Domino's Design Sprint
Dominos Design Sprint: Tackling a problem in five days
Project Vision Statement
Domino’s Pizza wants to help solve the question of “what’s for dinner?” for families. It’s hard to make a decision when you’re going through the hangry emotions so that’s why Domino’s Pizza app will help solve all of your questions and concerns for dinner.
The Challenge
The design sprint consists of a five-day challenge where we will be finding solutions to our chosen problems. We will be tackling to build a prototype that will solve our customer’s needs. The challenge will help us reach a certain goal and launch products faster.
Domino’s Pizza is an American chain restaurant that was founded in 1960. In 2018, Dominos is currently rated as the second largest pizza chain restaurant in the U.S. Dominos is utilizing technology to its fullest and in the most creative ways. For example, one of the coolest features Domino’s Pizza has is the ability to order in 11 different ways.
My group has decided to focus on building a prototype that includes preset buttons. The idea behind the preset buttons is to order with one push of a button and save time. This special feature can be called “DominoKnows”. The preset buttons will also cater to the concept which is to feed families before the hangry feelings set in. The purpose of the app/website will be to cater to the hangry feelings of the customers. Hangry is a feeling that people of all ages experience when dinner time comes around.
For our group’s design sprint we will be focusing on catering to families and group events as our main customers. Through the digital app, the customer must be able to ultimately buy food and have it delivered. The app will be very responsive to the needs of the customers so they are satisfied and don’t have to come across any issues.
Team
Day 2: Sketch
Our Sprint team was conducted by Kylie Reagan as she was the leader. Other group members include Kristina Robbins, Lilybeth Medina, Karsten Graham, Zoe Abels, and Arely Diaz. In total, there were seven group members including me. We all had our own comfortable field of expertise so each member was assigned tasks and split up the work and then it was compiled together in the end. It was an obstacle to work in such a big team but in the end, we all balance each other out.
Day 3: Decision-making
Day 4: Prototype
Day 5: Validate
Outcomes
In the end, the outcome came out to be that our app was very hard to navigate through for the average user. There were many flaws to our app that we needed to work on but overall many of users liked the layout and design of the app. The app also didn’t have every button functioning which made it difficult for the user to navigate through. Our app is also focused on a feature called DominoKnows button which confused a lot of the users so we had to explain it several times during the testing. The DominoKnows feature is a preset button that allows users to click on different themes of different occasions such as birthdays, sports events, and etc. Then the DominoKnows feature will help you choose what to buy for each event making it easier for event planning. The user testability proved to be very valuable in identifying the flaws and highlight of our prototype app.
Based on the design sprint, I learned that the design problem can have many different solutions and approaches to solving it. While I was a volunteer tester in different groups I noticed that there can be many approaches and solutions to one design problem. I came across so many creative solutions and ideas. Another important thing that I learned was we should incorporate the actual user in the process because we would need a different perspective on things. Because our team is designing and thinking of every step of the way it’s important to think like the user to make the app more efficient and focused on our solution.
What I found the most challenging about this project is working as a team and communicating together. I think I have always enjoyed working on a team. But when the team gets really big then it gets difficult because you have so many opinions and thoughts to process and hear out which could delay the process of the project. Even though my team had few members missing during the Sprint, everyone was involved in the whole process and the remaining members worked hard to complete the prototype. One of the advantages of working on a team is everyone has something to bring to the table. For example, one member could have amazing layout and organization skills while another member could be proficient in using the Marvel app.
The most valuable lesson I learned was don’t be afraid of communication. Throughout the Sprint process, there were many times where we had our miscommunications in the group. But everyone tried hard to reach out to one another for help if they weren’t present on one of the sprint days. I think that’s why our group was able to successfully produce a prototype app. Communication was a crucial part of successfully working as a team.
Day 1: Understand
On day one, groups were met together with groups members from each class. The first thing that was completed was picking out a leader and my group’s leader was Kylie Reagan. The group leader was picked based on the criteria that were set by the Professors. One thing that was understood and learned on day one was of how successful Dominos had gotten in the past few years due to its technological advances. The most important task that we completed was the HMW (how might we?). With the HMW, lots of great ideas were shared and exchanged with one another but in the end, we simplified it down to our top 3 best ideas. This helped us map out the possible problems that could be solved for the Domino’s customers. On day one we came down to determine that the app will need to be simple to use, updated with current designs style, and mainly focused on the user’s needs.
On day two, it was mainly focused on sketching. The sketching went along with an exercise called the Crazy 8’s. After the Crazy 8’s voting and sketching exercise everyone had to share out and present their eight ideas and in the end, we all had to choose one idea per person. After the sketching was completed the voting dots were brought out to vote. At the end of the day, as a group, we decided to focus on the preset button features of the app which makes ordering pizza convenient and simple. Our app will prioritize simplicity and convenience which translates to the preset buttons.
As a group, we gathered to discuss and share ideas. We completed the HMW (How Might We?) exercise using sticky notes.
We sketched ideas for the Crazy 8 exercise. The Crazy 8 exercise challenged us to sketch eight unique ideas within eight minutes.
On day three, we regrouped and discussed our final decision that we should go towards. We used heatmap voting which involved voting on its features. Choosing the features for the app was definitely the difficult part of this day because choosing the right features proves critical to the overall customer experience on the app.
After the heatmap voting, we took our final decisions to Adobe Illustrator. In Illustrator, we designed a rough draft of the app.
On day four, everyone was assigned different tasks over the weekend and we all took our sketch into Illustrator and Marvel app to create our prototype. Few of the given tasks include the layout design, icon design, marvel app expertise, and organizer. On the slideshow below, you can see the final screen designs of the app. Build 1, build 2, and build 3 are categories for the three main functions of the app. The three main functions are quick to order, DominKnows, and new orders.
On day five, we tested our prototype app with 5-6 different users of technology in order to get valuable feedback.
