CODE App
Refining an existing product
Background
For this project, I selected an existing product in the market that I would like to refine - changes that I applied to elevate users experience. As an existing user of CODE app, I chose this product to address key opportunities for improvement and enhance its functionality.
What is CODE App?
CODE App provides exclusive discounts (up to 20–50% off food and drinks at various venues) for hospitality professionals. It’s an incredible concept designed to support those in the field, many of whom are passionate about culinary experiences.
Restaurants can choose their discount time frames, usually during non-peak hours, which align perfectly with the schedules of hospitality professionals who typically work during peak times. This arrangement strike a perfect balance on the supply and demand.
Even with its fantastic concept, me, as a user, have experienced difficulties using the app. So, when the opportunity came to do a case study on an app, choosing CODE was on the top of my list.
After delving into the ratings and reviews on the app store, it was clear that all users love the app’s concept (who wouldn’t be?). But, there’s indeed room for improvement in the app’s search experience and functionality.
Discovering the Problem
What do users think?
Despite myself being a first-hand user, I shouldn’t be biased and therefore, I conducted some user research to find out what other users think.
First thing first, ratings & reviews on Apple and Android store!
by Apple Store and Android Store
Users’ Reviews:
“It’s a marvellous concept I fully support, but the app is awful.”
“Good app. Could do with better search function, categories to filter by cuisines.”
“It would be nice though, if it were possible to narrow down the search results (for example by cuisine or price), as its difficult to set through an ever increasing list of restaurants.”
“The concept is perfect, and we are eternally grateful! But the app is very glitchy!”
Secondary research
In the meantime, I read some articles to understand the main concerns of customers when they select a restaurant.
According to Upson (2024), the three main factors of customers care about are price, brand reputation and worth of mouth. These goes very much in line with the reviews on the app stores.
While The Fork (2024), has also highlighted the main 6 crucial aspects that customers concern are food style, value for the money, geolocation, opinion from other clients, brand reputation and the experience.
Reflection:
I could have conducted a few user interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the users pain-point, create a persona to help with the ideation. However, given the time constraints of the project, I prioritised resources that were most accessible. In this case, as 90% of the reviews highlighted the same issue which was aligned with the secondary research findings. I felt confident that the data was sufficient to proceed effectively.
“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole”
Jobs-To-be-Done Framework
The famous quote by Professor Theodore Levitt highlights that there is always an intention or story behind why we use a product.
The Jobs-To-be-Done framework helps us understand the consumers’ story: why and when do users want to use CODE app, and how can it better solve their problems?
On this framework, I identified the main users goal:
1. After a long shift, users want to quickly and effortlessly choose a restaurant that meets their specific criteria for a dinner with friends or family. They need an easy way to find dining options that suit their preferences and utilise their membership discounts, minimising search time.
2. When users want to explore new dining options, they want to have access to culinary experiences at a competitive price, so they can stay updated on current market offerings, understand how competitors are performing, and enjoy diverse culinary experiences while appreciating the work of their peers.
Guerilla Usability Testing
I conducted a usability test with 2 of the existing users to gain some insights.
Tasks to Complete:
1. Find a restaurant for a specific occasion.
You are planning to meet with your friends for a dinner on a Tuesday night, 19:00. They would prefer Indian cuisine. Please search for a restaurant that is suitable.
2. Explore New Dining Options that has good reputation.
Find a restaurants that you have not heard of before and select one you would like to try.
3. Search for a restaurant based on a dietary preferences.
One of your friend is vegan, try to search for a restaurant that is vegan friendly.
Interview Questions:
How easy for you to complete the task? Are there any challenges? If yes, please elaborate.
Were the filtering options sufficient for the restaurant search process? Did you find all the information you needed to make a selection, or are there additional filters or details that could have improved your experience?
Can you describe your general experience while you are completing the tasks? What do you like or dislike about the interface.
Can you describe a typical situation where you would use the app to search for a restaurant? What aspects do you consider when you are selecting a restaurant?
Painpoints
After conducting user interviews, I uncovered a few valuable insights as below.
Users find it challenging to effectively search for restaurants because the app's filtering options are too limited and do not adequately address diverse search criteria.
Users are not familiar with many restaurants listed on the app, and making it time consuming to research of the restaurants on external platforms.
Users want to provide feedback on their restaurant experiences, but the app lacks a feature for submitting reviews
Users frequently experience slow loading times and frequent glitches when using the app
To help with decision making, I mapped out the actions could be taken to solve each user painpoints (colour-coded accordingly) on the impact and effort matrix as below.
The impact and effort matrix helped me to compare and identify actions that should be prioritised, those are likely to be successful.
I decided to focused on the actions that fell under “high impact; low effort”, as they are the “easy wins”.
Developing Solutions
Action A: Refine filter options in user search process
Current Design
by CODE App
Looking at the current filter function is somewhat limited. Users can only filter by a fixed selection of neighbourhoods, dining day, meal periods (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and the number of people.
According to online reviews and the secondary research, it is evident that these filter options don’t fully meet users’ needs, which is a pity for an app that has marvellous idea and intention.
Refined Design
I have redesigned the layout of the filter feature and added several aspects that align with the top priorities of users when selecting restaurants, such as type of cuisine, price range, and dietary options.
Additionally, a sorting tab has been introduced. This allows users to sort the researching result by newest additions, pricing, and distance from the specified location.
Action B: Integrate accessible research tools
Current Design
The current restaurant page shows the conditions of the disccount applies (i.e. available timeslot, items etc.) It does give access to contact the restaurant (i.e. number, emails, their website and instagram). However, none of these would show other customers review on the restaurant, which is a gap to fill as “word of mouth” appears to be one of the mosts important factors when customers select restaurant.
Refined Design
As there are other factors that play a role when customer select a restaurant (i.e word of mouth) since the app doesn’t have its own data base of ratings and reviews. The quickest and easiest way is to give access to users to one of the known reviews platform of the restaurant. Therefore, by adding “google” logo to give direct link to the restaurant information on google map will help to save time on users research process.
Action C: Add a feature to provide reviews
I decided to add a pop-up feature ask for instant feedback after redeeming offer for rate and review for the dining experience, in the user flow.
Introduced an in-built review system within the app, enhancing the seamlessness of the research process.
Even though this action fell under “low impact” in the matrix, however, as it does bot require a lot of effort and it is “nice to have”, I included it in the new user flow at this stage.
User-flow
To Sum up
It has been a fun journey working on this case study. Taking the time to redesign an app that I truly love and talking to users to understand their perspectives has been rewarding.
If I could, I would love to develope this to a high-fi fidelity and conduct a usability test to ensure the designed user flow is user-friendly.
Hopefully, the developer of CODE app will take these improvements into consideration in their next update. And if they need help with the UX part, I’d more than happy to lend a hand!
