Challenge
We were designing in a constantly changing context. Restrictions shifted week by week, and user behaviour had already changed in ways people had not fully reflected on. The design needed to work under current conditions without becoming irrelevant once restrictions changed.
A second challenge came from our process. The prototype was built directly from needs gathered in participatory workshops. This gave us confidence in the concept but also created a risk. Designing around stated needs can overlook how those needs behave in a real interface. The booking flow made sense in theory. Testing would show whether it worked in practice.
Process
Research
We conducted three focus groups with nine participants to understand how behaviour had changed. The main shift was clear. Spontaneous visits were replaced by planned ones, and users expected visible health measures before arriving. Booking had moved from convenience to necessity.
We then ran participatory design workshops with ten stakeholders across three groups: customers, restaurant staff, and people with development experience. Using paper prototyping and collaborative sessions, we defined the core structure of the app: a Discovery page combining map and card views, a Search page with filters for dietary needs, mood, and activities, a restaurant detail page including COVID guidelines, menus, and reviews, and a booking flow with calendar, party size, and time selection.
Prototype
Based on the research, we created user flows and initial sketches, then designed an interactive high-fidelity prototype in Figma. The prototype covered the full journey: account creation, discovery, filtering, restaurant details, booking, confirmation, cancellation, and user profiles. Seven flows were fully connected and testable.
Usability testing
We tested the prototype with eight participants across six task-based scenarios. Three structural issues emerged: the booking confirmation flow did not clearly show when an action was completed, with several users remaining on the screen unsure if the booking had gone through; the cancellation flow was too similar to the previous screen, and users did not realise they had taken a separate action; and the map view, identified as important during workshops, was missed by most users because it was placed where they expected search functionality.
Outcome
Testing revealed three structural issues before development began. Each issue was consistent across participants and clearly actionable. We ran three separate research studies, synthesised across them, and caught these failures before a single line of code was written. We delivered prioritised recommendations across all flows, with the next step to implement changes and run a second round of testing.
