Jackie Garfield, Product Designer

Me&u (Formerly Mr Yum)

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

Custom permissions were restaurants' top feature request, and a blocker to landing enterprise customers. We ran research with waitstaff and head office teams that surfaced the need for a tailored experience, letting staff focus on what mattered during service.

My role

Lead designer, working closely with a researcher on discovery through to strategy.

Me&u (Formerly Mr Yum)

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

My role

Lead designer, working closely with a researcher on discovery through to strategy.

Me&u (Formerly Mr Yum)

2023

Designing for waitstaff in high pressure environments

Summary

My role

Lead designer, working closely with a researcher on discovery through to strategy.

The current experience was difficult and overwhelming, especially for waitstaff who juggle multiple tasks while serving customers.

“If I am panicked and we're in the heat of it where there's like hundreds of people here... at the moment I get lost”

Restaurant manager

Our research highlighted an opportunity for a restricted, easy to use view for managers and waitstaff.

Our first focus was to improve item availability, one of the most frequent tasks waitstaff use during service. The current experience was unintuitive and scored low in our usability baseline study

“We have somebody at head office that will update the menu, venue staff can focus on running the venue”

Operations manager

Data showed a large percentage of waitstaff were using their phones to make updates like item availability so focusing on a mobile experience became a priority.

We were also hearing consistently that venues were frustrated with the amount of iPad’s they had to manage.

Findings

Quick filtering by sold out items

Filtering by sold out items made it much easier for staff to find unavailable items and update them when they were back in stock.

Quick filtering by sold out items

Filtering by sold out items made it much easier for staff to find unavailable items and update them when they were back in stock.

Growing need to monitor alcholic drink ordering

As waitstaff aren’t taking orders themselves, it’s difficult to monitor alcohol intake, and take measures to pace how frequently drink orders are placed.

Growing need to monitor alcholic drink ordering

As waitstaff aren’t taking orders themselves, it’s difficult to monitor alcohol intake, and take measures to pace how frequently drink orders are placed.