How would you design a cafeteria app for employess?

Approach:

I would ask some calrificaiton questions to understand the business goal that we are trying to achieve, then define the user segments, then pain points, and solutions to solve them.

Problem background:

Candidate: Making it easy for the employees to obtain the food and drinks is key to improve the employee experience and satisfication, which in-turn lead to a better productivity and boost the company performance.

Are we trying to create convience for employees by cutting down the time it takes to obtain the food of choice for the employees.

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Are we doing only pick up or also delivery.

Interviewer: Both

Candidate: Are we offering 24 hours service or only day time service.

Interviewer: 24 hours service

Candidate: Are we delivering only within campus location or outside as well

Interviwer: Only within campus. Outside campus use case is well served by food delivery apps.

User segments:

A) Regular hour workers

B) Silent hour workers

To serve the use case that affects the large number of employees, I would choose the regular hour workers, this cohort is bigger in size.

User pain points:

A) Ordering: 

Group order: Employees have to spend lot of time to switch from their work related apps like outlook to other food deliery apps to arrange for a food whey plan to organize the meeting or when they organize the event.

It is also difficult to co-ordinate and get the food preferences of all the meeting attendees.

Solution:

I would a cafeteria app that would be both standalone and that could also be integrated into the office outlook. That way, when organizer set up a meeting, he/she can include the cafeteria plug-in on the invite. So invitees not only allows the employee to respond to the meeting but aslo to order the food of their choice.

B) Timely meal: Employees sometimes do not remember to get the food timely during their busy schedule.

Solution: Cafeteria app would be integrated with the suite of microsoft office products. Thus this app would know the employee schedule for the day. There by it can help the employee to plan their meals for the day.

For example, by integrating the cafeteria app with the outlook, this app would know the employee meeting location and the timing. So when outlook provide the meeting remainder, it would offer the intelligent recommendations as it relates to food. 

Because cafeteria app would be also integrated with the employees details data such as ethinicity (cue for food cuisine preferences) and medical records of the employees, thereby it can offer the food recommendations, along with the meeting remainders.

C) Payment: Employees prefer to be able to order the food without having to add payment information which is cumbersome.

Solution: On the company device that employees get at the time joining the organization they would aslo receive this cafeteria app. That way employess do not need to add payment info rather they simply elect to pay from their pay check where money would be deduct from the pay check.

D) Pick up or delivery: Employees cannot get the food delivered to their desk when they are in the middle of the important call or cannot get the food delivered to the meeting room due to security concerns. Rather employees have to walk to the reception to get the food. It is incovinient and they incur time in the process.

Solution: Caefteria app will be intergrated with the company tool that host the employee location in the campus. So it would delight the employee by delivering the food right at the employee location whether it is their desk or meeting location.

Summary:

This app would allow the employees to order food right from the productivity app that they use such as outlook, remainding the employees to take food on time, enable employees to have the option to pay directly from pay check and lastly would have the food to follow rather than the other way around.

Clarifications

1. What kind of app are we talking here (Mobile App, Web App)? - Mobile App

2. Any particular goal are we trying to achieve with this app? - Make the experience more efficient and help plan meal time better

3. This cafeteria which we are talking is a shared one among companies or private one? - Shared

4. This cafeteria are we talking, is it like a full meal cafeteria or just tea/coffee/snack bar type? - Full meal cafeteria 

5. In this cafeteria does a person pays or is it like free? - Free

6. And is it free for all kind of employees? - Yes

7. Can this cafeteria be accessed by guests? - Yes 

Rephrasing the question

We want to design a mobile app that needs to be used by employees to reduce wastage of time in a shared full meal cafeteria where everything is free for everyone

User Segments

1. Company Employees - People who are the working in different companies and have their meals at the cafeteria

2. Cafeteria Employees - People who manage the cafeteria

I would like to focus on Company Employees as they are the largest base here and have the most pain points in terms of meal experience

User Journey

1. You decide to have the meal

2. If with someone, you ask around

3. If alone you proceed

4. Reach cafeteria

5. Show some identification

6. Figure out what to eat by visiting various counters

7. Figure out the appropriate seating

8. Eat

9. Put the dishes

10. Go back to work

Pain Points

1. You sometimes are not able to figure out whether a person is in cafeteria or not

2. Sometimes you forget to get your identification at your workdesk which causes problem if you reach at the identification section of the cafeteria

3. Knowing the availability of the right size of seating beforehand to plan the time right is a problem 

4. If you have come alone to join a group and you don’t know where your group is seating becomes a problem

5. In shared cafeteria, to figure out where to sit is a problem.

6. If you are new, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out the navigation path in a cafeteria

7. Figuring out what to eat

Prioritizing Pain Points

I will like to prioritise on the basis of the goal we had to making the experience more efficient and help plan time better so let’s evaluate where the does the most wastage happens.

1. Low (You already have some other channels to figure this out)

2. Med (Depends on the rules some places it is strict some places it is not)

3. High

4. Med (A lot of time people go together)

5. High (Similar to point 3)

6. Low (Typically new employee go with their teams or generally somebody accompanies them and then there are signages)

7. Low (Most of the time they have fixed menus or you already know what is present)

For further discussion, I would like to focus on Point 3 and also try to solve point 5 with it as both kind of have similar characteristics

List of Solutions

1. An QR code-based entry scanner that calculates the total number of people inside and displays the overall count to people inside count at the gate and also the display is available on demand on the app

2. An on demand live camera feed of the cafeteria

3. A table/seat booking system

Prioritising Solutions (On basis of impact to plan their meal time better)

1. QR Code based entry scanner & notification system

1. Impact - Med (Considering it doesn’t solve for knowing whether the appropriate table size is present or not) 

2. Effort - Low ( Out of box solutions for scanning and notification system are present)

2. Camera Feed

1. Impact - High (Considering you will know what size of tables are available, how many people are present)

2. Effort - Low (CCTV solutions already exists in cafeteria typically)

3. A table/seat booking system

   1. Impact - High (You have a pre booked seat for the time)

   2. Effort - High (Making a booking system is complex as it has a lot of elements)

Metrics

I would like to use the HEART framework 

Happiness -  Capture experience rating every time you log off the work around Rate your Meal experience 

Engagement - 1. Number of people launching the app 2. Number of times people are launching the app with associated time 

Retention - Number of people launching the app daily

Task Completion - Number of people finding the table immediately as they reach the cafeteria ( We will capture the same as a part of the flow)

Trade-offs

1. Privacy concern - some people may not want this kind of live feed to be visible. A solution to that can be that we can show avatar or just color coded boxes rather than actually images

2. It may happen that the seat is lost till the time to reach as may other people may be also watching at the same time - We can have the same information available to everyone watching that how many people are watching the space parallely