APPLEBEE'S
PROBLEM
The ask for this project was to encourage customers who already go to Applebee's five times per year to go a sixth time. The problem was very vague and we as the team could not address many of the problems within the restaurant that would lead to the people not showing up more often (better quality food and service).
SOLUTION
The first hurdle was to figure out how could we solve the problem which was to design a mobile app where customers would gain points by going to an Applebee's location that would lead to rewards. But we also decided to make our reward app a little different. A lot of apps reward the customer by how much they spend at the restaurant, we decided to reward customer by how many times they go and with how many people they go with. The more people in your group with the app, the more points the group gets.
MY ROLE
My role in this project was to create user informed designs. I needed to truly understand the user as best as I could. The client provided us with a rough persona which we were going by since the client didn't know what we were working on (this was a covert project). I did further research into competitors and also asked if users would actually be interested in an app such as the one we were proposing. Once we got a prototype put together, I was in charge of doing the usability testing on the app. For this, I decided it was best to do Guerrilla style testing since I was able to get quick results and relay those results back to the designer on the team to quickly iterate on the prototype.
RESULTS
This was a very fun project where the client did not know what we were working on but where we also had a large budget (dream project right here). I experienced a war room and a design sprint for the first time during this project and loved the process and seeing how much work we were getting done. I grew personally and professionally while working with a new team, we had disagreements at times but we overcame them. The team and I produced a top-notch prototype for a mobile app in a 6-week time span, there were several speed bumps along the way but we got it done and as a result, the team as well as our company learned and grew from this process.
