Crowd Ease: Business Productivity App for Restaurant Management & Marketing Strategy
Highlight
Capstone Award
Langara College Audience Winning
Cross-functional
4 developers & 3 designers
8 weeks Built MVP
Agile development
Problem
Restaurant promotion could be hard.
Managers may have a hard time finding the right promotion strategy for the business. They need insights into effective strategies and actionable steps to achieve optimal results. Without a management assisting tool, it is difficult for a small restaurant to retain its service quality and sales quantity.
Restaurant management struggle with resource planning.
Resource planning is one of the biggest headaches for restaurant owners and managers since they commonly lack customer traffic information. As a result, they might encounter instances where there is a rush of customers due to an event nearby, or have a slower than average night, which results in an inaccurate arrangement of staff and inventory.
Solution
Data Visualization for Business Planning Insights
The first element on the homepage is a graph to show the event participants throughout the week because the main purpose of this app is to assist users in getting ready for their business planning. The goal of the data visualization is to facilitate easy analysis at a glance. Then, we give them some calls to action to remind them of the day they should be paying attention to.
Deep Data Analysis & Strategy Suggestions
This is the core of the app — where users find all the analysis and advice they need for marketing and business planning. Users can explore the app and discover its value before they're asked to sign up or log in to access the full report. From there, the top arrow reveals a brief weekly preview. Crowd Ease breaks down each day's events and provides detailed analysis alongside business recommendations.
Event Overview & Smart Filtering
The calendar makes it simple for users to switch around days. We offer options for text search, voice search, event category filtering, and location filtering to ensure a seamless user experience and make it simple for users to find the information they require.
Live Crowd Density & Event Location
The team built the map by extracting data from various APIs. It shows crowd density in color gradients so users can see how crowds are moving and plan accordingly. To give users greater confidence in the data's accuracy, we combined the heat map with a pin map showing the exact location of each event.
Research Insight
Poor Management and Advertising
I have experienced difficulties in keeping track of local events as we do not have a tool to assist us with that. Although we have a point of sale system, our management and advertising are not streamlined, which can be challenging for our business.
– Restaurant Manager
Short Preparation Time
As a manager, I usually plan my inventory and staff schedule a week in advance to ensure smooth operations and avoid any last-minute surprises.
– Restaurant Owner
Competitors Analysis
Like our competitors, we work with crowd data in the high-mobility industry. But we provide more than just real-time data — Crowd Ease combines nearby event information with crowd analytics, giving businesses the insights they need to customize their marketing and plan operations accordingly.
User Flow
The team struggled with the user flow early on — we weren’t yet aligned on the core feature before defining the interaction design and information architecture. We held a session with developers and key stakeholders to gather feedback on how the app’s features should flow, which became a crucial guidepost for scoping the project.
Design
Wireframes
The team finally grasped the key feature – Analytics and Reporting, considering the event data is an effective indicator for decision-making, and also given that the pain point of restaurant owners is that they have trouble filling up their tables.
It was a big validation and I am grateful that my teammates trusted my design suggestion. Following that, we had an agreement on how it would operate, and we created wireframes under that understanding.
Visual Identity
Design System
I worked on the UI kit and made the icons using Illustrator in accordance with the Google Material Design Guidelines. I also established the design system to maintain the same design aesthetic across all screens.
Takeaways
Acquisition funnel for UX design
From a business perspective, the acquisition funnel is a critical driver of user acquisition and retention. In Crowd Ease, our job is to remove blockers and ensure users discover the product's value before they're asked to register or commit to a purchase. I understand that users build up excitement when they download a new app — my job is to sustain that momentum and make sure they have a clear picture of the benefits before being asked to commit.
