order online and schedule a pickup—all on our new website!"
Eager to try this new online ordering and pickup scheduling option, Yusuf promptly visited Café Turko's webpage.
Taking into account Café Turko's business strategies, available resources, the existing content from the old website, and insights from potential users, we have formulated the information architecture process.
Card sorting
Following our research, we created a card-sorting set comprising 42 cards to tackle critical aspects of information architecture. The card sorting was executed in an open-style format, utilizing predefined cards.
Site map
We analyze the outcomes of the card sorting process, along with other pivotal information related to the tasks users wish to accomplish. Subsequently, we craft a new site map with the goal of efficiently guiding users to their intended tasks.
User flow
User flow outlines the stages that shape our process for a given task.
Sketches and Wireframes
Usability test
We analyze the results of the card sorting exercise and other pertinent information related to users' intended tasks, which informs our design of a new site map aimed at swiftly guiding users to their desired actions.
PROJECT TAKEAWAYS
1) It's important to acknowledge that your assumptions may not always hold true. During usability testing, I gained valuable insights into my users and their interaction methods. Sometimes, I've been surprised when they don't notice a button I designed based on my assumptions, opting for different paths to achieve their goals.
2) Designing with users in mind should always be the top priority. I realized that prioritizing the user experience is fundamental in evaluating every product.
3) I've come to understand that iteration is the cornerstone of a great user experience. As I've progressed in this project, I've recognized how continuous refinement can positively impact a product and help keep the business competitive in the market.
NEXT STEPS
As evident from the study, our primary emphasis was on enhancing the user experience, with a substantial focus on UI and color schemes during the website redesign process. Consequently, further attention needs to be devoted to refining color choices and image selection in our next steps.
Additionally, there is a requirement for more user research to streamline and make the catering process more user-friendly. The subsequent phase could involve conducting user research specifically for catering orders.
Furthermore, since the restaurant offers a diverse range of options, including vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free foods, we should explore food filtration and filter rearrangement through research, which could be our upcoming initiative.