Kitchen Display Redesign
Helping kitchens work on new orders at a faster pace.
Project details
Client
Kitchen United (KU Mix)
2020
Involvment
UX Design
Overview
Kitchen United (KU) had the KDS running but they knew that its experience, usability and interface had room for improvement. Current members were having difficulties while using it and the look and feel was not appealing to them. The alarms and order statuses in general were not things that KU had figured out yet and they were iterating without having a clear way to go.
Design goals with redesign
Give a visual lift to reflect a more modern look and integrate with the KU brand identity
Evaluate the overall interface for usability and user experience: hierarchy, button sizes, placement for elements to help users gather relevant information without much effort.
Improve interface for better touch interactions, making sure interaction elements are focused on specific areas and not spread across the whole screen.
Improve visibility for products and orders and legibility for all the texts and information.
Define a clear order flow and steps for the order management process and options to filter the list.
Understanding order flow
The first thing I needed to understand was the order flow so I can know when cooks are notified of new orders coming in and suggest improvements if any. We had several rounds of iterations on these flows since we didn't want to change management too much. Simultaneously, it was not ideal to trigger alerts for everything. The main goal was to alert the kitchen when important and relevant action had to be taken: meal overdue and/or there isn't any action after certain amount of time.
Design challenges
In the kitchen, speed is everything. In this redesign, we wanted to make sure cooks had to focus on one thing at a time without worrying if they are tapping on the wrong button. The main action to take on a tile is based on the status of the order.
Because the KDS is for the kitchen to get orders out of their way for dispatch, we explored ways of adding bags to an order. (This state only shows when the meal is ready).
In the old design, if an order had too many items and their names couldn't fit in its container, remaining items went to a separate title. It was extremely confusing. In these explorations, we challenged ourselves around how to display all the items within the same tile so we keep showing 10 orders at a time.
This was the final version for the redesign and the team were very happy with it.
Order ID and time due have higher visibility than the rest of details of an order. Orders in queue trigger and alarm when they arrive into the list. They have a clear call to action that says ‘start cooking’.
When they start cooking, orders get to cooking status in which the order now has a CTA that reads ‘finish cooking’, replacing the ‘done’ button they had at the beginning. This is a clear way of reading the flow.
When an order is in the cooking status and has 3 mins left, the KDS triggers and alarm = orange color. If time is over and they have not finished it, the order triggers a second alarm = red color and sound.
When they finish cooking (tapping the ‘finish cooking’ button) the order goes to the packing status, allowing members to select the number of bags needed for this order and prep it for delivery.
After selecting the number of bags the order goes to completed list (filter on top) and disappears from the active list. As for orders with refires, they have the highest priority when they get into the active orders list and have to be fixed ASAP.
