From start-up to bought-out: the growth of Skip's Partner Portal
Scope
UI/UX Design, Product Design, Mobile & Web Design, Design System, Wireframing, Prototyping, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Copywriting, Usability Research
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Invision, Origami Studio
Outcomes
Leading two redesign projects to align with design systems and improve overall usability, discoverability, and awareness of critical features based on user research and feedback.
Various new features from MVP to final product that increased user engagement, improved NPS scores, reduced workload of support staff, and a new revenue stream for the business.
A still frame from the redesign proof of concept video.
Empowering Canadian business owners every day with a collection of self-service tools and features tailored for their needs
What is Partner Portal?
Partner Portal is one of two products that partners use for managing their businesses on the Skip network. Whether it's for checking earning statements, order history, or performance metrics, Partner Portal is built for any size business. From Mom-and-Pop shops to the chain franchisee owner, partners are given what they want and need to make informed decisions when managing their business.
A still frame from the redesign proof of concept video.
Transforming into a full-feature product
With thousands of partners across Canada and growing in 2018, the product teams worked toward offering more with Restaurant Portal. Besides the basic features of being able to check earnings and order history, the product was being underutilized and users mostly opted to contacting support for any concerns. Many of these concerns became thousands of unresolved backlogged tickets.
This led to the product's first redesign in 2019 where it addressed user engagement and discoverability of certain features by restructuring its information architecture and hierarchy. This redesign project was also the first attempt at building a design system which would lay the foundation for building new features.
The product quickly grew as more features were added. This included more self-service features that enabled users to generate business reports or update their business hours. These self-service features were also successful in reducing tasks for the support staff. One of the major additions to the product was a dedicated analytics feature, menu management, and promotions which introduced an additional revenue stream for the business.
Restaurant Portal in 2018.
Restaurant Portal redesigned in 2019.
Restaurant Portal was one of many digital products under the JustEatTakeaway umbrella and one of the long-term goals of the global design team was unifying the UI and UX of all internal and customer-facing products by building a design system.
Restaurant Portal was one of the first products that adopted the new design system. For this redesign, I produced a proof of concept video showcasing the value of a design system and putting it to use. Planning for the redesign started in late 2021 and development began in mid 2022.
With the business venturing to new markets in 2023, the product was renamed to Partner Portal.
Partner Portal redesigned in 2023.
Proof of concept video for the Restaurant Portal 5 redesign.
Autonomy and flexibility
During SkipTheDishes' start-up phase, restaurant partners were limited to only a few basic features for managing their business on the network. Viewing their revenue, earnings statements, and order history were most of the things they could do. Anything beyond that, partners would need to contact support.
We discovered that our users needed more autonomy and flexibility to make their experience as partners better. Having to call support to do things they can do themselves goes against that core value.
A photo of the whiteboard after a workshopping session where the team was figuring out how to implement a functionality that is criticial for managing menus.
A huge part (or symbol, some would say) of their autonomy and flexibility is the menu management feature. The ability to change and update their restaurant menu was a feature that was available during Skip's early start-up days. Ultimately, it became an internal tool due to complications of the technology and misuse... Or so I've heard. Eventually, tickets for the menu management tool returned to the Jira boards and became a primary focus in 2019.
A still frame from the redesign proof of concept video.
User map of the menu management feature in 2023.
It was a very challenging project and it took an amazing team to develop a minimum viable product. The product team started with interviewing the internal menu team that manages and builds restaurant menus to get some insight on their ways of working. The internal tool was complicated and not user-friendly and from our research we were able to determine an approach of how we could simplify it for the average user.
After iterating on wireframes, we built prototypes in Origami Studio and began usertesting. Origami Studio was created by Facebook and is a great and powerful design tool for prototyping. The majority of prototypes we built were simple but there were the rare opportunities where we tried to push what we could do to really get familiar with Origami.
Node structure of a prototype built in Origami Studio. Huge!
One of the most complicated high-fidelity prototypes was built to be as close to the real product (at the time) which was great for a more real-life environment when testing. It was a lot of fun to build and the massive node structure taught us how to optimize the project files in the future.
After the first rounds of testing, we iterated and refined the prototypes and even went back to rebuild them to try different things based on the insight and feedback we received.
With each iteration we did several user tests, testing with the internal menu team and visiting local restaurant owners. After the first MVP, we improved on the product as we continued to receive feedback and tested new functionalities.
Menu management in 2023.
Customer reviews feature in 2023.
A growing product team
During my time at Skip, the restaurant product team went from one small team with a couple of designers, a couple of product managers, and several engineers to becoming one of the largest teams in the company. The Partner Portal is a suite of different products and the team needed to divide in order to manage each feature.
It was very challenging at the time because I worked on the majority of projects under Partner Portal and was the only designer for many teams. Both redesign projects helped with designing because I made sure to develop a way of working efficiently with multiple teams and projects. One of my main focuses during both redesign projects was developing various guidelines for style, layout, and establishing interaction patterns to be consistent throughout all the products for both web and mobile devices.