WHAT IS MENUSIFU INSIGHT
MenuSifu Insight is a cloud report service for business owner to monitor and manage their business remotely, and analyze the data collecting from the local menusifu POS to advice the business improvements.
WHY WE STARTED?
MenuSifu is a POS software company, and serves almost 10,000 restaurants at United State. Recently, with the industry growth, it seemed like the local POS report is not able to fully support our clients' requirements any more.
I don't want to check each of my restaurants report one by one. I want to overview my businesses at once.
I don't usually at the store all the time. Can I monitor my business performance anytime anywhere?
The chain restaurants need a centralized report to oversee all the stores and monitor the business operations remotely.
1
The hard disks at the store was broken because of the flood. All the historical data were gone!
Saving data at cloud is securer and can have a wider and more flexible usages.
2
Besides showing all the operation data and facts, can you suggest us the business improvement and facilitate decision making?
We can analyze the data collected from all different businesses and predict the trending to provide a better advices.
3
I don't want to see this A,C,E,F reports. Can you take it off?
Report A, E helps me a lot, but report C and D is not what I need.
Different type of restaurants need some customized adjustments on the report structure to handle the business efficiently.
4
So we need...
A cloud based report dashboard that can be access through the mobile device and be easily customized to serve different user personas.
HOW IT WORKS
Based on the research results, we design this frame of the report dashboard product.
Batch local POS data to cloud
Create & save agents on database
Pulling data from the collections
Use editing tool to generate reports
Access control for accounts
WHAT'RE THE CONTENTS?
Before we generate the report contents, there are few criteria need to be clarified. Who will be using the product? What are the useful contents for them?
Identify User Personas
First of all, we try to identify the user personas through interviews.
Wanderer
-
Don't know what they want.
-
Keep the old report content
-
Limited usage of report
Boss
-
See the business overview
-
Care about trending
-
Comparing data
Operator
-
Monitor the business operation
-
Quick decision making
-
Employee management
Analyst
-
Need detailed contents
-
Work with numbers
-
Accounting / inventory manager
Categorize Business Types
Secondly, we categorize the various restaurant types that would require different focuses on the business report.
Review Existing Report & Competitor Analysis
Lastly, We also study and analyze the POS report and the other competitors to understand the specific use of content.
GENERATE THE RELEVANT CONTENTS
With all these research results, we can then generate the most relevant content for specific users with the editing tool and authorization system.
Ex:
Login user
Operator
Fine Dining
Chain
_edited.png)
DATA VISUALIZATION
Here I created the chart library for data visualization usage. There are various charts such as Bar chart, stacked area chart, line chart...all of them have different usage and best represent the data visualization.
Color code
The color that is used for the charts need to align with product theme color, but at the same time, it has to be recognizable and visually comfortable.
Line Charts
Color with low saturation is not recommend since the line is thin, and the color tones has to be recognizable.
Group Bar Charts
Limit the number to 5 in a group, and the color should align with the theme color. The tone(color hue) can be closer to create the visual comfort
Light/ dark mode
There are dark mode and light mode of the app. The chart design has to consider the readability, so I have to avoid using the color that has very high/ low brightness, which gave me more constraints on designing the chart library.
Cross platform
The report will be running on the different devices due to the purpose of usage. Therefore, setting up the breakpoints and having the design fulfill the different devices is considered when I designed the chart library.
DESIGN DETAILS
Cross platform design
TABS DESIGN ITERATION
%20Copy.jpg)
%20Copy.jpg)
I used sliding bars for the tabs on web, which is a very common and intuitive.
When the sliding tab goes to the mobile, we found out that the user accidentally swiped to another page very often when they tried to scroll horizontally inside the table. And the test result also shows that our users are more used to the button style tabs on the mobile, which is why we have this cross platform design change.
FILTER DESIGN ITERATION
%20Copy.jpg)
Each filter modules are listed out on the web version since there is enough space and it's a more accessible way.
Previous design
I tried to apply the same design on mobile, but it took too much space which should be used for contents especially when multiple filters are used. Therefore, I designed a filter component that contains all the filters as an alternative.
Current design
TABLE DESIGN ITERATION
The table on the web has the fixed height and can be scrolling up and down easily.
When using it on mobile, scrolling vertically inside the table against the whole page scrolling, so I added a rule on it: if the page contents only one table, then we keep the scrolling function inside the table, otherwise we ban the vertical scrolling and fully extend the table.
DESIGN ITERATION & CONTENT IMPROVEMENTS
MenuSifu insight was launched a year after we started the project, and we still keep gathering the feedback and monitoring the user behaviors to bring the better version of the product.
Interviews
Competitor analysis
Ideations
Testings
Design user flow
Design Wireframes
Iterations
High fidelity design
Prototypes
Iterations
Developments
Launch
HOW TO IMPROVE?
Besides interview users to gather feedbacks, we also use google analytics to keep tracking users' behaviors, and keep iterating the contents and interactions design of MenuSifu Insight.
WORK WITH DATA
In addition to all the product design works, I especially learned a lot more about how the data is processed and how it can be applied. Started from the original data field on POS, I literally went through the definitions and how they were affected by the POS activities, and figured out the formulas that would generate the final numbers that users want on the reports. I also learned how the data is batched and calculated affects the usability and efficiency of the end product. I found all these experiences helped me on decision makings and product designs.