User Research

Research Questions

close up portrait of young journalist giving microphone

Would you rather eat at a chain/sit-down restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall, or a fast food restaurant to get your burger?
How do the different features/toppings of a burger impact how much you want a burger? If they do impact your decision what are these features/toppings?
How much do the sides impact your decision to buy a burger? If they do impact your decision, what are these sides and how do you like them cooked?
What motivates you to go out for a burger?
How does the wait time impact your decision to eat at a specific burger joint? If it does impact your decision, how long are you willing to wait for your burger?
If you were to build an app to improve the experience of students trying to discover the best burger joints in Harrisonburg, what features would you include?

Rationale for Approach

When we were given the example question, “How might we improve the experience of students trying to discover interesting and delicious beverages around Harrisonburg?” I thought to myself, “How am I going to do this? The only thing I drink is water.” Then, when I found out that was only a baseline question and that we could design our app to help students find almost whatever we wanted, I knew immediately what I was going to do. Hamburgers. Hamburgers come in so many different types of restaurants, styles of bun, the way the burger is cooked, special toppings, unique sides, the way the fries are cooked… there are so many factors that go into choosing where to get your burger that it’s often difficult to choose.

So, I thought, “What if there was an app, in which students could select exactly what they’re looking for in their burger-eating experience, and then the app could suggest to them where to go? For example, I could select that I wanted to go somewhere within a five-mile radius, no more than a 20-minute wait-time, toasts their buns, and has curly fries on the side. Then the app would run through its keywords preset with all of the different places to get a burger in Harrisonburg, and it would suggest a few different places that I would like to go with those specifications.

Selecting Students to Interview

At first, I thought that making sure all of the students I interviewed would absolutely die for a hamburger, but then I realized that would be biased; so instead, I simply interviewed students who I knew loved eating at restaurants of any kind. When I asked my research questions, I asked them verbatim, and then I explained a little more deeply, exactly what I meant. For example, I made sure they realized that I meant something different when I said a sit-down or chain restaurant versus a hole-in-the-wall versus a fast-food restaurant.

I interviewed two males and three females. I interviewed one freshman, two juniors, and two seniors. I interviewed four JMU students and one student who does not attend JMU but who visits often. I made sure to have a range of ages (freshmen – seniors), genders, and habits/types of burger-eaters. Also, I never just wrote down their answer to each question. I wrote down every little detail that they answered with, which was helpful later on, because even if you don’t report those details in your findings, you still have them to look back on to see their thought process when answering each question.

Interview #1 – Cindy

Year: Senior
Has eaten at just about every restaurant in Harrisonburg
Would rather eat most at a chain/sit-down restaurant
Features and toppings of a burger don’t affect her decision that much. She just wants a burger, but if she had to choose one feature she does care about, it’s the quality of the meat.
Sides do affect her decision to eat at a specific burger joint. Fries must come with it. The type of fries don’t matter that much, but she really likes the thin, shoe-string ones.
She goes out for a burger, because she’s craving one.
Wait time does impact her decision to go to a specific restaurant. She won’t wait more than 15 minutes for a burger.
She would want to include a “Near me” or address search bar in this app.

Interview #2 – William

Year: Senior
Has eaten at just about every restaurant in Harrisonburg
Would rather eat most at a chain/sit-down restaurant or hole-in-the-walluFeatures/toppings do impact his decision to eat at a burger joint. He likes big, thick, juicy burgers, not cheap, dinky ones.
Sides do impact his decision to eat somewhere. Even though he is not a huge fan of McDonalds hamburgers, he will eat them just for their fries. He likes his fries with lots of salt, greasy but not too greasy, and thin, not homestyle.
He will go out for a burger, because he’s craving one.
He will wait around seven minutes for his burger.
If he was creating this app, he would include a feature where customers can click a button when they walk into the restaurant and again when they walk out, kind of like how drivers can report things to other drivers on the Waze app.

Interview #3 – Kaitlyn

Year: Junior
Wants to find more unique restaurants or ones she’s never eaten at before in Harrisonburg
Would rather eat most at a chain/sit-down restaurant
Features/toppings do impact her decision to eat at a certain restaurant. She likes her buns slightly toasted, not super soft, and she absolutely does not like blue cheese.
Sides are not significant enough to impact her decision to eat at a specific location.
She will go out for a burger if she hasn’t eat one in a while and is in the mood for one.
Wait time does not impact her decision to eat somewhere.
If she was going to build this app, she would want different categories to select from when narrowing down where to eat (juicy, flavor, scale, classic or fancy, special toppings).

Interview #4 – Walker

Year: Junior (at Liberty University)
Goes to a university two-hours away but visits Harrisonburg often (about twice a month)
He would rather eat most at a hole-in-the-wall, because their food is unique & usually tastes better.
Features/toppings do affect his decision to eat somewhere. He likes thick, juicy burgers, and unique toppings (mac & cheese, fried egg) gain his interest.
Sides do impact his decision to eat at a specific burger joint. He has to get fries on the side. He really likes sweet potato fries. He also likes when restaurants have special sauces (ex: Chick-fil-a sauce).
He goes out for burgers when he’s in a “party-ish, chipper, uppity-up kind of mood”
Wait time doesn’t really impact his decision to eat somewhere. He’ll wait 30-45 minutes for his burger if he knows it’ll be worth it.
If he was building this app, he would include distance from one’s dorm/apartment, the menu, & restaurant’s rating.

Interview #5 – Jessica

Year: Freshman
Has eaten at plenty of restaurants around NOVA but is new to Harrisonburg
Would rather eat most at a hole-in-the-wall
Features/toppings do not impact her decision to eat at a specific place. She eats classic burgers that every place sells. She’s flexible & just wants a burger.
Sides do not impact her decision to eat somewhere. Pretty much every restaurant offers fries on the side, and she likes all kinds of fries.
Only eats burgers if her friends ask her to come with them to a restaurant. She doesn’t eat much meat, and uses occasions like that as her cheat-meal.
Wait time does not impact her decision to eat somewhere. She goes for the experience/time with friends and family, not just the food.
If she was building this app, she would want organized categories to help point her toward what she wants, sort of like how on the Domino’s website when you’re ordering pizza, each category gets more specific, and it’s easy to select what you want.

Findings

How Data From Findings Informed The Design Requirements

All of my design requirements were primarily based off the last research question “If you were to build an app to improve the experience of students trying to discover the best burger joints in Harrisonburg, what features would you include?” The other five research questions were to determine how necessary different features would be. My main conclusion from the interviews was that this app should be very organized, specific, and should include every single thing a person might look for in a burger or burger-joint. I concluded that the average person would rather wait longer and eat a more delicious and better-quality burger than get a below-average-quality burger in five minutes. Also, people care much more about the features of the burger and fries than I thought they would, which is another reason why I want to be very specific with the categories/keywords people can choose from.

Design Requirements

This app should have a feature that allows college students and restaurant staff to report the status a burger joint (wait time, quality of the food that day, etc.) because having the app be interactive allows for a more accurate, trustworthy, and updated experience.
This app should allow you to search by one of the following three ways: by category, by keywords, and by restaurant name, because some people know what they want, where others need more help figuring out exactly where they should go.
This app should use the five-star rating system, because our peaers’ opinions hold a lot of weight and accuracy onto our decision to eat somewhere.
This app should include the distance each burger joint is away from your current location, because the amount of effort and time a person has to spend in order to get their burger usually plays a big role in the final decision-making process.
This app should only include restaurants that sell burgers AND that are in Harrisonburg, because going any broader than that would defeat the purpose of the app, which is for JMU students (or residents of Harrisonburg) to find burger joints near them.

Persona #1 – Lee

Year: Senior
Major: Engineering
Devices: Always on phone. Very often on laptop.
“I need my food so I can get to my next class!”
Dietary restrictions: none
Favorite type of restaurant: fast food
Doesn’t care what’s on his burger. He just wants a burger.
MUST have fries with his meal.
If he has to wait more than 10-15 minutes for his burger, he’s walking out.
Relationship status: exclusive with another engineering major
Credits this semester: 19
Occupation: college student & cashier at Chick-fil-a
Lee is constantly busy and under stress. Him and his girlfriend don’t have time to go sit down at a restaurant. He grew up an only child. His mom is a nurse practitioner, and his dad is an electrical engineer. His main goal is to succeed higher than his parents, so he would rather put his time and energy into his school and work than the quality of the food he eats. He wants to eat somewhere with quick service and that is close to home.

Persona #2 – Jane

Year: Senior
Major: Art
Devices: Regularly uses phone. Sometimes uses laptop.
“I want to eat something different, somewhere new.”
Dietary restrictions: none
Favorite type of restaurant: chain/sit-down or hole-in-the-wall
Likes trying new toppings, buns, cooking styles, etc.
As long as she gets to eat a delicious burger, she doesn’t need a side, but if she were to get a side, she would like thin, salty, stringy fries.
Relationship status dating around but not exclusive
Credits this semester: 14
Occupation: college student & tutor
Jane’s goal is to experience life as broadly and fully as possible. She loves finding new restaurants to eat at and trying every different burger on the menu. She often meets with her peers at restaurants for tutoring sessions, which she has a lot of time to do, because she is not taking too many classes. Her goal is to eat all of the different burgers in Harrisonburg that she possibly can to gain inspiration for her final art portfolio: “The real heart of Harrisonburg.”