Case Study: Open Table
Connecting over meals made effortless.
Open Table is an online restaurant-reservation service company focused on helping users locate and reserve local restaurants.
The company faces a challenge of untrustworthy reviews due to users not being able to connect with friends or know anything about who is leaving the review.
The Problem
A lack of bookings due to users questioning the credibility of reviews and lack of trust in the review system.
The Solution
How might we elevate the user experience by fostering connections with friends and increasing trust in reviews through seamless usability?
Usability Audit
We utilized a simple model of auditing the product and locating pain points and wow moments to find the elements that we wanted to make sure to keep and those we wanted to improve on.
Competitor Benchmarking
We compared to a direct competitor (Yelp) and an indirect competitor (Amazon) to better understand the market and industry standards to help inform future decisions.
Business and User Frustrations
Users felt that they were unable to verify the credibility of reviews through connections with friends or knowledge of the reviewers, which led to a lack of trust in the review system, negatively impacting the decision-making process and overall satisfaction with the app.
User Frustrations
When booking a reservation, users rely on reviews for confidence in their decision, but when they are unable to verify the credibility of the reviews or understand the reviewers, their trust in the review system is lowered.
Business Frustrations
Since users were feeling a distrust in the review system, it lead to low bookings through the OpenTable app since they could not verify the credibility of a restaurant and the level of food and service provided.
Ideation
We utilized mind mapping and the Crazy 8's workflows to brainstorm and organize ideas to improve trust. This visual tool helped us to identify potential solutions to user needs and pain points by understanding the relationship between different ideas.
User Flow
Mapping out what users are currently experiencing versus what the new user experience would be like helped immensely in planning for what our actual solution would be to this study.
Rapid Prototyping
To help keep cost of time down and provide some clarity to the direction the product was headed, we utilized wireframes to help design and layout our new user flow.
High Fidelity Prototype
Nailing down the wireframes, we moved on to a high fidelity design where we prototyped what the user journey would look like in a realistic experience.
Usability Testing
To gain crucial user insights, we conducted UX testing using Maze. Our findings revealed that the addition of user profiles was a significant factor in boosting customer confidence, with a high usability score of 81% and users finding the feature "very clear" and "easy to use." However, our restaurant home page received a lower usability score of 56% and a high mis-click rate of 60%, as users preferred searching for a restaurant rather than relying on the system's suggested options. The results indicated the need for improvements in the restaurant home page and prioritizing the search function for filtering options.
Retrospective
Key Learnings
User Profiles helped develop a sense of trust and community within the app, whereas users felt they could rely a bit more on reviews. Half of our testers rated they would be absolutely confident booking a reservation through OpenTable.
Even with the confidence in a new place increased, users still preferred a restaurant that is known over a new place. This was evident through heat maps where users attempted to click on the popular chain Torchy's which was over ten miles further than the desired restaurant.
Integrations with other social platforms may increase some user confidence, as a few users mentioned they did not use Facebook as a social media platform.
Next Steps
Given more time to iterate, we would take the opportunity to provide more guidance and education to users on how to effectively use the new filter feature and introduce the new social aspect of the app with an onboarding process. This would involve conducting more user testing and gathering feedback on the changes we make to the app, in order to ensure that we are meeting the needs and preferences of our users.