Update menu price with few clicks
Rushable is a B2B SaaS platform provides digital solution for restaurants to succeed online by automate tasks such as a custom-built website; menu setting; order management, integrations and analytics anytime.
I joined Rushable as the first full-time product designer, and responsible for:
- Solve the problems of current flow in a simple and trusted solutions.
- Prioritizing new features and improvements.
- Building a new basic design system for moving devolopment efficiency.
I work closely with marketing team define user problems, explore potential sulutions with product manager, and implement hi-fedility design with engineers. We support each other to transform the challenging workflows into simple and professional experiences for user.
In this case study, I will showcase how I collaborate with cross-functional team to reduce updating menu prices time from at least 2 hours to less than 1min.
As the inflation during the covid, marketing team frequently pick up a call from restaurants, they look for help to increase all dishes price, increase by 10% or add $1 each item. Actually, update the price is very easy but both merchants and the marketing team still feel headache with it.
Why so?
In the current flow, only 1 item could be edit per time. If the restaurant have 50 items, they need to open 50 item pages and update price one by one. Even the marketing team is familiar with the dashboard they still need 2-4 hours to have all prices done.
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In the current flow, redundant operations and time-consuming makes users upset.
One chain restaurant has 5 locations and each has 80 dishes. Most of them has modifiers.
How long will it take? Maybe a whole day.
Key User Journey:
Click Bulk edit → Select/Unselct items → adjust price rate → price review → save change → Done
The process is iterative. I continue to update and make revisions to the product. My design process is broken into 3 steps: Think - Explore the problems that users are experiencing and consider how I could solve them with my design. Make - Start designing the product by creating sketches, wireframes, and prototypes. Create a minimum viable product or MVP for short. Check - Find out how users respond to my design and gather feedback from project stakeholders.
The merchants could update the price by themselves or look for help from marketing team. It means both merchants and marketing team are end-users. I interviewed different types of merchants to empathy theirs pain points and expectations.
" If the flow is simple and intuitive, I would like update the menu by myself. Faster and efficiency than calling support."
- Eddy. Owner of Rolling Snack in Newark
" I call customer service to update menu for us, but it needs 3-5 days. "
- Jayden. Manager of Loi Palace in Milpitas
" It would be great if we can have a way to edit all menu price in one time."
- Kayla. Marketing team representive of Rushable.
I need to explore a way to benecial both merchants and company.
I studied guidebook of Uber Eats and Doordash, they provide detailed information how to edit menu portal but they donot have bulk edit feature. Meanwhile, I get inpiration from Gmail which allows users to bulk select to delete /archive /report /others emails. We use Gmail everyday and it has shaped user habit. I am aware that it is a good opportunity to distill it into Rushable.
My original idea is there will have a list of items and modifiers. Select all and bulk edit the price.
I sync the product concept with engineering to make sure my idea works and could be realized in a limited time. The end-user could be truly benefited from the application when it easy to use and relatively error-free.
My idea get fully support from engineering team.
Since merchant may not have the advanced device(laptop), and the touch screen they use is only 1280px. So, I need to make sure my design will work in 1280px device.
I brainstormed with the product manager to explore more potential solutions and detail improvement to a better experience. I collaborated marketing team and users along the way to validate concepts and gather feedback to continue improving the experience.
As one of main users, marketing team plays a key role in the testing stage.
Meanwhile, thanks for Koi Palace(Milpitas, CA), Rolling Snack(Newark, CA), Mala Sichuan(Katy, TX), and weboba(Santa Clara, CA) meaningful feedback.
In the beginning, I struggled with what information would list on the mainboard. How to showcase the status? How to enable merchants bulk edit whole menu/category/single item price on the same page? After several rounds of user testing, I abandoned unnecessary information and improve the bulk edit experience to achieve my design goal.
Before the final design, I built the basic design system to keep all design consistency and enhance future efficiency. Process here.
I will only show big decisions we had.
2 ways to edit single item price:
- Direct edit in the item list
- Edit in the item detail page
In the small start-up team, I work seamlessly with CEO & PM Ryan, CTO Chloe, and marketing researchers. CEO hosts meetings regular to sync ideas and thoughts. I so appreciate them to translate design work into a functioning and help me figure out if the design works are feasible from a technical standpoint and bring the idea to life.
The first time I asked my product manager, what's my task and the timeline? He answered me he would only tell me the business strategy at this stage and I decide the rest. I know I could handle the design work, but I still feel uncertain in the ambiguous start-up environment. As the first product designer, I feel much more pressure than before. But pretty quickly, I go through our new features and user issues to be solved, then prioritize my following work and schedule it in a clear timeline. In a short time, I build a new design system, design the bulk edit feature, and add a new automated marketing feature to benefit both company and its users.
I can feel my fast growth in Rushable though not everything goes well as my imagination. My design work could not satisfy users and I felt lost and self-doubt a lot. "This is a good thing, Joanna," CEO Ryan told me. "Pass through the self-doubt and grow up from imperfect." I keep studying from open-source SaaS platforms and learn experience from senior product designer of ADPList. Efforts turn out to be a satisfactory result. I am on the way to learning and growing.
