AREAS OF NEED-FINDING:
1. We used online survey to identify the amount of people who have the need as we predicted. The total number of participants is 30, and they took a two-section survey that is described in detail below.
We designed the first part of the questionnaire to obtain a fundamental understanding of our potential order-placers(people who place orders). These questions help us to understand consumers' experience with the current delivery system provided by local restaurants and perhaps third-party service providers. Based on this knowledge, we are able to derive a clear understanding of the actual needs from our consumers and design solutions based on those needs.
Our Questions:
How often do you order delivery from local restaurants?
What do you think are the major problems with current delivery service provided by local restaurants?
How long do you often have to wait for delivery service provided by local restaurants?
Have you ever wanted to place an order of delivery but only to discover that the restaurant does not deliver?
When that happens, have you ever attempted to order using a third-party delivery service?
If so, what third-party delivery service have you used before?
What do you think is their biggest weakness, if there is any?
Do you have a motor vehicle?
How often do you drive out to eat?
How much delivery charge(tip+any other delivery charge) are you willing to pay for fast and reliable(within 30 mins) delivery service?
We are also interested in the activities that people perform while dining in restaurants. We would like to know the amount of people who are willing to take delivery for monetary reward, and we want to know if the expected cash reward from driver will match the expected expense on tip from consumer.
In the second part of the survey, we asked the following questions to determine the need and approximate the population of our potential order-takers(people who take and fulfill deliveries). These questions focus on understanding the behavior of people who dine out and their needs. This knowledge helps us to develop more reasonable and efficient method of operation.
Our Questions:
Do you often go out for lunch?
If so, do you often go back to school after lunch?
Do you often go out for dinner?
If so, do you often go back to school after dinner?
When dining out, do you often find yourself with other people or by yourself?
When you want to dine at a certain restaurant but are unable to find a friend to come with you, would you rather go alone or give up on the idea?
Do you have certain restaurants that you always go or do you prefer to try different places every time your decide to dine out?
Do you often check Facebook or use other apps on your cellphone while dining out?
Do you often browse webpages on your cellphone while dining out?
After dining in at a restaurant, have you ever taken take-out orders from that restaurant for your friends?
How often do you do that?
Do you think that taking deliveries for other people creates a lot of trouble and delay for you?
Will you be willing to deliver take-out orders for other people after you finish dining at a restaurant in exchange for monetary reward?
If you are requested to deliver a take-out order on your way home after dining at a restaurant(without having to make any detour), how much tip do you think is appropriate for your to earn?
We also explored the need from local restaurants or service providers. The focus of need-finding in this area will be whether restaurants will be interest in reducing their delivery cost and work with our website.
Based on our communication with local restaurants including Chopsticks, Hans Noodle Bar, and GuangDong House, we discovered that the restaurants have diverted a considerable amount of money from their profit to maintain their delivery service team. The owners or managers of those restaurants have expressed interest in our service and agreed that by allowing efficient third-party to take over the delivery service, they will be able to maximize profit and serve a greater number of customers.
First Round of Evaluation:
After these preliminary surveys, we collected data and interpreted the results. Our goal was to optimize our mechanism so that the greatest number of people would be using our website. Also, we would like to have meaningful expectation of the level of activity on our website.
Conclusion:
Based on the information collected from the first section of our survey, it was clear that most participants placed delivery orders more than twice a week. However, among the thirty response that we received, more than 20 people complained that delivery service provided by local restaurants were either too slow or too expensive. 18 participants complained that their order took more than 30 minutes to be delivered. 17 participants also spoke of the problem that more than half of the restaurants that they would like to order from did not deliver. These observations clearly indicated that the current delivery service provided by restaurants are not satisfactory. In order to understand whether existing solutions such as third-party delivery providers including Grubhub and Eat24Hours are actually solving the problem, we asked additional questions regarding participants’ experience without those service providers. 21 participants expressed that they either never tried those options before. Among the 9 participants who have used third-party delivery services, most of them chose Grubhub. Many of them expressed that current third-party providers like Grubhub often times rely on the delivery service provided by local restaurants. This information confirmed our belief that our target market exists, and no third-party is able to provide a reliable and independent delivery service. In order determine the price that people are willing to pay for reliable and fast delivery service, we included a question to collect this information. As a result, 25 participants said that they would pay $5(including tip and all delivery charge) or more if it is truly reliable and fast service.
Evaluation Result of the second section of our survey:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jeeq3e3hdbega7p/Order-taker%20side%20needfinding%20.docx?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/arsh9jjbudradr0/Order-taker%20side%20needfinding%20.xlsx?dl=0
Based on our findings in the second section, we concluded that we should focus our service during dinner time, when the greatest number of students are dining out and others are looking for delivery services. We realized that a large number of students are used to spend time on their cellphone during meals, and many of them are willing to bring take-out orders for friends. Therefore, we were confident that given the delivery will not incur excessive detour, many people will be willing to work with and bring deliveries for other members of our community. The result of study about whether monetary reward changes people's behavior provides basis for our confidence. Based on this study, there is a significant increase of people willing to bring delivery for others when monetary reward is provided and guaranteed.
Prototype:
After the first round of needfinding, we will establish our prototype website. The prototype will be relatively high-fidelity in terms of functionality. It will be consisted of a front-end interface and a rear-end database. The prototype will be relatively low-fidelity in terms of appearance. We may not worry about the CSS and layout of the front-end user interface but instead focus on building the structure and testing whether user will be satisfied with they way our system operates.
Our prototype will include the following components:
We brought in users to test our system. We used the Wizard of Oz. One of our group members simulated a member accepting orders to run test on participant, who is using the system as the other party. We collected feedback from users who would act as members placing orders.
Evaluation process:
We walked around Gleason Library and RushRhee Library during dinner hours and offered our service to help them to order food. Six people participated and tested our website. We accepted their orders and fulfilled their orders for them because our website had not gone public, and there were few actual users to perform actual food deliveries. Although we failed to test the order-taker side of our service, we were able to collect some valuable information from our order-placers.
After fulfilling the orders placed by our participants, we asked them to fill out short surveys and recorded interviews from several of them.
This survey was completed by all six participants, and it included the following questions:
Which restaurant did you place your order from?
How long did it take for your order to be completed?
Were you happy about the speed of your delivery?
Does the restaurant provide delivery service? If so, what do you like and don't like about their service?
What are the aspects where we outperformed the restaurant-provided service, if any?
What are the aspects where we failed to succeed in comparison with the restaurant-provided service?
Will you use our website again for your future orders?
Have you used similar third-party delivery services before?
When you first visited our website, were you able to quickly understand the service we provide?
Are the functions provided by our website self-explanatory?
Was there any function provided on our website unclear or ambiguous?
Were you able to quickly place an order? If not, what were the difficulties?
On a scale of 1 to 10 (w/ 10 being the best), how much would you rate our website based on its design and layout? (Is it appealing to the eyes)
What are your concerns about our service? (what do you think is the weakness of our service)
What do you think can provide potential solutions?
Interview Video URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PFUeHkrDHI
Evaluation Results:
From the list of restaurants on our website, McDonald's is the most frequently restaurant that participants ordered food from. However, McDonald's does not provide food delivery service, which is really inconvenient for on-campus students who lacked transportation option. Participants also ordered food from some restaurants that provide food delivery service, such as Bamboo House. However, during rush hours, the delivery service provided by Bamboo House takes over an hour on average. Through our website, it took 66% of our participants less than 20 minutes to complete their order and receive the food. So 83% of the participants considered that speed is our advantage over the delivery service provided by other restaurants. And 100% participants expressed that they would use our website in the future. In comparison with the restaurant-provided delivery service, however, there are still several problems that require attention. The biggest problem is “Lack of order taker”; Students are afraid that no one will take their orders after they placed the order on the website. This is a valid concern, and due to the lack of time, we were unable to provide any test result to address this issue. However, possible solution includes increasing delivery reward by raising money through advertisement and using other incentives. Also, we need to set up a functional rating system to allow users to evaluate their service providers. Several participants suggested that menus should be attached to each restaurant page in order for customers to have easier access to the list of dished provided by each restaurant. All of our participants found little difficulty understanding the service and function we provided when browsing our website. 83% of the participants took 10 minutes or less to place their order. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average score that participants rated our website based on its design and layout was 8.3.
In conclusion, our service did provide an alternative to our users by providing them with a fast and convenient delivery option. However, as we were unable to test the reliability of our service, we were unable to determine whether there will be enough drivers in the market to fulfill most of the orders posted by other members in a timely fashion. The website prototype received a lot of praise. It appeared to be self-explanatory and easy to understand. The functions provided by the website are clear and easy to use.
Other areas of question that we are considering are as follow:
What if people don’t appear when the order arrives
First of all, everyone using the website has a rating system where others are free to comment and rate every delivery. Drivers who do not fulfill their responsibilities can be reported by users who place orders. If users refuse or do not respond to drivers when their orders arrive, the users can also be reported. Members of the forum who are reported for multiple times within a certain period of time will be blocked for a certain amount of time. People deliver the food and order the food can read the comments and ratings before making an agreement. ROC will pay for all the potential monetary loss caused by abortive deals
How do users pay for the product?
1. We used online survey to identify the amount of people who have the need as we predicted. The total number of participants is 30, and they took a two-section survey that is described in detail below.
We designed the first part of the questionnaire to obtain a fundamental understanding of our potential order-placers(people who place orders). These questions help us to understand consumers' experience with the current delivery system provided by local restaurants and perhaps third-party service providers. Based on this knowledge, we are able to derive a clear understanding of the actual needs from our consumers and design solutions based on those needs.
Our Questions:
How often do you order delivery from local restaurants?
What do you think are the major problems with current delivery service provided by local restaurants?
How long do you often have to wait for delivery service provided by local restaurants?
Have you ever wanted to place an order of delivery but only to discover that the restaurant does not deliver?
When that happens, have you ever attempted to order using a third-party delivery service?
If so, what third-party delivery service have you used before?
What do you think is their biggest weakness, if there is any?
Do you have a motor vehicle?
How often do you drive out to eat?
How much delivery charge(tip+any other delivery charge) are you willing to pay for fast and reliable(within 30 mins) delivery service?
We are also interested in the activities that people perform while dining in restaurants. We would like to know the amount of people who are willing to take delivery for monetary reward, and we want to know if the expected cash reward from driver will match the expected expense on tip from consumer.
In the second part of the survey, we asked the following questions to determine the need and approximate the population of our potential order-takers(people who take and fulfill deliveries). These questions focus on understanding the behavior of people who dine out and their needs. This knowledge helps us to develop more reasonable and efficient method of operation.
Our Questions:
Do you often go out for lunch?
If so, do you often go back to school after lunch?
Do you often go out for dinner?
If so, do you often go back to school after dinner?
When dining out, do you often find yourself with other people or by yourself?
When you want to dine at a certain restaurant but are unable to find a friend to come with you, would you rather go alone or give up on the idea?
Do you have certain restaurants that you always go or do you prefer to try different places every time your decide to dine out?
Do you often check Facebook or use other apps on your cellphone while dining out?
Do you often browse webpages on your cellphone while dining out?
After dining in at a restaurant, have you ever taken take-out orders from that restaurant for your friends?
How often do you do that?
Do you think that taking deliveries for other people creates a lot of trouble and delay for you?
Will you be willing to deliver take-out orders for other people after you finish dining at a restaurant in exchange for monetary reward?
If you are requested to deliver a take-out order on your way home after dining at a restaurant(without having to make any detour), how much tip do you think is appropriate for your to earn?
We also explored the need from local restaurants or service providers. The focus of need-finding in this area will be whether restaurants will be interest in reducing their delivery cost and work with our website.
Based on our communication with local restaurants including Chopsticks, Hans Noodle Bar, and GuangDong House, we discovered that the restaurants have diverted a considerable amount of money from their profit to maintain their delivery service team. The owners or managers of those restaurants have expressed interest in our service and agreed that by allowing efficient third-party to take over the delivery service, they will be able to maximize profit and serve a greater number of customers.
First Round of Evaluation:
After these preliminary surveys, we collected data and interpreted the results. Our goal was to optimize our mechanism so that the greatest number of people would be using our website. Also, we would like to have meaningful expectation of the level of activity on our website.
Conclusion:
Based on the information collected from the first section of our survey, it was clear that most participants placed delivery orders more than twice a week. However, among the thirty response that we received, more than 20 people complained that delivery service provided by local restaurants were either too slow or too expensive. 18 participants complained that their order took more than 30 minutes to be delivered. 17 participants also spoke of the problem that more than half of the restaurants that they would like to order from did not deliver. These observations clearly indicated that the current delivery service provided by restaurants are not satisfactory. In order to understand whether existing solutions such as third-party delivery providers including Grubhub and Eat24Hours are actually solving the problem, we asked additional questions regarding participants’ experience without those service providers. 21 participants expressed that they either never tried those options before. Among the 9 participants who have used third-party delivery services, most of them chose Grubhub. Many of them expressed that current third-party providers like Grubhub often times rely on the delivery service provided by local restaurants. This information confirmed our belief that our target market exists, and no third-party is able to provide a reliable and independent delivery service. In order determine the price that people are willing to pay for reliable and fast delivery service, we included a question to collect this information. As a result, 25 participants said that they would pay $5(including tip and all delivery charge) or more if it is truly reliable and fast service.
Evaluation Result of the second section of our survey:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jeeq3e3hdbega7p/Order-taker%20side%20needfinding%20.docx?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/arsh9jjbudradr0/Order-taker%20side%20needfinding%20.xlsx?dl=0
Based on our findings in the second section, we concluded that we should focus our service during dinner time, when the greatest number of students are dining out and others are looking for delivery services. We realized that a large number of students are used to spend time on their cellphone during meals, and many of them are willing to bring take-out orders for friends. Therefore, we were confident that given the delivery will not incur excessive detour, many people will be willing to work with and bring deliveries for other members of our community. The result of study about whether monetary reward changes people's behavior provides basis for our confidence. Based on this study, there is a significant increase of people willing to bring delivery for others when monetary reward is provided and guaranteed.
Prototype:
After the first round of needfinding, we will establish our prototype website. The prototype will be relatively high-fidelity in terms of functionality. It will be consisted of a front-end interface and a rear-end database. The prototype will be relatively low-fidelity in terms of appearance. We may not worry about the CSS and layout of the front-end user interface but instead focus on building the structure and testing whether user will be satisfied with they way our system operates.
Our prototype will include the following components:
- Homepage
- User Login Page
- “Order Post” page : To post an order, simply login and submit the item name, expected delivery time, order expire time and other specific request of the order.
- “Order Review” page: all the delivery-pending orders are listed and can be sorted by different standards. Available sort methods: distance from my location to the store; customer’s review rating; item’s size and weight
- Once user agreed to pick up an order, he/she will receive contact information of the consumer who posted the order to negotiate about details if needed.
We brought in users to test our system. We used the Wizard of Oz. One of our group members simulated a member accepting orders to run test on participant, who is using the system as the other party. We collected feedback from users who would act as members placing orders.
Evaluation process:
We walked around Gleason Library and RushRhee Library during dinner hours and offered our service to help them to order food. Six people participated and tested our website. We accepted their orders and fulfilled their orders for them because our website had not gone public, and there were few actual users to perform actual food deliveries. Although we failed to test the order-taker side of our service, we were able to collect some valuable information from our order-placers.
After fulfilling the orders placed by our participants, we asked them to fill out short surveys and recorded interviews from several of them.
This survey was completed by all six participants, and it included the following questions:
Which restaurant did you place your order from?
How long did it take for your order to be completed?
Were you happy about the speed of your delivery?
Does the restaurant provide delivery service? If so, what do you like and don't like about their service?
What are the aspects where we outperformed the restaurant-provided service, if any?
What are the aspects where we failed to succeed in comparison with the restaurant-provided service?
Will you use our website again for your future orders?
Have you used similar third-party delivery services before?
When you first visited our website, were you able to quickly understand the service we provide?
Are the functions provided by our website self-explanatory?
Was there any function provided on our website unclear or ambiguous?
Were you able to quickly place an order? If not, what were the difficulties?
On a scale of 1 to 10 (w/ 10 being the best), how much would you rate our website based on its design and layout? (Is it appealing to the eyes)
What are your concerns about our service? (what do you think is the weakness of our service)
What do you think can provide potential solutions?
Interview Video URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PFUeHkrDHI
Evaluation Results:
From the list of restaurants on our website, McDonald's is the most frequently restaurant that participants ordered food from. However, McDonald's does not provide food delivery service, which is really inconvenient for on-campus students who lacked transportation option. Participants also ordered food from some restaurants that provide food delivery service, such as Bamboo House. However, during rush hours, the delivery service provided by Bamboo House takes over an hour on average. Through our website, it took 66% of our participants less than 20 minutes to complete their order and receive the food. So 83% of the participants considered that speed is our advantage over the delivery service provided by other restaurants. And 100% participants expressed that they would use our website in the future. In comparison with the restaurant-provided delivery service, however, there are still several problems that require attention. The biggest problem is “Lack of order taker”; Students are afraid that no one will take their orders after they placed the order on the website. This is a valid concern, and due to the lack of time, we were unable to provide any test result to address this issue. However, possible solution includes increasing delivery reward by raising money through advertisement and using other incentives. Also, we need to set up a functional rating system to allow users to evaluate their service providers. Several participants suggested that menus should be attached to each restaurant page in order for customers to have easier access to the list of dished provided by each restaurant. All of our participants found little difficulty understanding the service and function we provided when browsing our website. 83% of the participants took 10 minutes or less to place their order. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average score that participants rated our website based on its design and layout was 8.3.
In conclusion, our service did provide an alternative to our users by providing them with a fast and convenient delivery option. However, as we were unable to test the reliability of our service, we were unable to determine whether there will be enough drivers in the market to fulfill most of the orders posted by other members in a timely fashion. The website prototype received a lot of praise. It appeared to be self-explanatory and easy to understand. The functions provided by the website are clear and easy to use.
Other areas of question that we are considering are as follow:
What if people don’t appear when the order arrives
First of all, everyone using the website has a rating system where others are free to comment and rate every delivery. Drivers who do not fulfill their responsibilities can be reported by users who place orders. If users refuse or do not respond to drivers when their orders arrive, the users can also be reported. Members of the forum who are reported for multiple times within a certain period of time will be blocked for a certain amount of time. People deliver the food and order the food can read the comments and ratings before making an agreement. ROC will pay for all the potential monetary loss caused by abortive deals
How do users pay for the product?
- All payment takes place offline and this website does not involves any kind of financial statement of personal users.
- Once the order-placer and the order-taker has reached one agreement, the website consider this trade as one recognized order
- If the order-placer and the order-taker has reached agreement and the order-placer has finished the order, the order-placer is required to give the order-taker pre-agreed amount of payment for doing this, as listed on the post-information page.
- If a members posts a request but fails to pay the driver. The order-taker may report the person who posted the request, and we, as administrators of the website will look into it.
- Both the order-taker and the order-placer can leave comment on each other but are not required to do so.