Zee’s Wiener System (2021)
Lead UX/UI Design · Prototyping & Wireframing
In 2021 I was hired by Zee’s Wiener System to prototype a mobile application that would help users find Zee’s. As a Texas-based pop-up restaurant, Zee’s location is constantly changing, so Zee’s owners wanted to ensure that customers could easily find them.
Auditing The Competition
I began the project by meeting with Zee’s owners to learn more about their need to grow the business by helping customers find them. In parallel, I conducted an audit of comparable pop-up restaurants with similar business models.
To learn more about Zee’s unique customer needs, I attended one of Zee’s events and conducted interviews with 12 customers to gain a better understanding of the demographics, and how they found out about Zee’s events.
From my conversations with Zee’s owners and customers, I learned that Zee’s relied on social media to announce when and where their events were taking place. Zee’s posts about multiple events at different times and locations, could easily get lost or go unnoticed on their Instagram, which made it hard for customers to keep track of Zee’s events. Zee’s needed a dedicated place for customers to learn when and where events were taking place.
Reseach Informs Design
It became clear during the initial audit of the competition that Zee’s management needed a dedicated site that functioned as an archive of their past events, recipes, press, and an official way to contact them. While social media could provide these functions, implementing an official site opened Zee’s business up to event catering possibilities.
I still maintained the initial goal of developing an application that would be easy to use and help direct Zee’s customers to the right place at the right time,
while also focusing on including the additional information about their business.
Armed with the information from the audit phase, I was able to create a user journey, which helped better outline the opportunites and pain points, which I used to create a prototype for Zee’s web app.
Later, I took the prototype to a Zee’s event, where I conducted a beta test with 17 of Zee’s customers.
Measurable Result
Users found the “Take Me” to the event function helpful, but were more interested in learning about Zee’s history and press coverage. While we set out to solve one problem, we ended up solving another.
One user who interacted with the prototype, who didn’t realize that Zee’s catered, made a plan to hire them for one of her upcoming events.
I worked with a developer to build a web application for Zee’s that would be easily updatable and help users find Zee’s while maintaining an up to date archive of press and past events. Zee’s owners were thrilled with the app, which allowed them to grow their business and online presence in a way the didn’t even consider at the onset of this project.