en
plConor Sheridan – an owner of a chain of fried chicken restaurants called Mad Egg from Ireland came to us with a goal. He wanted to revolutionize the hospitality industry by giving other business people a product that will help them to control their resources. Cost efficiency is one of the main pillars of every company and when running a restaurant, it’s particularly essential. Knowing how many products you have and what else do you need is crucial not to waste anything.
Control vendors, billings and the costs of ordered products
Skueeze
IRL | Logistics
6
People in the project
4
Months
2020
Cooperation
Client
Problem
Creating an application for mobile devices and web that would help restaurant managers to responsibly control vendors, billings and the costs of ordered products. It was also supposed to help with inventory – knowing what the restaurant has in its pantry and when should we buy more supplies. The app needed functionality that would analyze current operations in real-time and advised on improving them in the future.
Results
The product is still in the phase of development, but we finished the prototypes and final visual mockups. Soon, we should be able to release a mobile and web application that allows hotels, bars and restaurants to keep their business operations in one place. Cost control is one of the most important factors when it comes to building a successful hospitality brand – and this app is more than that. Thanks to Skueeze, controlling and improving budget, resources and processes is easy. Automation and intelligent algorithms that continuously analyze every provided information is what makes this product stand out from the crowd.
Technical Objective
The client visited us in Warsaw for a 2-day UX/UI workshop, where we could discuss business requirements and goals. The fact that the founders of Skueeze were also a part of the target group and that they came prepared with a preliminary mockup was remarkably helpful in the process.
Technical Solution
“Skueeze is built for use in busy restaurant settings, not back offices.
The product is ‘intelligent’, so the more it’s used, the more it ‘learns’ ”
– said Conor in his statement for the Irish Times portal.
We’ve used AI and machine learning to build an intelligent solution
that would improve and scale itself according to the current needs.
The functionality of analysis and suggestions could be this one thing that would help the app
to succeed – by bringing the users value that no other product did before.
Technical Strategy
During the workshop, we went through customer paths and wrote down user stories to determine which functionalities would be the key to create a product that would fulfill the objective of the app. Each view was discussed in detail – we showed them on a TV screen, used printouts and wrote on a whiteboard to freely introduce changes and adjustments. We wanted to engage and motivate 6 attendees of the workshop (2 from the client’s side, 4 from itCraft) to be a part of the process of initial UX design.
We’ve determined what should be included in the app. It needed to:
- Help the user with cataloguing all the products available in the restaurant,
- Improve the planning and control of the budget,
- Introduce the automation and monitoring of the product ordering process based on the current state of pantry,
- Collect and check the correctness of the invoices,
- Support the process of verification of the received goods comparing to the list of ordered ones,
- Create reports.
To achieve that, we needed to build a couple of clickable prototypes that would help us with testing individual features. After filling out all the user stories, we’ve created a mid-fidelity prototype. We did it based on our best UX practices and User Centered Design methodology. We’ve shared each module with potential clients so they could give us insightful feedback.
After collecting useful information from the target group and the client himself, we’ve made a high-fidelity prototype with visual branding and UI elements. Each module was discussed with the client to achieve the best possible result – in terms of visual and technical aspects.
