Let’s Amoy
Hawker culture is an integral part of the Singaporean way of life. A part of the ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ it is important that Hawker Culture evolves and grows into being not just an attractive choice of dining for the customers, but an attractive way of life for the hawker owners themselves too.
A Skip the Queue app to enhance customer and merchant experience at Amoy hawker centre, providing users with both; an easy ordering and order management system.
Problem Scoping
A busy lunch location in the downtown area, the majority of stalls in Amoy focus entirely on serving the office lunch crowd. This small 2-3 hour window has led to significant congestion, a lack of seating, long winding queues and high stress on the hawker owners + workers - overall, an unpleasant experience for diners.
The ‘Lunch Time’ bottle neck
Research Methods
01
User Interviews
02
Competitors Analysis and Benchmarking
03
User Personas
04
Customer Journey Map
05
Service Blueprint
06
Prototyping
07
Usability Testing
Key Learnings
In addition to discovering that most customers love Amoy hawker centre for it’s variety, proximity and price point, we also learnt that;
Customers need a way to get their purchase and receive food quickly as their lunch hour is not very long
Customers need a more efficient method of ordering from multiple stores
Vendors need a way of growing their business without being financially dependent on current tech solution partners
Vendors need a way to retain staff because most people don’t want to work at a hawker centre
Identifying Opportunities
What is the right problem to solve?
The current hawker experience has a lot of pain points, both short and long term. From our observations and research, it was clear, though, that the current hawker experience itself left a lot to be desired. We wanted to solve for for this immediate frustration, providing immediate pain relief for our users and allowing us to be quick-to-impact
“At peak time, every second is money!”
“I love Amoy, but why does it have to be so crowded during lunch hour?”
What if you could actually ENJOY your lunch hour at Amoy?
No more rushing around looking for a table, while deciding what to eat and stand in a queue- all at the same time.
Product Scope
An “Enjoyable Lunch Hour @ Amoy” means delightful interactions between customers and merchants. Our solution needed to be two sided - enabling both user-types to benefit.
Key Considerations
Given the demographics, any product we build would need to come with minimal learning curve, allowing for quick and sustained adoption
We need to keep scope manageable. The first iteration of this product must stick to enabling a complete order flow , with other value additions coming afterwards.
Customer
Search for food
Place order
Cancel order
Receive order
Merchant
View order
Accept/Reject order
Change menu availability
Change shop status
01
Geofenced Availability
Customers are only able to place orders when they are in a specific vicinity to Amoy Hawker Centre
Reduce inconvenience to merchants due to limited stall space, when customers are unable to collect their food on time
02
Discovery + Order Placement
Explore food options through Search, Favourites, Recommendations, Popularity and Floor level
Crowd indicator to aid with stall popularity indication
Estimated wait time indicator to aid quick decision making
Ability to cancel order if not yet accepted by merchant
Enhanced customer experience that also replicates the vital parts of the physical experience
03
Virtual Queuing
Tracking order using queue number and estimated prep time
Alerts for order pick up
Interactive map to customer with finding stall
Eliminates need for physical queuing in multiple queues reducing the overall dining time
04
Status Change
Ability to change status between Online, Offline and Pause
Pause allows merchants to pause orders when kitchen is overwhelmed or merchant is on a break
Status colour indicator on left panel
Provides flexibility to merchants, particularly the older generation hawkers
05
Order Management
Ability to view order details before accepting order
Easy UI to toggle between New Orders, Order in Progress and Orders to be Picked Up
Large “New incoming order” indicator to grab attention
Improve fulfilment efficiency with enhanced order organisation and reduced error rate. Reduce the reliance on additional staff to take orders / cashier
06
Menu Management
Freedom to add, remove or edit menu items as required
Ability to quickly change status of item to Sold Out when no longer available for the day
Provide flexibility to merchants
How did we fare?
Given we were building a 0 to 1 product for busy, impatient consumers, our product had to win over hearts craving convenience right from the start.
To this end, our detailed usability tests yielded significantly positive results with 100% task completion rate and >4.3 ease of use rating (1-5 scale).
What’s Next?
After our first round(s) of customer feedback, we identified the following “fast-follow” features for continuous improvement
Feature
Opportunity to upsell at checkout: add a drink?
Multiple order tracking, per customer
Use QR codes to order directly from hawker stalls
Payments flow enhancements: “1-2 click payments”, refund flows and transparency improvements
Product Uplift
Quicker task completion rates for users buying food & drink. Increased satisfaction & engagement scores for merchants & consumers
Increased engagement & acquisition as customers order more through the app
Quicker task completion rate, higher transacting frequency. Increased satisfaction & engagement scores for merchants & consumers
Quicker task completion rate, higher transacting frequency, increased user trust & satisfaction scores
Business Uplift
Higher Average Basket Volume & Increased spend per customer
Higher spend per customer, increased transacting users and an increase in customer LTV
Operational Uplift- Shorter queues , increased efficiency (less time spent handling customers)
Increased customer retention & LTV, increased transacting users
