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Canteen UX Research, Redesign and Service Design

@University of Trento

This is a Service design User research and re-designing of the University Canteen's online and offline services. The overall timeline of the project was three months and mainly focused on the evaluative aspects though we had a few moments of discovery and opportunities leading to the development of a new mobile application for canteen services.

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Fig 1.1 Facilitating Participatory Workshop for University Students

Background and Goals

Some of the Problems we identified and resolved were:

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  1. To navigate the canteen in real-time with ease.

  2. To find information regarding food and other specific items in the canteen.

  3. To understand the functioning of different canteens in the university.

  4. To ease the accessibility to various branches of the canteen.

  5. To build an inclusive, economical, and environmentally friendly space for incoming and existing students

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Fig 1.2 Canteen website before User Research - Available only in Italian, outdated Information of canteens

Fig 1.3 Canteen website after User research - Included English language for international users and updated canteen information 

Evaluative Research goals

  • Understand the service provided by University Canteens, pain points of customer along the touch points.

  • Customer journey and perception of the canteen services.

Design Research goals

  • Understand discoverability, learnability, effectiveness of the canteen website

  • Understand whether users are getting enough feedback and are aware of the features/ affordances of the online service

Method

We chose to approach our problem via mainly four different methods  - we started with Ethnography, moved to Focus group then Participatory workshops and IDI. We split into teams to share responsibilities. Of my colleagues, I was responsible for ethnographic studies of Two canteen branches, both in real-time and Virtual, Two In-depth interviews, Facilitating a Participatory workshop, and observing one Focus group discussion.

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Fig 2.1 Methods Used for Research

Ethnography

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We started the process by analyzing the websites online and other relevant online sources.

We split into teams to start the real ethnography studies.

​We went into the field of university canteens for a deep dive into its organizational structure, service, and quality analysis.

We clearly defined the problem statement and identified responsibilities for both the engineers and the administration.

We documented and jumped to thematic coding. 

In-Depth Interviews

 

We recruited two Italian students, three international students, and one Italian admin ( stakeholder) to benefit from a widely representative sampling. I interviewed an Italian and an International student.  Transcribing the audio and thematic coding provided a variety of insights, some of which have been mentioned in the crucial insights section.

Workshop

 

We conducted a workshop with eight University students with a random sampling including those who used the canteen - often, rarely, and never.

​There were Five different rounds:

  • Ice Breaking 

  • Visual Brainstorming

  • Affinity Mapping

  • Card sorting

  • Co-Creating Solutions with creative problem solving

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Fig 2.2 Workshop outcome of "co-creating solutions" round by one of the teams

Focus group

 

Our discussion included Six University students with my colleague Muhan moderating the discussion, we framed the guiding questions after careful observations from our previous interviews and workshop and distilled them down to essential questions to fill the gap and thereby we achieved triangulation and we concluded our research.

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Fig 2.3 Observing Focus Group discussion of university students facilitated

by my colleague Muhan 

Crucial Insights

  • There was an excessive Queue length at each canteen during the busy hours and there was no properly organized method to serve all those who were in the queue. Sometimes users had to leave after an extensive period of waiting because they found out that food was over or they couldn't find their regular food order available.

  • Dine in option is not available, Students who couldn't afford food at the canteen couldn't enjoy their lunch by hanging around with other students as the dine-in option was strictly prohibited and there wasn't any workaround for this. 

  • Unclear Canteen rules and regulations - Rules were in Italian and weren't placed in an accessible format and place for a view.  

  • Website inaccessible and hidden - Many of the users weren't even aware of the website and that information is available on the websites.

  • Magic ingredients in food - There was no clue about what was included in the food - there wasn't any segregation for vegetarian/ Vegan/ Gluten-free etc.

  • Poorly designed Menu - The menu didn't have a price column.

  • Language and communication issues -  since there were staffs who only spoke Italian none of the international students could communicate.

  • Increased food wastage and no way to monitor wastage.

  • Recycling of food and subsequent economic impact was expected from students who vouched for sustainable and minimalistic life.

  • Pleasant aesthetics is important for a peaceful experience in the canteens - there was no entertainment available.

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For additional findings and learnings, please contact preerampr@gmail.com.

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Fig3.1 Customer Journey Mapping of Universtiy canteen service

Research Impact

Strategic Impact

  • Canteen services redesigned touchpoints including renovating student card options, English menu and sign boards

  • Design guidelines and Research repositories are left for designers and Front-end developers to take over from.​

Stakeholder Collaboration Impact

  • Improved UX maturity of the university canteen by involving stakeholders - Italian admins and staff in various research activities.

  • UXR championed user research and collaborated with cross-functional teams for the development of a new application including a ticketing feature. 

Product Impact

  • Included the English language for the canteen website

  • Updated restaurant information and IA of the whole website 

  • Included dynamic map - Navigation system

  • Menu was redesigned with a price column and segregation with Gluten-free, vegan option columns 

My Learnings

  • ​User Experience Research is similar to any kind of scientific research.

  • To dig deep into the key problem areas I had to first set a common ground with my teammates. This led me to understand the importance of interpersonal communication skills and enhance the same.

  • As in any challenging development process, there were many places of total out-of-sync, disagreements, and misunderstandings but I learned on the whole how to be compassionate, empathize and be patient with my team, and resilient towards building the product desired originally.

  • ​Overall, it was a great learning process with immense wisdom.

*For more details about the project, please contact me

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