Concept Testing
Restaurant Booking System
UK | 17 Participants | 3 Personas | Concept Testing | Interviews
Research Goals
The client was migrating a legacy codebase and needed to prioritise which parts of the product to carry forward. This required a clear understanding of what existing and potential customers valued most, alongside the validation of three existing personas.
Project Context
11 x 75 minute remote interviews were conducted across the UK.
6 x 90 minute in person interviews were conducted in Greater London area.
17 restaurateurs across 3 personas (7 x Rob, 5 x Regina , 5 x Dee).
Research Objectives
Research Process
UK | 17 Participants| 3 personas | In person | Remote
Semi-structured interviews were carried out, whereby participants went through the following 6 workflows within a table management system (TMS):
Setting up a new rule
Setting up a new promotion
How they engage with the CRM
Using the Widget
How they use the In-service Layout
Taking deposits for bookings
Tasks per workflow:
Step 1: Live walkthrough of current TMS
Step 2: Prioritisation exercise
Step 3: Use prototype to complete a task
This three-step approach was designed to first understand current behaviour, then surface priorities unprompted, before testing whether the prototype actually addressed them, ensuring findings reflected genuine need rather than reaction to new stimuli.
Personas
Small Restaurant Rob
A hands-on, old-school small restaurant owner with limited tech experience. Looking for a simple and intuitive table management solution.
Multi-Venue Regina
An owner-operator of multiple restaurants. Focused on streamlining operations, increasing customer loyalty, and expanding their business.
Manager Dee
A tech-savvy restaurant manager with medium to high technical skills. Seeking to optimise their venue's operations and boost profits.
Interviews
UK | 17 Participants | 75 - 90 Minutes
Introduction. 10 mins.
Getting to know the participant and their current booking system experience.
Workflows & Prototypes. 60 mins.
Semi-structured discussion about their experience and priorities with setting up workflows. Participants will walk through prototypes and compare it to their current experience and provide feedback.
Wrap Up. 5 mins.
Final thoughts and answer observer questions.
Analysis
The analysis process consisted of thematic analysis. Whereby transcripts were closely examined to identify common themes and patterns.
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Once the data has been coded the themes are then reviewed to explore potential ideas for recommended solutions.
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Using Miro an affinity map was created to assist with organising the data and recommendations.
An insights report was then presented to the client, accompanied by a highlight reel to bring the insights to life.
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Insights
Here are a few of the insights that were presented to the client.
Onboarding & Training
Participants discussed their need for first-hand training and customer support. To allow them to know how to use their TMS to its fullest potential. Particularly important for Robs to help ease their reluctance to change.
Implication
In order to reduce friction and increase adoption, onboarding needed to be treated as a core part of the product experience, not a secondary feature. This informed the prioritisation of guided setup, training and support.
Decision Making
Most participants stated the decision making process is slowed down. As data is fragmented across multiple platforms.
After viewing the prototypes, there was appetite for data centralisation to assist with decision making.
Implication
Data centralisation emerged as a key value driver. This provided clear direction to prioritise features that consolidate insights, enabling faster more confident operational decisions.
Implication
Trust and reliability were critical to product adoption. This highlighted the need to prioritise performance, resilience, and fail-safes to ensure the system could be relied upon in high-pressure environments.
Outcome
Migrating a legacy codebase is a significant engineering investment, getting the prioritisation wrong means building the wrong thing twice. This research gave the client a clear, user-validated answer to what actually needed to carry forward. The findings directly shaped the product roadmap: onboarding elevated from a secondary feature to a core part of the experience, data centralisation confirmed as a primary value driver, and reliability prioritised as a non-negotiable foundation for adoption. Across all three personas, the research replaced internal assumption with evidence , ensuring the migration was built around what customers genuinely needed.
Reflections & Challenges
When participants are shown prototypes they can naturally gravitate to giving feedback on the usability of a prototype.
However, as usability is not the aim in concept testing. Its important to navigate the participants back to focusing on the objectives at hand. The discussion guide included prompts throughout to ensure the conversation stayed focused on the research objectives rather than drifting into usability feedback.