Company
Fjord Design
Role
Junior Interaction Designer
Year
2016
The Future of Fast Food
For this project, Fjord and Accenture were hired by a global quick serve restaurant chain to combat declining sales and lost market share. Initially, Fjord was directed to focus solely on the chain’s loyalty program. I was proud to be part of a team that challenged the assignment and pushed the client to face issues that ran deeper than updating their points system. I was one of two interaction designers on the team and I worked on this project for approximately three months.
We reframed the questions we were given, performed competitive analysis, and expanded the competitive set to include all potential options, including bringing lunch from home. I then conducted research with customers and employees in the stores and at a market research facility. One of the main insights revealed was that while customers choose the brand as a healthy alternative to other QSR options, they remain conflicted by a perception that the food is low quality. Another insight concerned frustration with the ordering process when language barriers or communications challenges are present.
Our team then returned to the studio and performed the research synthesis and prepared for a co-design workshop with the client. I worked with the visual designer to create a combined customer and employee journey to share with the client.
During the workshop, we presented information gleaned from interviews and worked with stakeholders to facilitate an open and productive conversation. The CMO and CTO were present, as well as members of their staff, franchisees, and even restaurant workers. I acted as the facilitator for one team and walked them through the exercises for defining a vision for the company’s future. At the workshop’s conclusion, the participants had generated over 100 new ideas that could help them reach their goals.
Afterwards, I worked with the rest of the team to distill the raw ideas down to around 40 concepts that might bring success. We explored each idea to see what was interesting and most useful in terms of reaching the goals the client had defined.
