Solving for cafe overcrowding and rethinking the aquarium experience
Cafe Aquaria is one of two dining options at the Georgia Aquarium, and serves as the aquarium's main dining experience providing a homestyle buffet, salad bar, and off-the-grill favorites.
Georgia Aquarium has had a steady influx of visitors over the years, with 2.5 million visitors in 2018 and record breaking numbers of visitors this summer. The aquarium has projected that numbers are only going to increase, anticipating added stress to their exhibition spaces and dining areas.
Our team was tasked to work the Georgia Aquarium and focus on the overcrowding issues present in Cafe Aquaria and create solutions to help control the traffic flow and improve the overall dining customer experience.
UX Researcher
Competitor Analysis, Cafe comment cards, Family Persona & Empathy Map,
Observations, Interviews, Usability Testing (expert review, customers)
UX Designer
Ideation, Interactive display design, Information architecture, Wireframe, prototype and hi-fi iterations,
3.5 months (Aug 2019 - Dec 2019)
Victoria Green, Rhea Laroya, Whitney Li, Yining Liu
Having a pre-ordering web app available allows customers to order at their convenience at any point in their aquarium visit while eliminating unnecessary overcrowding at the cafe and increasing throughput at the same time.
Before diving directly into creating solutions to overcrowding, we wanted to understand what was causing the overcrowding issues beyond a sheer volume of visitors, and get a closer look at the kinds of visitors at the aquarium.
The aquarium gets millions of visitors each year from all over the world, which includes locals, international tourists, students, elderly, and within each of these groups, there are different dynamics including families, couples, and friends. We had to make sure that our potential solution could serve all these user groups.
To keep the users’ perspectives in mind throughout the entire course of our work, we created a set of personas and empathy maps for three main user groups (young couples, families, elderly) informed from our research that captures the majority of the visitors in the aquarium.
In addition to understanding users' initial needs and desires, we took multiple visits to Cafe Aquaria to gather data on customers behaviors within the context of the cafe and to get a closer look of what may be causing the overcrowding of the cafe than simply due to a high volume of visitors. To achieve our research goals, our team came up with a research plan and employed the following research methods:
Through our findings and analysis, we found overcrowding and negative experiences of the cafe can be grouped into four main categories
The circular layout of the cafe and the placement of the food forces customers to traverse along the edges of the cafe and then are funneled through a set of dividers and then wait for an available cashier for payment. All customers must go through this path whether they are interested in the selection of foods or not. The most popular off-the-grill food is also at the end of the path. The cashier stands are also placed in a staggered formation leading to customers congregating to wait for the next available cashier one at a time.
Furthermore, the dolphin show is one of the aquarium's biggest attractions and as a result the cafe traffic and operations are planned around dolphin show times. Unfortunately, the dolphin show exit coincides with the entrance of the cafe causing congestion and confusion for incoming customers
The cafe tries to be as transparent as possible with their information as signs are placed throughout the cafe, which may work on a good day, but when chaos is present, the information gets blurred out to customers as they are just trying to get their food and sit down. This often leads to customers being surprised by the price of the food during checkout. Customers may even change their mind about their food leading to food waste. We found that it is not the amount of signs present that helps customers, but the context in which they need and see the information.
Customers also lack key information about the food available and their ingredients due to certain allergy or dietary restrictions. They repeatedly ask staff for help, slowing down service. We also learned that some staff's jobs (known as "runners") were specifically to provide information the customers need in addition to keeping everything stocked. After the customers pay, they still wonder about where seating, fountain drinks, and condiments are even though there are signs present.
One of the biggest user groups of the aquarium are families with small children, which means lots of strollers being pushed around. Unfortunately, there is no place to set the strollers aside, leading to parents either having to split up to get cafe food or simultaneously getting food while pushing the stroller through the cafe, which is already cramped. Adding to the stress of parents, many times their kids gets excited and run around to pick up different foods and the parents have to reel them back in.
After customers finally pay for their food, if they are not lucky enough to find a seat, then customers are stranded with their food having to awkwardly wait. We also found customers often don't know about additional seating on the second floor even though there are signs, further highlighting the ineffective use of signs.
With these insights uncovered from our research, our team began brainstorming various solutions to the overcrowding problem and improving the cafe experience overall for both the customers and staff. The goal during this phase is to narrow down a solution quickly in order to begin prototyping and testing it out with real customers to see how the solution works in context.
Because we had formed a very specific problem statement further informed by thorough research, ideation came quickly. We sketched and mocked out conceptual solutions, gathered feedback from our stakeholders and users, and analyzed the pros and cons of each.
Kiosks at fast-food services and other restaurant chains are getting more and more popular to ease the load of staff and create a self-service experience for customers. We explored this concept in the context of Cafe Aquaria.
With many food-delivery and pre-ordering apps such as GrubHub, UberEats, Doordash etc., people are becoming more accustomed to on-the-go ordering. We see this solution as having major potential in reducing overcrowding and streamlining the food ordering process to make the staff's lives easier and the customers happier.
However, use case for a pre-ordering food at the aquarium would be limited since visitors would only use it when they are at the aquarium and if they choose to eat here. This means that the barrier of entry has to be low as possible and is why we decided to go with a web-app where users could potentially scan a QR code to bring up the pre-ordering services instead of having customers download a standalone app. (However, it is important to note that Georgia Aquarium does have an existing mobile app for general information)
During our observations, we had found multiple large digital displays around the cafe showing rotating slides of the cafe menu and special discounts and ads. However, users could not interact with the display and because the display screens were on a loop, the customers would have to wait through the ads to see the menu again.
We wanted to see if we could leverage what the cafe already has and improve upon this display to solve for overcrowding issues and give customers more relevant information including an interactive layout of the cafe so customers can have a mental model of where all items are located before entering, as well as the food photos, ingredients, and prices of each item
With three different potential solutions, we wanted to get feedback from both stakeholders and customers to better inform us of which concept we could develop further to best solve the cafe’s problems. We created feedback plans involving design and satisfaction questions in order to narrow down our solution from three to one single solution. From the feedback sessions, we chose the pre-ordering app for the following main reasons:
After we chose our solution, we quickly mocked up wireframes to validate the interaction flows and features of the app in order to get feedback with users, hoping to narrow down the solution scope even further.
We then had the cafe manager and customer services manager review the app. We had them go through a series of task-based usability app
Methodology
ROLES
1 facilitator + 1 notetaker
PARTICIPANTS
Cafe Manager, Georgia Aquarium Customer Services Manager
OBJECTIVES
- Task-based usability test to uncover any usability and interaction issues
- Feedback on Menu items to validate information architecture
- Features survey for both consumer-facing and kitchen operations app to gauge feature priorities
1. Need to balance customization of orders
2. Account for vouchers and combo meals
3. Nutrition and dietary restriction info should be clear and discoverable
4. Common practice to offer sides and beverage after creating an order
5. Display food availability
6. Prioritize map info for finding seat feature
From the expert reviews, we quickly made iterations to address these issues while increasing the fidelity simultaneously.
We found customer expectations wanted to have side options included when choosing an entree found in common food ordering apps. We added on sides and toppings below each entree selection.
We had a poor completion rate during usability testing when asked to find seating info with the old prototype. We simplified the information architecture and labeled the menu categories more clearly.
When testing with the cafe manager, we were made aware of many customers having coupon and voucher codes for food. As a result, we included a coupon code input in the checkout section.
In our original prototype, we had included a variety types of seating information including waiting time at the cafe, traffic overview based on foot traffic, and a map of seating area locations. During our testing, both experts believed the seating area map would be most helpful to visitors and the most realistic to implement. We prioritized the seating area map by putting it first and up front in the list.
As we iterated on our design, we began to testing it again with real cafe customers to further validate our design and features. To evaluate the overall usability of the prototype, we had customers think aloud and complete tasks such as ordering a burger and finding seating info. In the end of the testing session, we had participants fill out a SUS form.
Home Page - mostly positive
- Likes the simplicity of the design and easy to understand
- Glad to see kids' meal and combo info on the top
Ordering Food - some confusions
- Want to see a list of toppings and customize the burger
- Would be convenient to have the checkout button at the bottom of food item page
- Glad to see info on calories and allergy issues
Checkout - average, but clear
- "It's all normal info requested, so I can understand"
- "I'm happy that I can schedule a time to pick up my food"
- "How would I pay by cash?" Need more instructions here
Tracking your order - mostly positive
- "I have all the info I need and it's easy to understand"
- Concerns about directions to the counter and how to interact with staff
Finding seating info- confusing
- Over half of the participants tried to interact with the seating map
- Need more guide on directions of "real-time" information
System Usability Scale
- Average: 82.9
- Median: 83
- Highest: 94
- Lowest: 72
With multiple rounds of testing, we have validated the features and hashed out any major usability issues in the prototype. Our next steps would be to further iterate on the design based on our findings and test the prototype in the context of a crowded situation as well as explore ways of having visitors discover the app within the aquarium. Concurrently, we would also begin designing the staff-side application and see how it would communicate with the pre-ordering app in the cafe ecosystem. When the prototypes are developed enough we would begin measuring the success of our prototype through business metrics such as the total throughput and revenue the cafe with and without at the app. Ideally we would to do this as quick as possible to minimize risk and costs to the aquarium.
We want to thank the Georgia Aquarium and its staff for giving our team the opportunity to work with them on this problem and providing us their resources and guidance.
Thorough research with clear and actionable findings leads to an efficient ideation process.
Our ideation process was not only quick but effective and this was mostly due to having set a clear problem statement further informed by deep research insights. That being said, good research takes time and effort and having a solid research plan with a timeline allows the team to stay focused on research goals and allows for any logistical pivots leading to the next point
The research process is often iterative as well.
We recruited some customers for quick initial interviews about their cafe experience. However, we were not quite satisfied with the findings as there were still some unanswered questions. Due to some time constraints, we could have moved on, but as a team we felt that we did not have all the information we needed, so we went back and talked to the aquarium to work out an incentives deal for the customers that allowed us to do cafe touring interviews, a method better than we had originally planned for and as a result obtained much deeper insight on how customers navigated through the cafe.
Going beyond the product itself, service design?
Although the scope of our project focused mainly on a digital product in the end to solve for overcrowding, there were many aspects of this product that were not digital and may not necessarily need to resort to a digital solution. There are many actors and stakeholders involved in the cafe ecosystem. The cafe vendor is a separate entity from the aquarium and different aquarium departments dealt with different business aspects of the cafe. We also had to consider the existing layout of the cafe and it's adjacent surroundings. In this day and age, its sometimes easy to "create an app" for everything, but there are multiple other routes that the aquarium can consider especially if they are "low hanging fruit"- physical space redesign, improved signage systems, and physical products (trays, tables, seating)
Having a great team dynamic
This last point is often brought up, but I want to thank my teammates for being awesome and collaborating from start to finish with the many team meetings and constant communication, and committing even when everyone was juggling many things at once.
