MenuSifu Insight
MenuSifu Insight
MenuSifu Insight
Tip Out Service
A cloud-based service to manage tip distribution in restaurants
UI Designer
UX Designer
Product Manager
Team
Product manager/ Product designer (me), 1 Developer
Platform
Web
Duration
6 months
01 BACKGROUND STORY
Tip distribution in restaurants
Tip income is an important part of the restaurant system here in United States. Usually, the tips we pay go to the server who served us. However, in many cases, there is more than one person that has provided their services during the process, such as busboys, bartenders, sushi bar chef...etc. And they deserve a share of the tips. Therefore, a reasonable and efficient "Tip Out" system becomes very important for the businesses.
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02 RESEARCH
How does tip out work?
I collected most of the use cases and scenarios from clients, and studied the existing tip out products on the market. Then I figured out there are two major ways for tip out distributions.
01.
Tip Pool
Tip Pool allows you to calculate and distribute tips to your staff based on the distribution rate tied to their roles. For example, you can distribute 5% of the daily sales to your waiters, bartenders and managers according to tip allocation percentages.
Tip Pool
20%
30%
30%
20%
02.
Tip Sharing
Tip Sharing can help you calculate the amount of tips going out from directly tipped employees to other indirectly tipped employees. For example, waiters will take 50% of their drinks menu tips out to share with bartenders.
Tip Sharing
02 RESEARCH
Who are my target users?
Bosses or managers
This person is responsible for people management in the restaurant. They have to calculate the tip distribution and allocate the tips to the employees on a daily or weekly basis.
Employees (Tip receiver)
This person provides the service to the clients in the restaurant. They clock in and follow instructions, and get the distributed tips every promised period.
02 RESEARCH
What are the pain points for them?
01.
Time consuming
Doing the calculation is tedious and time consuming
" I usually calculate the tip out amount manually by myself. It is complicated and takes me a lot of time. "
" I would adjust the rules depending on the business operation sometimes, that took me a lot of work to review the calculation process. "
02.
Making mistakes
Doing the calculation manually can easily lead to mistakes.
" I make mistakes sometimes doing it manually. The staff is not happy about that. They think I am cheating. They are very sensitive about the tips. "
" I live by tips. It is really important for me that I get what I deserve. If the number looks wrong for me, I would go back and ask for the reviews. It happened a few times. "
03.
Feeling insecure
The employees are very sensitive about the tips. They want to know more about the process.
" I am not good at math, but I still kind of want to know more about the process, especially when the number looks wrong. "
" I need to keep the record in case there is any argument about the tip out results. I want to keep them happy, but not spoiled. "
Highlights and corresponding requirement summary
Summary 01
Clients need a more efficient way to handle the calculation process.
Summary 02
Clients want to increase the accuracy of the tip out results. Reduce the human involvement in the calculation process.
Summary 03
Both types of our users want a secure and transparent process. The results and process should be traceable.
03 PROJECT GOAL
A tool that can handle the tip out calculation and provide transparent and traceable results.
Efficiency
Accuracy
Transparency
Traceable
Efficiency
Handle the input and calculation process automatically. Generate the outcome based on the set up rule in a few seconds.
Accuracy
Reduce human involvement. The only thing that user should do is set up the rule at the beginning.
Transparency
Provide calculation process logs for further investigation. It has to be designed in a readable and understandable way.
Traceable
The generated results should be saved like historical snapshots in case the input data or rules have been changed.
04 DESIGN PROCESS
My approach and product flow
User journey
The new approach saves a lot of time for users, and increases trust.
There are two main flows starting from the landing page: pooling and sharing.
The two parts of the product
Tip Out tool
Set up & adjust rules once in a while if needed. Has to be efficient and accurate.
Report service
Check the results daily or on a weekly basis. Need to be transparent and traceable.
04 DESIGN PROCESS
The design iterations for the tip out tool
01.
How to apply the same rules to different merchants
Users need to quickly apply the same rules to their other merchants.
Original Design
Allows user to select multiple merchants while they are setting up the rules at the beginning.
Step 1
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Potential Problems
01 Confusion around the following steps
The dynamic loading data from all the different merchants for the following steps causes an extra burden in speed and service cost.
Step 2
If the user assigned two different merchants on the 1st step, the system will pull both menus from the merchants here on the 2nd step.
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Steps after setting up the merchant. There is an independent data set pulled from the merchant.
02 The flexibility is limited
The adjustment of the rules now applies to all the selected merchants, but in real cases, the users might need to make some small changes for specific merchants.
03 Development cost is higher
As a start up company, the cost of developing the new product is always pretty limited in terms of time and budget. It becomes one of my considerations in design decision making.
New approach
Instead of handling this complicated scenario inside the setting process, I decided to simply apply a "Duplicate" function on the rule table.
Learning curve:
Development cost: -80%
02.
Distribution module improvement
The distribution module has been updated after the user testing.
Original Module
This module was designed for the user to set up distribution percentage at the end of the process.
Testing Results
Not intuitive enough in certain scenarios
" It is a bit complicated if I want to divided the tips into 3 portions. That would be 33.33%... "
Design Improvements
I designed the feature "distribute by weight" which also corresponds with the percentage, so users can choose whichever is easier for the scenario.
Accessibility:
Development cost: +50%
03.
Navigation flow improvements
An example of the navigation improvements after the prototype testing
Original Design
I put the "Back" button at the top-left of the page similar to the way many websites have been designed.
Problem observed
Could not find the "Back" button easily
When users were navigating through the set up flow and wanted to get back to previous page, they assumed they would find the button on the bottom-right side.
Design Improvements
I then put the "Back" button down there next to the "Next" button based on the testing feedback I got, and it turned out to be a smoother navigation design.
Intuitivness:
04 DESIGN PROCESS
The design for tip out report
Once users have the tip out rules set, they can access the Tip Out report to see the results and distribute the tips to participants based on it.
01.
Tip out summary report
This report shows the calculated results
For managers
On the Tip Out report table
1
2
"I can quickly check if the receivers are under the right rules from column Rules Applied (1), and distribute the final result based on column Expected Tips (2).
For tip receivers
Click on staff names (1) and see the popup personal report
1
2
"This report has all the details related to me. More importantly, I can see the tip out calculation process from the Note (2) at the bottom. I feel much more secured with this receipt."
02.
Historical snapshots report
This report shows historical tip out summary reports that the user has generated, so users can always look back even if the base data or rules have been changed.
Find the snapshot
Users can see the list of generated reports under the historical snapshot section.
1
3
2
"I can easily find that when (2) the reports has been generated and who (3) did it, and check the historical results even if the data has been changed. This reassures both management and employees"
Snapshot of tip out report
By clicking on the snapshot numbers (1), users can access the details of the generated report.
The report time range and merchants will be recorded as well.
05 Launch product
How do we measure the success
The product was developed and tested in October 2023. I worked with our sales team to figure out the success rate of the prodcut.
01.
5 new sign on clients per month
Previously, the sales team lost many opportunities to sign the clients to our POS system, who had expressed the need for the features of our Tip Out tool. Now, we want to see if this Tip Out tool can be a strong selling point for new clients.
02.
Over 50% retention rate
We want to see if the clients who have the service are using it. We will use Google analytics to monitor the usage and retention rate of users.
06 RESPONSIBILITIES
My responsibilities as a product owner
As the UXUI designer and product owner on the team, I have taken on the responsibilities of the end to end product design and management process. Here are the contributions I made to the project.
Research (interviews, competitor analysis)
Ideations
UX Design (Blue print, User flow, Wireframe)
Information architecture
Prototypes
Testing and iteration
Product development planning (evaluation)
Monitor development process (adjustments)
Self testing, reevaluating and bug fixing
QA testing
Launch
High fidelity UI design
Monitoring & further iteration
As UXUI Designer
As Product Manager
07 IMPROVMENTS
What went wrong?
We started the beta testing with real clients before the launch, and all the testing users dropped off. It was a bust. Through my observations, I determined why.
Wrong expectations about user behavior
I did the research on the system functions and the results our clients expected. However, I assumed they were familiar with the cloud service, and was unaware of their common behaviors and the specific circumstances.
"This is cool, but... "
In reality, the user who is responsible for tip out distribution is the one at the restaurant. They are very accustomed to completing their daily tasks on the local POS machine. This new cloud Tip Out service didn't match their expectation.
My design:
Set up the rules and check the outcomes on the cloud services
gap
POS
Reality:
I use the local POS at the store and distribute tips everyday
My next step
Cloud service and POS integration
POS
Instead of forcing our users to use the cloud service or rebuilding the tool on local POS, I decided to integrate the cloud service and local POS. This allowed the user to access the cloud service through the local POS. The plan will launch at the end of 2024.