Revolutionizing Restaurant Employee Experiences
Empowering 140,000+ Restaurant Employees with a Streamlined, User-Friendly Platform
Our goal was to design and build a comprehensive employee portal for restaurant employees that would allow them to easily report issues, request services from the corporate service desk, connect with their team members, review pay, request time off, and participate in a gamified Q&A system.
We had limited time to complete this project over 5 months with a fast growing organization that was rapidly adding new franchine owners and restaurants. Supporting the teams and franchinse owners required us to approach the overall program with a lean design thinking methodology that foucses on how to get the experience into the users hands as quick as possible.
Defining jobs to be done
We started by gathering insights on the needs and expectations of the employees. This involved conducting interviews, surveys, and user testing with various stakeholders to identify pain points and areas for improvement. We identified different types of personas across the restaurant and support base that created new list of jobs to be done (JTD) to classify and support.
Journey mapping and early UI designs
End-to-End Experiences defined
Armed with our research, we developed user personas and mapped out user journeys, which helped us understand the different paths employees would take to access the portal's features. These insights guided the overall design of the platform, ensuring that it was user-centric and addressed the employees' unique needs.
Personalized Experiences
Rapid prototyping and testing
To validate our design solutions, we created high-fidelity prototypes and conducted user testing. This iterative process allowed us to make data-driven design decisions and refine our approach based on feedback from actual users.
Once the design was validated, we worked closely with the development team to bring our vision to life. We maintained close collaboration throughout the implementation process, ensuring that the final product stayed true to the original design vision and met the high-quality standards we aimed for.
Experiences for everday use
Traveling Support Engineers
Through our analysis, we found that field service engineers often travel to various franchise locations, assisting owners and staff in troubleshooting operational issues. These vital engineers require prior knowledge of the specific issues, related trends, and team dynamics before arriving at the restaurant for faster resolutions.
Gamification
We have created a social Q&A community for restaurant employees to share common experiences, ask questions, and provide answers. This interactive platform, with its gamified elements like leaderboards and rewards, facilitates knowledge sharing and self-service improvement, enhancing the overall customer experience.
Schedule Swap
Franchise owners often struggled with arranging temporary employee coverage. To alleviate this, I designed the platform with timekeeping and payroll tools integrated to enable restaurant employees to swap shifts at their specific locations, earning them overtime and points redeemable for franchise merchandise.
Outcomes and Benefits
This design thinking led solution offers a range of features designed to streamline the employee experience, including:
Issue Reporting: Employees can report issues directly through the portal, ensuring a quick and efficient resolution process.
Service Requests: The portal provides a centralized location for employees to request services from the corporate service desk, reducing response times and increasing overall efficiency.
Team Connectivity: Employees can easily connect with their team members, fostering a more collaborative and supportive work environment.
Pay & Time Off Management: The portal offers employees the ability to review their pay and request time off, simplifying these essential tasks.
Gamified Q&A System: The platform's gamified Q&A system encourages employees to ask and answer questions, promoting a culture of knowledge-sharing and continuous learning.
Follow on included a backlog of enhancements to improve the mobile experience with employee onboarding and a manager's hub to easily track employee status, requests, time and leave and more.
