ReadyBelly

Project Framing

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At the beginning of term, my group members and I were approached by the Downtown Brantford BIA — and organization which aims to better the downtown in order to create a safer and more desirable location — to create a project that would help them with their goals moving forward. After being assembled into our groups, my team and I held a meeting with several members of this organization to learn more about the problems they faced and the areas we could help.

As we discussed the many different problems the downtown area faces, one of the most prominent talking points became the way business is being affected downtown — and more specifically the way in which restaurants are suffering to gain and retain business. Sure, the onset of the current pandemic has damaged their business severely, but even before the pandemic was a thing, these restaurants were being hid hard by third-party delivery services. In the days in which we now live, providing your service on apps like Grubhub, UberEats, or SkipTheDishes is absolutely essential in order to remain competitive — and yet restaurants can even lose money by providing these options. For one, the fees these companies charge can reach up to 30% of the restaurants profits. But maybe even more importantly, is the problem of downtown residents using these services to get food from non-downtown restaurants. In total, the harm to the downtown area can be great, and so this was our problem space moving forward.

“How might we help to support the Downtown Brantford BIA in driving an increase of business to the downtown core?”

Inspiration

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During the inspiration phase, our team began by researching the problem at hand. During this phase, our team was introduced to a news article of a Vancouver restaurant owner who had created his own delivery app in order to cut down on the external fees. The app had been successful, and so we decided to create a similar app that restaurants could own and manage themselves.

Ideation

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Next came the Ideation phase. Here we dug deeper into the problem, and thought of ways in which we could best support the restaurants. We started by brainstorming all of our ideas, including how restaurants would be able to hire back their own employees (who may have been laid off during the pandemic) in order to fulfill deliveries. Then we took to our sketchbooks to make some simple ideas of what the app might look like.

Making

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Then came the phase where we began to make. Using Adobe XD, we turned our sketches into more relevant prototypes. It should be noted that the prototypes have a very similar layout to that of the other popular take-out apps — our reasoning being that people will already understand how to generally use the app, rather than reinventing the wheel. Of course, further testing and iteration would further the apps usability.

Conclusion

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Finally, we presented our solution to the entire class. We explained the whole process mentioned above, and the way in which our app could help the brantford area. The experience went well, and the project was well taken by the group.

Overall, the project was an enlightening experience, to better understand the way restaurants are being effected and how we might be able to help. Of course, there is still much to learn as we continue to move forward with the idea. In closing, we presented our project to the Brantford BIA — and the results will be updated here shortly ;)