Kinoyume is a Japanese restaurant located in La Jolla that specializes in Japanese comfort food including sushi, rice bowls, ramen, artisan Japanese sets, as well as drinks.
Our team visited Kinoyume and found that although the interior of their restaurant was incredibly homey and well decorated, their unpolished website failed to effectively reflect the style of the restaurant. In addition, users who were visiting the site found that they had a difficult time ordering food items from the menu.
Therefore, we decided to redesign and improve the aesthetic and flow of Kinoyume’s website to increase user enjoyment when visiting the site and allowing them to accomplish their goals more efficiently.

After reviewing the website on our own, we did our own analysis and identified potential features that would need to be fixed, but we wanted to gather direct feedback from the manager of Kinoyume. During our first interview with our client, we found that the client was also unhappy with the current restaurant website and he identified a few specific features he wanted: a more presentable menu ordering system, consistent color schemes that better match the restaurant, and fixing broken links.

After finding out what the manager wanted out of the website, we went to the customers and conducted group interviews with the groups of Kinoyume customers to see which aspects of the website were pain points from a user perspective. Some major points the user hoped to see included: having a better looking site, making it easier to use, and being able to check restaurant reviews. Upon interviewing the customers, we grouped the interviewees into 3 user personas based on shared value: convenience, budget, or service.

With all the information we received through interviewing our two major stakeholders, we now had to determine which aspects we would include in our prototype and define what was within the scope of our project and manageable within the time frame we had.

Upon completing our low fidelity prototype, we sought out critiques from our client, our peers, and our professor. Through this process, we received helpful feedback that allowed us to improve on our site. One major flaw we found was that we lacked any confirmation page, which made it unclear for the user whether their order had gone through or if their reservation was made. The site overall was still relatively plain so we added a cherry blossom background to begin synching the color scheme. I also experimented with a second version of the menu that split customization into a different page and enlarged the visual for the menu item. This would allow the menu page to appear less cluttered and allow the users to see the dish they are ordering which could help inform their decision.

Upon completion of our previous iteration, we conducted one user test and provided them with scenarios to walk through our site. We received no complaints about the functionality and flow of our website, however they did have some qualms about our choice of background. They observed that the background was a little too distracting and clashed with the actual content of our website. The menu page was also a little too simple with the removal of all information except the name, image, and price of the dish. After receiving the feedback from this test, we created our final prototype.

As this was my first time working with a client, one challenge our group faced was managing client expectations and aligning that with the customers’ needs and the widely-used practices in design. The feature that was most difficult to resolve was the inclusion of reviews on the website. Our client was adamant about not having reviews on the website or buying good reviews on Yelp because he felt it was biased and dishonest, whereas many of the users thought that the reviews were useful in helping them decide whether they wanted to eat there or what to order. We ended up deciding to follow the client’s request because, ultimately, the site was for him and the users could find other ways to find reviews themselves with external sites.
Overall, this experience taught me the importance of iteration and how our designs can sometimes drastically change over the lifespan of our project. My role in the creation of the prototype was creating the menu pages. My main struggle was determining the right balance of information that would be present within one screen. I experimented with both having too much and too little information and through getting many iterations of feedback, I was able to identify the perfect mix of both.
Ultimately, we were able to implement all of the features we planned for and created a site that I believe everyone was happy with.