Top Bread: Bakery Ordering App
UI/UX design | user research
Role
UX Researcher + UX Designer
Course
Google UX Design Certificate
Duration
Jan 2023–Feb 2023
Background
Top Bread, a bakery chain in the Greater Boston area, wants to create a mobile app to improve its ordering service and save costs on the labor force
Design Framework
Empathize — Define — Ideate — Prototype — Test
1. Empathize with users & define the problems
Top Bread is an Asian-style bakery with a wide range of bread, cake, traditional Asian pastries and bubble tea. Its target consumers are Asian-American and Asian.
To learn about the needs and pain points of users, I interviewed people who often shop at bakeries to create personas and problem statements.
Persona 1
Problem statement
Yushu is a/an Graduate student who seldom cooks, who needs An ordering app that allows her to reserve what she wants at a bakery because She will feel very depressed if what she wants to buy is sold out when she arrives at the bakery
Persona 2
Problem statement
Natalie is a/an Single mother with a daughter who needs Tasting samples or descriptions of bakery goods because She wants to try new bakery goods but is not sure whether they are good, and she doesn’t like fatty food
2. Ideate solutions
Competitive audit
A competitive audit is an important tool for UX research, as it provides valuable insights into how similar products in the market are designed, and how they meet the needs and expectations of users.
In this research, I compared the bakery ordering app of three direct competitors and one indirect competitor.
Key finding of competitive audit
Gaps
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Competitor products don’t show which bakery goods are popular
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Competitor products don’t have search features
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Competitor products cannot track delivery
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Competitor products don’t have the feature to mark favorite items
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The homepage of two competitors has little information
Opportunities
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Marking popular items to help users make choices
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Having search features to help users easily find what they want
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Making sure the navigation bar helps users switch pages quickly
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Making sure the homepage has the feature to meet user needs and looks appealing
4. Test usability
To test the low-fidelity prototype, I observed five friends as they interact with my design. I recorded their behaviors, questions, and feedback, and then turned observations into insights for the prototype.
6. Reflections and key learnings
It is my first UX design project. I get in-depth knowledge of the design system, from conducting user research to creating prototypes.
I feel when conducting user research, there is no substitute for personally watching and listening to real people. The feedback from real people helps us understand users' needs and improve our design. The interview for UX research has some similarities with the interview I did when writing news stories.
As for designing prototypes, I think details are very important. Even small differences in spacing, alignment, and color can influence user flow and give them a different experience.