CASE STUDY
Maximising menu efficiency and soooo much more.
Australia’s largest independent food buying group wanted to leverage its buying power combined with kitchen menu planning to deliver profits to hospitality venues, streamline paperwork and give kitchens inspiration with specially sourced products and deals.
Year:
2018 - 2019
Role:
Lead designer
Methods:
• Concept mapping
• Data visualisation
• Journey mapping
• Low-high fidelity UI
Managing enormity
The VenueMate project for Your Local Providore (YLP) was the most conceptually challenging and complex of my career, as well as the largest in scale. In fact it may be more accurate to describe it as 8 projects rolled into one. VenueMate is a system that is used by hospitality venues at multiple levels of management, distributors and factories, as well as YLP staff. It has modules to cover everything from recipe and menu planning; ordering, delivery and stock take; to invoice processing and beyond.
For the 18 months that I worked on this project I had VenueMate on the brain, which is why the Module Map or ‘Brain Chart’ as we often called it (below) is quite apt. I designed this map early in the project to identify all of the modules that YLP wanted in a complete product. It outlines the scope of the system, interactions and dependencies, and is categorised by user type.
Note: I’ve changed the names of VenueMate and Your Local Providore as a courtesy to my clients who are reluctant to have their business discussed online where the development of VenueMate and their business operations may be publicly searched. All other details remain the same.
YLP had an existing product that handled some of these modules, but it was built on old tech and wouldn’t accomodate any further development. It was also strongly disliked by YLP customers.
We clearly needed a new build, but we couldn’t build everything at once. The brain chart I developed provided a 20,000ft view from which we could see how modules were connected, discuss their value and decide which to work on first.
Identifying success
Given the scale of modules identified in the brain map, it was important that we understood what the high level wins would look like to target effort on high value modules. From our early workshops and discussions I created a basic chart to identify what success (or value) would look like to a customer and where we could generate it. I also felt it important to identify what failure looked like.
Understanding the ‘products’
Taking in to account what we could see in the brain chart, what would be a high value win, and what would inspire confidence in current users about future offerings, we focussed on recipes and menu planning first.
In order to get it right from the beginning and build effective recipes and menus we began with understanding the smallest unit of scale – the product items. I produced the Product Model (below) to break apart the various attributes of the product and identify the level of abstraction at which they are applied.
With this understanding we designed a system and processes that facilitated easy comparison and swapping of products within recipes and inventory, and that empowered chefs to manage cost, quality and profitability of recipes and menus. It also provided a strong platform to impact higher level modules such as ordering, pricing and tendering.
An often unsung hero
‘Where’s the UI?’ you ask! Don’t worry, we’ll get to that, eventually. It’s my opinion that documentation in the form of I.A. models, diagrams, org charts, user journeys, task flows and so on, were the true hero of this project. Due to vast, multi-layered and densely complex requirements, the success of VenueMate critically relied on this documentation to break down and understand a multitude of users, departments, entities and attributes, and functionality.
These were heavily utitilised to lead discussion, reflect and support our understanding, and generate alignment across stakeholders, managers and developers. We regularly referred back to them for clarification or direction and requirements.
Here is just a small selection of such documents…
A sketchy beginning
Almost everything begins with loose sketches. For me it’s the quickest way to explore ideas and understand concepts. I started this project using A4 bank pads to scribble out my notes, but found that I was plowing through paper, and frequently redrawing and revising the same concepts due to the density of this project. I decided it was time to take a more effective, more environmental and slighty fancy approach to sketching.
I convinced Alliance to invest in an iPad and Apple pencil, which proved to be a gamechanger for my workflow. I could now sketch ideas, duplicate, scale and rearrange elements quickly and easily, to more create generate meaningful concepts. I could also quickly share snapshots of my sketches with the rest of my team to generate early discussion and feedback.
Getting around
I designed two key forms of navigation – firstly to identify the user’s scope or ‘context’ and then to provide access to the modules and features available to them.
In the scoping navigation the user type and organisation are identified and allow the user to drill down within their departmental structure.
For example a hospitality group manager commences at their native department view (Venue Group) and can drill down into Venues and Cost Centers to progressively explore more detailed information.
Scoping navigation was most useful for YLP Administrators who require the ability to access every user type and department in the system. Because they frequently change context within their daily workflow, it was critical that admins could navigate quickly and efficiently across users types and down through departments.
We explored using key commands like tabbing and arrow keys to increase the usability and speed with which this could be done.
Once the user’s scope was established via the scoping nav, the main nav was designed to present the user with a list of modules and features available to them. Because the navigation list could be quite long I used accordions to structure and make more efficient use of screen real estate.
Management with clarity
With so much data available it was important to avoid inundating the user with superfluous information. We needed to identify and clearly represent the information that is most relevant to the user and the task at hand, be it recipe creation, menu building, ordering, stock take, etc. I designed the layouts to display the pertinent information at the top of page and more detailed, granular information down the page. I applied progressive disclosure allowing the user to drill down into the information via top level navigation, tabs, accordions and step throughs.
I designed the recipe cards so that chefs could clearly see the ingredients, quantities, serving sizes and method for each recipe. The design also allowed for display of a snapshot showing how the plate should be presented. I ensured that the design was responsive so that it could viewed on tablets that have come be used by many chefs and kitchen staff.
Reports were designed to provide easily digestible and interactive data on recipe cost, sales and profitability. This was most useful to chefs who were responsible for recipe and menu efficiency and needed to understand the data but were not accustomed to poring over dry spreadsheets. Visualisation makes the information easier to absorb and trends quicker to spot. Interaction allows the chef to filter the data by date range, ingredient, menu placement and view a list of potentially causal factors.
Intelligent ordering on the move
I designed the ordering screens (below) to display all products within a venue’s pantry list (i.e. those attached to recipes) and provide estimated order quantities that are required for restocking. This is known as ‘requirement lead ordering’. The system leveraged data from the stock take, menu planning and sales modules to identify how much stock is required now and in the coming days. Additional information – minimum order sizes, next available delivery and ordering deadlines for each distributor is discretely displayed in the side panel, providing further guidance while keeping out of the way.
VenueMate again leverages the product model shown earlier to facilitate potential product swapping by identifying ‘better buys’ which we defined as comparable products at a cheaper unit price. A better buy can exist in the form of the same product in a different pack size, a similar quality product, or the same product from a different distributor. This empowers the chef to continue optimising recipes even while placing orders.
I designed the screens responsively for viewing on tablets as chefs are often on the move between the kitchen and the stock room during the ordering process. I also took into account the potential for touch patterns which would aid usability and improve the experience of this task.
Clients such as Zagames Group and Pegasus Leisure are over the moon with the way VenueMate empowers their businesses at all departmental levels.
Outcomes
Over 18 months we progressively designed and rolled out all modules within VenueMate. After an epic task that involved 100s of design visuals and 1000s of hours across design, project management and development, YLP’s clients are over the moon with the way our system empowers their businesses at all departmental levels.
Large hospitality groups such as Zagames Group, Pegasus Leisure and the Moonee Valley Racing Club use VenueMate to purchase millions of dollars worth of product every year. It has increased profit and reduced costs by providing clarity and visibility of information and guiding staff to make the right decisions at the right time. The ‘drill down’ reporting features have been described as the new industry benchmark.
Hindsight
Looking back on VenueMate I feel that it shows a step up in my ability to inform the design and development with shared visual documents that guided us throughout the project. I’m as proud of these artefacts as I am about the UI and functionality they gave birth to.
Lack of client appetite for extensive user research testing hampered our ability to validate as rigorously as I would have preferred, however the highly positive feedback from users reflects the quality of UX design work based on other data and insights including access to the deep content knowledge of YLP and support staff.