Minipass

Minipass

I led the agile design process of Minipass, a B2C mobile app connecting consumers with restaurants based on the restaurant management system at Minitable. Within 10 months, we achieved 100k+ downloads, 300k+ users, and 3M+ user engagements, leading to $1.8M funding.

Introduction

Minitable is a startup specializing in restaurant management systems, providing SaaS B2B services to thousands of North American restaurants. Its offerings include waitlist and reservation systems, contactless ordering, and POS systems. I led a team to spearhead the development of Minipass, a new B2C app that seamlessly connects consumers with merchants by leveraging the established B2B product fleet and building new features.

My Role

As a product designer, my responsibilities encompassed identifying user pain points, conducting extensive research, iterating on wireframes and prototypes, and validating the final UI designs. My primary goal was to deliver feasible and innovative design solutions that effectively addressed both business and user challenges while ensuring a seamless onboarding experience for our users.

Target Users

Our target users were young professionals aged 18-45 who have a preference for Asian cuisine, seek social connections, and reside in major cities.

Problem Statement

There is a plethora of customer-facing dining-related products and social media platforms, along with individual restaurant websites. However, from a user perspective, there is a noticeable gap. Users lack an integrated platform that allows them to promptly access promotions and activities offered by their favorite restaurants and enjoy the privileges of being loyal customers.

For restaurant merchants, lack an automated and user-friendly CRM system that they can truly call their own. In order to enhance user management capabilities, they urgently require a platform that empowers them with autonomous control and fosters stronger connections with loyal customers.

User Story

1. Discover Promotions and Events:
   As a user, I want to easily discover restaurant promotions and events, enabling me to choose a dining destination that suits my preferences.

2. Effortless Schedule Management:
   As a user, I want to make hassle-free table reservations in advance and manage them, eliminating the need to wait in line at the restaurant.

3. VIP Benefits Membership:
   As a user, I desire a loyalty program that provides VIP benefits, allowing me to save money whenever I dine at my favorite restaurants.

4. Integrated Dining Platform:
   As a user, I seek an integrated dining platform that combines the above features, streamlining my dining experience and saving me valuable time.

After formulating the problem and outlining potential user stories, we embarked on an experimental and iterative design process in alignment with our product roadmap and strategy. In terms of design solutions, we are convinced that a gamified user experience, a clear and user-friendly UI, and a swift onboarding process are the optimal ways to present Minipass.

Onboarding

In crafting Minipass's onboarding process, our prime objective was expediting user access to the app. Initially, we pursued utmost simplicity: users merely inputted their phone numbers for instant login. For scenarios where phone numbers weren't accessible, we introduced the option of setting a password. This entire process was streamlined to take under 30 seconds.

As the app expanded, we injected engaging elements, such as avatar selection and informative pages. These additions ensured users swiftly comprehend Minipass's essence. Upon a significant update, where the app's navigation bar grew from two to three tabs, and the main page underwent restructuring, we implemented a straightforward tutorial. It featured concise instructions and user-friendly highlights for seamless adaptation. Users retained the choice to skip this tutorial.

By prioritizing user-centered design and iterative UI enhancements, onboarding remained a breeze, with an average duration of approximately 69 seconds.

Schedule Management

Online waitlist & reservations, a core product of our company's existing business, is the initial feature introduced in Minipass. We developed a comprehensive trip management system that covers the entire user journey, from reserving a table to the completion of the dining experience.

After thorough research, including the analysis of user behavior and competitors, I concluded that both waitlists and reservations fall under the category of securing tables before the actual dining experience. From a user experience perspective, arranging trips in chronological order based on their time status is the most intuitive way to present this information. I categorized all trips into three main sections: "Upcoming," "Completed," and "Canceled." "Upcoming" trips, being the most time-sensitive, provide users with real-time information, including trip status, time, dining location, and management interactions.

Subsequently, we added a user flow for proactive trip creation. Users can easily access the waitlist or reservation button through the merchant list. Moreover, they can remotely join a waitlist, saving valuable time they would otherwise spend waiting at the restaurant. In terms of UI design, we emphasized essential merchant information and highlighted core functions, balancing both business goals and user needs.

Through continuous optimization, users can now effortlessly complete all trip-related actions on Minipass. We've maintained a consistent design language and UI elements in alignment with our product's brand and style guide, solidifying trip management as a central and streamlined feature of Minipass.

Membership System

Designing Minipass's Membership Cards feature was a significant challenge due to the lack of similar products in the market, necessitating a fresh approach. With numerous features even in the MVP version, simplifying the information structure and user interface to facilitate quick user adoption was a demanding task. We spent over a month crafting more than 20 versions and creating 500 unique pages, from initial wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes. To ensure user-friendliness, we considered various user scenarios, ultimately delivering a clear and intuitively navigable Membership Cards feature.

Users can efficiently manage their membership cards by sorting them, as well as quickly access rewards in their accounts. For a single membership card, the overall design remains consistent, but the UI adapts based on the merchant's settings. For example, we employed secondary navigation tabs to present various sub-functions like membership, rewards, credits, and transaction history. We invested in user-friendly UI elements to effectively educate users within the membership feature, given its naturally overwhelming details. For instance, each membership level is associated with a distinct color scheme, and each member privilege has a unique icon. While introducing these innovative elements, we ensured design consistency by adhering to Minipass's established design guidelines regarding color schemes and fonts.

Given the complexity of the information, designing the information architecture required careful thought. Throughout the design process, we conducted usability testing to validate the information structure's effectiveness, assess the ease of user task completion, and iteratively refine the design.

Conclusion

As the product designer of Minipass, I successfully delivered multiple products under high pressure and limitations. This involved designing over 500 screens for more than 10 significant features across multiple front-end channels, including web, iOS native, and hybrid platforms. Our efforts yielded remarkable results, including over 100,000 organic downloads and an astonishing user growth rate of 2000%. Additionally, we maintained a total base of 300,000 active users. Through my contributions, I played a pivotal role in positioning Minipass as a key strategic asset for the company.

Takeaways