Improving operational costs and user autonomy with SkipTheDishes' menu management feature

An opportunity to build a robust menu management feature for partners.

Based on feedback and survey responses, restaurant partners were too reliant on the Skip support team when trying to make changes to their restaurant menus.

The internal menu team were backlogged with hundreds of menu-related tasks every day from thousands of restaurants.

1. Research and brainstorming

This included analysis of various competitors such as UberEats and Doordash. Gathered insights from the menu team by observing and asking how they use the internal menu tool. Our team brainstormed design ideas and solutions with whiteboard sessions.

2. Build a new internal menu tool first

Design, test, and build a new internal menu tool which served as a foundation for the new external feature. Initial design prototypes were tested by the Skip menu team. Restaurant menus were then migrated from the old internal tool to the new.

3. Determining how the product scales

Finding an ideal vision then scaling back for an MVP to test, iterate, and continue to improve. Soft launching the MVP for a percentage of users and monitor use, identify issues, and gain feedback. After the nationwide launch, we continued to monitor and gain feedback.

A happy path

For the minimum viable product, we focused on shipping a sipmlified version of the menu management feature to get users familiar with it. Essential tasks such as creation, editing, and deleting of categories, items, and options was the required minimum functionality.

A recommended user flow was introduced via provided tutorials in order for users to familiarize themselves with the feature.

A future state was always kept in mind because we predicted that the happy path might be restrictive and not meant for scale as the business ventured into other forms of retail.

Origami Studio was the main tool used for building advanced prototypes for usertesting

It was important for us to build a prototype that was advanced enough to not only show internal stakeholders how the feature might work, but also to give users a testing environment where they have unrestricted paths and outcomes of tasks that they can discover.

The design team also wanted to see how far they could push Origami when making prototypes. It was honestly a lot of fun.

We learned that complicated menus with many ways of customizing an item made menu libraries cluttered

Duplicates of customization variables made menu libraries cluttered. It was possible for a single entry of “Add Bacon” to be added to many items but it was more common for many duplicates to be created instead. This issue most commonly occurrence on pizza menus as they tend to have many customization options.

Our first thoughts toward addressing this was highlighting the impact of menu changes and how it would affect existing entries in their menus via product copy.

Monitoring and incremental updates

Adding new features and functionality as the product matures. Feedback and insights from surveys gives the product team direction. Various updates ranged from nationwide or by area as required (e.g., Vancouver cup fee).

Emphasis on menu change impact

As the product matures, we needed to make sure to highlight the impact of any menu changes made via product copy. While it is still possible for duplicates and cluttered menu libraries, users have the ability to make their menus more efficient.

Allowing more flexibility in user flow

While the happy path is still the foundation of the product, the matured product state will accommodate a flexible user flow. There will be multiple ways available in doing specific tasks.