ROLE:

Senior Product Designer

CATEGORY:

Food & Bev, E-comm, Shopping

COMPANY:

Inspire Brands

TIMEFRAME:

8 months

ABOUT

Pickup enhancements was a feature that Sonic and Arby’s wanted to include to reduce customer frustration. When Sonic and Arby’s released onto Inspire Digital Platform (IDP), the ability to choose how the order was received didn’t exist in the infrastructure. This feature created multiple opportunities for the two brands to reduce that customer friction.

TEAM & ROLES

1. UNDERSTAND/PRODUCT THINKING

I led the pickup enhancements feature earlier this year to align with the business needs for the brands. The complexity of creating this feature was understanding that Arby’s and Sonic have two different audiences that they cater towards. However, the customer pain points were identical based on customer reviews, analytics, and discovery that the autonomy to choose how customers want to receive their order was lacking.

The problem that all stakeholders were trying to solve was how to include their pickup choice at the start or end of their journey.

A) People Problem

• Sonic & Arby’s: Customers wanted different methods of picking up their order and employees were frustrated on the lack of transparency from their POS to cater to their guest based on their preferences.

B) How did we know it was a problem?

• Sonic & Arby’s: Customer reviews of dissatisfaction and sales declined according to our analytics shared by Susan.

C) How do we know if we’ve solved this problem?

• Through conversion and tap-rate from both consumer and employee to ensure customer choices match to the POS so that both parties have that documentation on their platforms.

2. Competitor Research

Our major stakeholder, Dan Lynn, requested this feature to roll out because a lot of competitors had already integrated pickup enhancements onto their platform. Knowing this, I reviewed a variety of competitors and noticed a pattern:

• Options are presented early in the journey with ability to switch at checkout.

• Options presented late in the journey to finalize customer’s journey.

Internal feedback

WHERE CAN WE INCLUDE PICKUP OPTIONS ON IDP?

Based on the patterns I identified, I connected with Carrie to see if there was a way to include the enhancements at the start of the journey. The idea was unfortunately paused due to the collision with another feature that Lian and Sukeerthi were working on at the time.

Although that was a challenge, the second option I proposed of introducing it at the end of the journey at checkout was another area that both Maggie and Danielle agreed would match what the brands wanted.

Before proceeding to design execution and matching business requirements for the brands, there wasn’t much time carved for usability testing. Instead, I went through our Baymard Institute guidelines on the e-comm category to verify if pickup options presented at start or end of the journey was a best practice and luckily McDonalds and Panera were the brands that was highlighted on the platform as following good practice.

3. DESIGN EXECUTION

gathering requirements for Sonic

SAME COMPONENTS, BUT WILL EACH BRAND WANT THE SAME THING? (PART 1)

Sonic had very specific requirements of how the brand has done pickup historically. Knowing how the brand is known for the drive-in stall, that option had to be accessible for folks to choose that option, but the business also opened up other avenues of picking up. Below were the total requirements and the logistical reasoning that the stakeholders and I collaborated on ensuring a smooth process for the customer when viewing on the app:

• Stall Pick Up: Allows the customer to check in on their mobile device to signal to the employee that they’ve arrived for their order.

• Patio Pick Up: In the events if all of the stalls are filled, the customer is able to park somewhere else and walk up to the patio to pick up their order by presenting their name and/or receipt.

• Drive-Thru: Allows the customer to head directly to drive-thru window to pick up their order.

• Mobile Express Pick Up: A new concept that the business rolled out to compete against Taco Bell and Chik-Fil-A where customers can pull up to this specific area and their order will immediately be served.

Based on the four options that Sonic wanted to provided, each option would change the customer’s journey on how to proceed after next steps. The challenge was ensuring that the content and flow was consistent based on the customer’s choice on how to proceed and how to reference back to their order history.

Collectively, the team was happy with the approach for Sonic after reviewing the designs and flow from a prototype that I created to demonstrate the journey.

gathering requirements for arby’s

SAME COMPONENTS, BUT WILL EACH BRAND WANT THE SAME THING? (PART 2)

Arby’s didn’t have as much strict requirements like Sonic, which was a benefit to focus on two main paths for Arby’s customers. Based on the data that Susan provided on the typical demographic for Arby’s, majority were older users ranging from late 30s to early 50s that live in rural or suburban neighborhoods. We also discussed that majority of Arby’s restaurants include a drive-thru area and a parking lot based on their real estate. In this instance, the relation to what Arby’s customers would see on the app prior to visiting the physical location should match.

With only two options, I executed the following with alignment from Carrie and Danielle:

• Drive-Thru: Allows the customer to head directly to drive-thru window to pick up their order.

• Carry Out: Allow the customer to enter the restaurant and pick up their order at a designated area or the front register.

Each of the two options I designed did result the customer to follow a specific path based on the option they chose. Similar behavior of what was designed for Sonic, the consistency of seeing what they ordered and referring back to it on their history was identical to ensure the balance.

Ready for Dev

HOW MIGHT WE ENSURE THAT DESIGN MATCHES BUILD?

Throughout our migration at Inspire, there was a lot of inconsistencies with what was being created. To avoid this, I started creating annotations of how the flow would be perceived and specific points in the design that changed or altered the current behavior. Below is how our process started to evolve with annotations and documenting components for this project

From these annotations, our developers minimized errors on the front-end.

4. OUTCOME AND TAKEAWAYS

SELECT HOW YOU WANT TO RECEIVE YOUR ORDER

The pickup project will be released in Q4 2024 and our Analytics Team will be able to track visits and conversion on each specific option to measure the success of the company’s influence to expand different opportunities or enhance our current structure.

This project saw so much progress and evolution and one of the biggest takeaways was utilizing annotations into our process to ensure the build was smooth.