Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is well known for delivering special patron dining experiences. However, staff members hold onto all of that information in their heads and on paper. 

By creating a digital management system, we could help staff use patron data to make a better service and experience every time.

Through benchmark research, we uncovered that similar patron management systems are great for making and organizing reservations, but not for understanding the patron. Knowing these gaps helped us understand the value we could provide through differentiated designs.

We developed a preliminary list of features and ran a quick survey with GMs to test how they responded, while correlating these with guest responses.

Some important features bubbled to the top, while other feature were not as well-loved.

Now that we had our priority list that we aligned with stakeholders, we synced with the Engineering group regularly to understand which priority features would be an easier lift, and which would be more difficult to implement.

Ultimately, we developed hi-fi Figma prototypes and charted a cohesive user flow.

As I was rolling off of the project, I lead the research and synthesis of key takeaways from usability testing our designs with general managers. GMs appreciated that the app helped them make informed decisions, and balanced comprehensive information without feeling overwhelming.

We started by running background research and heuristic analyses, tagging the current system for positive and negative characteristics, often in relation to other, more modern systems.

From our learnings we created multiple journey maps and blueprints to understand, at a higher level:

• Which services existed today and didn't need to be updated

• Which services were broken or were in serious need of revamping

• Where complete gaps existed in the service ecosystem, and needed to be filled in with valuable features

Through multiple stakeholder brainstorming sessions, we developed concepts and ideas that would most effectively and efficiently improve the current archaic systems.

At the time I rolled off, we were strategizing about the technical implementation of our feature concepts.

Additionally, we were building out the logic flows needed to successfully complete such a large-scale transformation.