Lead UX Designer
Kitchen Display System (KDS)
The Project
I worked directly with the Operations Manager at Taco Bell to redesign the screens in the kitchen that are used by the food preparers.
The goal of the project was to decrease employee errors while preparing food, decrease the training time, and increase speed of preparation time.
Over the course of one month I was the lead UX designer in charge of conducting interviews with business stakeholders and end-users, and working with one other UX designer to create three different Axure prototypes to test against the current Taco Bell KDS, ran usability tests at Taco Bell Headquarters test kitchen and iterated the design based on user feedback and observations.
I also did some work on Taco Bell’s native apps and did an extensive heuristic evaluation of Taco Bell’s website, neither of which are shown here.
Goals
Improve new hire training
Decrease time to serve food to customer
Increase order accuracy
Challenges
Current KDS system was outdated so drastic changes were only possible with a new system which had a bigger price up-front.
Key Metrics
Improved order accuracy
Decreased training time
Created an innovative and market differentiator concept
Stakeholder Interviews & A/B Tests
We interviewed business stakeholders from operations, training, new product, restaurant transformation and engineering, visited three Taco Bell stores, and interviewed 17 in-store employees. The current KDS sits about 3 feet above the food preparer’s heads, so they are constantly looking up at the screen to see what the customer ordered and looking back down to prepare the food. How much an employee can remember and retain was one of the most important problems to solve for. A/B testing helped us identify which layout resonated with the majority of people.
Prototype. Test. Repeat.
After spending a week in various Taco Bell’s observing and interviewing the employees, as well as conducting A/B tests, we were able to start design by building a few different prototypes to test against Taco Bell’s current KDS. We spent three days in the test kitchen and ran a total of eight tests with six groups of Taco Bell employees, all with varying experience working at Taco Bell.
Mixed Reality Proof of Concept
I am not able to share the proposed work, but we put together three options utilizing various technology, one which I produced and created a video to show how Mixed Reality could be leveraged to revolutionize the industry, while accomplishing the goals of the stakeholders and alleviating the pain points of the employees.