TableEase

Effortless Restaurant Reservations with Real-Time Availability and Easy Modifications.

Work Time: 5 days, TOOLS: FIGMA

Problem:

Restaurants face difficulties managing bookings efficiently due to a lack of seamless communication between staff and customers. Existing reservation systems often overlook the need for easy modification, cancellation, and real-time table availability, leading to frustration for both parties.

Solution:

The designed app will save users time and effort by providing real-time table availability and easy options for modifying or canceling reservations. This will let users focus on enjoying their dining experience rather than managing the logistics.

Overview:

Objective of this project is to design an easy and quick user-friendly online restaurant reservation system. The app will collect different restaurants to make it even simpler to choose the desired place to go. The goal is to make the reservation process clear and provide the user all of the important information such as: real-life timetable availability, allowing users to modify or reschedule, and cancellations. Output should be easy to get for both customers and restaurant staff.

Users:

  • Customers: Individuals and groups (people planning casual dinners), tourists and travelers, regular diners (People who are regular clients, who are using benefits as discounts, etc.), event planners (People working directly with a restaurant staff on the best solution for bigger groups, and managing evening flow customer friendly.)

  • Restaurant staff: Managers, Staff, Hosts, Owners (People responsible for managing reservations, planning, and ensuring smooth dining, taking care of contact with clients, and helping them have as easy as possible experience.)

Proces:

Restaurants are often struggling with managing bookings and providing customers efficient system to manage their reservations. Because of the lack of communication on the line restaurant - customers, there are problems with modifying or canceling. The purpose of this project is to create an easy-to-follow product that will provide the following information with just a few steps: real-life table accessibility, reservation management, reminders about booking, past bookings library, contact to restaurant, and cancellation.

Market research revealed a gap in current restaurant reservation applications, which typically allow users to make reservations but often require them to call the restaurant for changes, overlooking customer needs for online management and cancellation options. Recognizing that existing products focus more on improving restaurant operations than enhancing customer experience, I was inspired to optimize the reservation process to be more user-friendly for both customers and staff. To validate this idea, I conducted a short survey to understand customer preferences during the reservation process.

Summary: During these steps, I learned that customers want to receive information easily, guided by the following key insights:

  • Intuitive process: Easy to navigate window with clear data.

  • Transparency: Customers appreciate knowledge about payment and cancellation.

  • Flexibility: Customers value the ability to modify or cancel reservations easily

  • Confirmation: Users want to know that the confirmation process was successful through multiple channels.

Challenges and Obstacles:

My main responsibility was to develop easy to navigate product, that will show how users can manage all of the features intuitively.

This portfolio project aims to showcase the design process and the overall outcome for a specific section of a restaurant reservation application. The focus is on the user journey during the reservation process and the management of their bookings within their profile.