jlee88@risd.edu

[CBORD GET App] Live Meal Checkout

What began as a 2-week personal passion project was pitched directly to the RISD Dining Board, then the product owner of CBORD to implement these designs live.

ROLE

UI/UX Designer and Researcher

TEAM

1 UX Designer, 1 Product Owner, 1 Application Support Specialist

TIMELINE

April 2024

2-week sprint

TOOLS
Figma, Miro

PROBLEM

Checking out a routine meal is an anxiety-inducing, daily inconvenience.

Through campus wellness research conducted for RISD's Health Education and Promotion Department, I discovered that dining logistics were a major barrier to student wellness. To address this issue at its root, I took the initiative to redesign GET Mobile, the primary app RISD students rely on to track their meal plans and campus finances.

SOLUTION

Quickly add funds to your student account during busy hours.

Pair real-time meal checkout while tracking your balance.

RESEARCH

I interviewed 20 students face-to-face to understand what's wrong.

I learned about the dining pain points of 20 students from three different housing areas on campus.

I aimed to fix three pain points that consistently appeared across all the interviews.

01 Adding funds was difficult to manage

Unnecessary steps stall busy hours. Input errors cause the form to restart.

02 Essential data was scattered

Pricing, menus, and hours were inaccessible across different screens.

Pricing, menus, and hours were inaccessible across locations.

03 Mental Math anxiety during checkout

Students have to manually calculate their total meal cost and budgeting before checkout

DESIGN PROCESS

01 Add funds with no friction

I initially ideated a step-by-step accordion-style form, but this still delayed the process

Options are seen upfront and doesn't cause the form to reset due to an error

Multiple choice shows options upfront

Form doesn't reset from an input error

02 Access all essential data in one place

My initial ideation was not intuitive to the user's natural browsing behavior

The hours and extra info for a dining location are accessed within the respective menu.

02 Checkout your meal seamlessly

Students still have to manually calculate how much of each payment method they must use

The checkout process automatically calculates necessary payments based on selections and visible balance

REFLECTION

What I learned + next steps

Sometimes, less is more

Many of the original app's UX problems stemmed from too many unnecessary or repetitive features. Just because there is a feature available somewhere doesn't mean it is accessible or even usable. Crucial steps should be seamlessly integrated into a flow.

Communicate with all Stakeholders

Designers, developers, and stakeholders all think differently. This was my first self-directed case study, and I learned so much about the world of stakeholders. Since I didn’t communicate with the backend team early on, misunderstandings arose during the process. For example, I found out much later that some other schools using this app don't have a credit system and just use dollars, which makes the dining checkout process much simpler. This brought up the conversation of the scope of this project, which solely focused on the experience of RISD students. To prevent future setbacks, I learned that I need to collaborate with both the business and developer sides from the very beginning. What began as a 2-week personal project was pitched directly to the RISD Dining Board, then the product owner of CBORD to implement these designs live.