Chick-fil-A
Wallboards - Web Application
Revitalize an existing product to empower restaurant operators and leaders by enhancing motivation, equipping, and engagement functionalities.
Role
Lead Product Designer in a team of 6 engineers and 3 stakeholders.
Tools
Figma, Slack, Jira, & Miro
Duration
I’ve been the only designer on this ongoing project for one year.
Process
Discovery, Ideate & Design, Handoff, Outcome
My Role
Since January 2023, I've spearheaded the redesign of the Chick-fil-A web application Wallboards and iOS app, collaborating with three product owners and six engineers. I lead vision workshops and feature discovery sessions, guiding UX design, prototyping, content creation, and visual design. Additionally, I manage two other critical products at Chick-fil-A:
@CFA Now: A mobile app with 32k users, serving as a real-time business pulse for operators and team leaders. It boasts a 99% adoption rate among operators and is vital for efficient restaurant operations.
@Chick-fil-A: An internal website for staff, operators, and contingent workers, providing essential updates and information aligned with the internal design system.
The work showcased on Wallboards reflects broad, high-level contributions, with deeper insights available during portfolio presentations.
2023 - Present
In the hustle and bustle of a busy Restaurant, how can Operators & Restaurant Leaders keep high-level business objectives top of mind for the entire team? Since 2018, Wallboards, a mobile app, has been built to engage and empower Team Members by displaying sales, operations, culture, and feedback content of the Operator's choosing. Operators were limited to only one layout option of a 9-tile dashboard, choosing from a list of 22 tiles.
Over the years, Operators felt the product lacked flexibility, and eventually, the Wallboards App became "wallpaper." Many Operators, in return, turned to other products to fill the needs they were missing.
I was brought in to rethink the experience of how Chick-fil-A can support their operators and restaurant leaders who seek to boost team enthusiasm and share goals and essential metrics for the day to be successful.
My Process & Work
When I joined Chick-fil-A, there was a vague idea of what needed to be done: how can we assist users with creating content they need to support their team?
To start things off, I met with the client to begin the Design Kick-off. We met for two days, where I assisted in a workshop on learning about users' frustrations & requests and listening to stakeholders' goals and needs. It was our first official meeting, where we defined the overall project goal, discussed the scope of work, and established a timeline for all designs to be completed in August 2023.
Some key things we learned:
Learned that users preferred/were using other products like PowerPoint to create custom content like full-text slides and images. Additionally, they were making a complete presentation about goals at their restaurant for the day, along with meaningful metrics.
As a team, we decided we didn't want to take away the dashboard experience, as users who use the current app/and switched to other options were split 50/50.
We planned out the production of the new web application into 3 phases. This allows us to present the latest app to a small group of users and work with them closely to figure out bugs as they arrive. Phase 1 is currently being developed.
The overall goal of the project…
With the re-imagination of Wallboards, the main goal was to create a web application that allowed Operators and Team Leaders more flexibility to develop locally-created content for their team.
Identify the specific pain points users experienced with the previous version.
Launch the redesign (Phase 1) within eight months to test with a limited number of restaurants.
Create a platform where users are given the proper tools to create customizable content their team needs to be successful in their daily activities.
After the design kick-off/discovery process, I quickly began to prototype and work on designs. I would share designs with stakeholders weekly, working swiftly on features essential to product functionality. Additionally, I partnered with the engineering team by communicating the designs early and often for their input: can we build it? What technology constraints do we need to consider? Are there any tradeoffs we need to make? Having that cross-team functionality is essential when projects have tight constraints.
For engineering, I build detailed specs and annotations while consistently pairing with developers to make sure designs provided the best UX yet were feasible. I partnered with QA to ensure the design quality would be up to standards by implementing a "design check" for stories.
Prototyping helped tell the story of what needed to be built and what interactions were necessary, especially within the builder feature of this product.
Annotations and specs are a basis for collaboration; they serve as a source of truth for my engineers to refer back to while working on stories. The designs are familiar when they use these for their work. We have discussed and iterated upon them already. I carefully review scenarios like error states, load states, empty states, and edge cases.
The designs for Phase 1 are completed, and the engineers are working hard to meet our goal for launch in June 2024. Additionally, I meet with the product owner weekly, discussing goals, what's necessary for Phase 2, and how to approach testing when the product is launched to the <10 restaurants of users. Alongside vision and strategic work, I continue to work closely with the engineering team, meeting with them weekly to review designs and walk through any questions they may have.
One thing I am particularly proud of is the in-depth prototype that I provided the stakeholders and users as part of Phase 1 testing. We have received great feedback on what else users want, that this is precisely what they need, and that stakeholders at CFA see the value of investing in a product like this for operators.