Piece of Cake

Piece of Cake is an app for web and mobile that will make managing cake orders... a piece of cake!
Market Research Competitive Analysis User Interviews Field Observations Personas Wireframes Flow Diagram High Fidelity UI Prototype Usability Study Accessibility Evaluation
Project
Mobile app (iOS)
Role
Design and Research
Tools
Figma, Miro

Why I made this project

When I worked as a baker, I witnessed numerous instances where order forms were lost. These unfortunate incidents could have been avoided if there was a way to digitally track and manage cake orders. This app aims to address this issue by providing a streamlined system for order management.

Market Research

Despite decline in cake sales during the pandemic, the global cake market is estimated to be worth $47.8 million present day. It is expected to be $66.1 billion by 2033. Having an app can provide a seamless ordering experience, helping businesses differentiate themselves and attract and retain customers in a competitive market landscape.

Competitive Analysis

Although I have researched two well-established Paint and Sip franchises and Color Me Mine, a different art class franchise, none of them offered a dedicated app, so I focused on their mobile-optimized websites.

Positive: The strengths for Painting with a Twist, Pinot’s Palette, and Color Me Mine were that they offered easy navigation. dedicated pages for each location. Both of the Paint and Sip sites had an intuitive and simple user flow for booking classes.

Negative: Color Me Mine, on the other hand, offered class bookings only for certain locations, and its busy background and quickly moving carousel image could negatively impact accessibility and mobile optimization. Painting with a Twist also had some areas with too small text which may be issue for the visually challenged.

User Interviews

Interviews were conducted with 10 participants, including bakery employees and customers. Some important findings include:

  • Other than the taste of the cake itself, the most important factors for a customer when ordering a cake are that the order to follow their specifications and being on time.
  • One cake order is either lost or overlooked every 2-3 months
  • As cakes make up 20% of the store's profits, this leads to loss of profit
  • The regular system is having paper order forms which leads to:
  • illegible handwriting
  • forms being misplaced
  • no smooth transition for relaying message to cake decorator
  • no way for customer to reconfirm what they ordered unless they call or there is a direct phone call from the store

    • Field Observations

    As an employee at an actual bakery who was involved in multiple areas of the cake order process, I made the following observations:

  • Bakeries may take orders even a year in advance, or they might squeeze in an order as soon as the next day.
  • There is a filing system - This Week, Upcoming Weeks, Future, but there is still human error in organizing each order by deadline - another reason it is forgotten
  • The cons of paper forms are that they get dirty because of a work environment that handles food, and illegible handwriting.
  • The food service industry has high turnover and new cashiers and servers all the time. Therefore the product must be intuitive to use, and easy to access information
  • No way to tell the status of the cake order without confirmation from cake decorator, who determines the last step in the process.

    • Personas

    I created three personas based on three types of users of the app: the person taking the order, the person making the cake, and the customer.

    Time to start designing!

    After analyzing the research data, it was time to sketch out the low-fidelity wireframes.

    Flow Chart

    To outline the necessary functions for the app I created flow charts of how a typical customer buying a cake would use the app, and how a bakery staff would use the app.

    Wireframes