EatNow: User Research

Domain Research Interview Protocol

Subjects

Our interview subjects included both undergraduate students and parents of students to get a mixture of perspectives.

Introduction

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
How often do you eat at one of the on-campus dining locations?

General Dining Experience Questions

Can you tell me about a time you had a bad experience at one of the dining locations on campus?
- What frustrated you about that?
- What do you wish had happened?
- Probe, if necessary
Can you tell me about a time you had a really good experience?
- What happened then?
- How did you feel?
- What could have made that experience even better?
- Probe, if necessary
Do your good/bad experiences affect how frequently you return to those dining locations?

CMUEats/Dining Website Experience Questions

How does the website help you visualize the many different food locations on campus?
How does the website help you plan your day around long wait times?
What features do you wish the dining website included?
What are the most helpful features on the dining website?

Conclusion

Ask any follow-up questions that were brought up during the interview
Thank them for participating!

User Testing Interview Protocol

Introduction

Our dining website is aimed at bringing efficiency in locating dining services across CMU campus so that students and visitors can manage their time more efficiently. We want to see if it makes sense to a new user. This is an assessment of our design, not of you in any way.

Instructions

You are a student who wants a quick bite to eat, but only has 10 minutes before your next class. You want to eat somewhere close to you, but because you’re new to campus you’ll also want instructions on how to get there.

List of user tasks:

Find the restaurant that best satisfies your needs as someone who has limited time to eat
Make sure that the restaurant you choose is not going to get busy anytime in the near future
Figure out how to get there

Questions to Testers

Are the sort options in our main screen easy to understand?
Is the location of the three sort buttons at a visible location?Should the navigation button in the detailed page of the restaurant be bigger? Or even at a different location?

Closing Comments

Thank you for testing our website.

Domain Research Interview Documentation

Interviewee 1: CMU Junior studying Chemistrty

Mentions that at ABP “you just wait like 45 minutes to get a sandwich” because it’s understaffed and “the workers just hate their jobs.” It’s “especially frustrating” when she is trying to study but is getting distracted by her hunger.
Loves the Exchange because the workers are really nice and they always have a long line but they manage to get through everyone quickly. She also loves the Exchange because the workers are really happy
Started eating at UC because that’s the only place she knew from when she visited, and that ended up being the place she ate the most, even after walking around and learning about new places
Never uses the website because she sees food as a social thing (she would never “randomly go to the Exchange”, so she doesn’t care much about what the website has to say) Riya has qualms about the CMU dining website--she wishes it had a nicer UI, or that it were something you could download instead of having to search for it every time you want to use it
Ate food on campus for two years but this year has relied more on groceries with a fund set aside for eating out. This has been much better for her economically as well as food quality-wise

Interviewee 2: CMU Sophomore studying Chemical & Biomedical Engineering

Is frustrated by the inefficient lines at La Prima, especially after classes let out
Favorite CMU food is the pound cake from ABP. She also loves the convenience of being able to pick it up easily
When she was a freshman, she would decide where to eat by going wherever was closest to her--she learned where these places were by walking around. She didn’t think to use the CMU dining website.
No longer has a meal plan; she buys her own groceries and prepares her own food.

Interviewee 3: CMU graduate student, working towards a Masters in Computer Science

Has only eaten on campus a few times; she tends to eat food from home. However, she drinks a lot of coffee on campus
In her first few months on campus, she didn’t even realize that the dining locations in the UC and Resnik existed, because she spends all of her time in the Gates-Wean complex.
Likes to shop at Kohli’s, the Indian food store on Craig Street. She prepares Maggi noodles, which she describes as “the Indian version of ramen.”
Once tried Taste of India and was horrified by how unauthentic it tasted. She also noted that the cashier was quite rude.
Will occasionally grab a coffee at La Prima. However, the lines are super long, and it’s frustrating wasting time in those lines when she has a lot of work to do. Chandra often studies in Sorrell’s Library, and will crave La Prima coffee because it’s so close.
As the president of an acapella team and a graduate student, she leads a very busy life. She would appreciate any way that the dining website could keep her from wasting her valuable time.

Interviewee 4: CMU parent, businessman by profession

The first time he visited, he wanted to get a visual sense of where the many variety of restaurants were located because he was new to campus and didn’t get to choose where to go.
Had to eat at Reznik House just due to convenience because it was located closest to his daughter’s dorm and because it was clear to see that Reznik was a food place.
Had mixed feelings about the curry place at Reznik. He was happy that he could have Asian food but was dissatisfied about the lack of variety of curry flavors, unfriendly customer service, and unclean dining. He wish he had known the quality of the food service before coming.
Hears a lot about the food and his daughter's overall satisfaction about food services. He wishes the lines were shorter so she can get her food quickly.

Interviewee 5: CMU sophomore studying Decision Science

Only got to know iNoodle, which is now one of his favorite restaurants in the second semester of his first year through word of mouth. He wish he knew earlier.
In general, he thinks that some restaurants like the Exchange and iNoodle are hard to find.
During weekend lunch, he wasn’t sure which restaurants were open and checked the CMU website regularly to see opening hours for food places.
He used Google Maps to see how long it would take to get to different locations because the CMU website didn’t tell him.
He was willing to walk far to get the food he liked. He lived in Donner his first year and even though it took a 15 minute walk to get to iNoodle, he would do so. But now, as a sophomore, he eats based off of Uber Eats and Whole Foods door delivery. He finds these options to be higher quality.

Interviewee 6: CMU sophomore studying Fine Arts

Doesn’t eat on-campus very often - maybe once a week
She has bad experiences at Resnik cafe and UG because the workers are very rude and she feels like it’s obvious they don’t want to be there.
She wishes there was less hostility because she just wants to get her food!
Loves the Exchange and ABP because the workers are really nice
Interactions really influence whether or not it’s a good experience, however, she goes back to resnik because it’s the closest dining hall to where she is
Location and the amount of time she has in her day are really big factors, but also how many blocks/dinex she has. If she didn’t have dinex/blocks, she wouldn’t eat on campus.

Interviewee 7: CMU senior studying ECE

He eats on campus a lot more than other upperclassmen - around 3-4 times a week
He has bad experiences at iNoodle because the employees are always really rude and listening to their own music, so sometimes they mess up his order. They’re also really impatient. He wishes they were more serious about their jobs
He really likes ABP and Entropy simply because of the people - they’re always really cheerful and make an effort to talk to you
Even though he has really bad experiences at iNoodle, he goes there a lot because he likes asian food and there are no other places on campus where he can get that.
Interactions are a really big factor because he thinks anyone working at a restaurant or food place is considered a service job and how you act is a big part of that

User Testing Interview Findings Summary: Low Fi Prototype

The flow seemed to make sense to our classmates. However, they pointed out some navigational problems that came about when they tried to go through the screens. For instance, we realized we were missing buttons that help users get from one screen to another. There was no “back” button if you accidentally pressed something. There was no “home” button or logo for users to press to get back to the home page. When users press into a dining location, they only get one option to press, which is the map function. Our peers suggested that we could broaden those options to include menus or ratings, even though the main feature of our app was efficiency and we wanted to highlight a map.

User Testing Interview Findings Summary: Mid Fi Prototype

Users noted the inconsistency of headers, and how each wireframe did not have a home button. Although users noted that the “backward” button was clear to understand in navigation, we didn’t have a home button that showed our website’s logo. In our next draft, we want to include a logo of our home screen and add a header with the home button.

Another area of confusion we noticed was the map. A lot of users either didn’t know what to press next or went straight for the “start” button, instead of the “directions” button like we had intended. When asked about it, they noted that they were under the impression it would start automatically because the name of the restaurant was already auto-filled in the top search bar. We are considering getting rid of the directions button altogether and having the directions start automatically. Currently, our map also doesn’t allow the user to change what’s in the search bar in the map screen, but we might change it so that they can search for any restaurant they want.

Users seemed to like the sort function, but were confused about which direction the restaurants were sorted in. For example, for wait time, one student asked about wait time, “It sorted from shortest to longest or the other way?” To reduce this confusion, we want to add more information on the home screen before they click into the more detailed screen of each restaurant. We will add wait time, distance from user, and ratings, depending on what they’re sorting by.

Users also liked the simplicity of our app and the fact that it was not too cluttered because it went well with our goal of increasing efficiency and maximizing their free time. They noted that our app was “clean and did the job.”