Design Roost's First Ordering Kiosk

This project presents my ability to rally the troops, find resources where I can get them, and have those UX resources jump in and do their best work, all while delivering on time.

The Business Objective

Use labor resources for the most critical tasks rather than taking orders, and present an upsell opportunity with every transaction.

The Situation

The project kicked off during the holidays, when so many people were out of the office, and while I was trying to fill the Restaurant UX Designer role.

The Designers

Jasninder Singh: He built an order process framework that would follow conventional expectations and be reusable for our other restaurant brands

Philip Sams: Did the initial UI designs and gave the kiosk its look

Me: I brought my kiosk knowledge from a previous employer, made revisions during the design process, and kept the ball rolling

Samia Gilani (New hire to fill the vacancy): brought us from initial designs and spearheaded all future iterations, and brought the project home

The Research

We visited a lot of other restaurant kiosks, took photos of the ordering process, and met back at headquarters to synthesize our findings.

• Food imagery is key; every decision we made kept the food photos the most prominent element on the screen.
• Through my previous experience, I had first-hand knowledge that having more single-choice steps in the process increased the speed of ordering at the kiosk
• We learned a lot about how to visually highlight made choices, and the liberal use of step indicators throughout

McDonalds has one of the best quick-serve restaurant kiosks in the market. The above example of a less-than-optimal experience surprised me.

Our Framework

We kept it simple for speed and understanding.

The Upsell

Once the customer clicks checkout, they get the upsell page. I gave specific instuctions for the upsell. It had to absolutely be and look as empty as possible. What looks like empty space makes choosing and selecting items as clear as possible.

The Results

As of spring 2025 we're in development and UX is running environmental observational studies at other quick-serve restaurants. The proof of concept will launch June 2025