Breakout : feeding hangry med students

An exploration in using crowd sourced data real time to help create a seamless ordering system for Georgetown University.

May 12, 2018

minute read

Product strategy

Visual design

CLIENT

Vivonet

SERVICES

Mobile Strategy

ROLE

Lead designer

Project summary

Vivonet was presented with an opportunity to create a mobile platform for Georgetown University. The premise was simple, can you create a way to help students with limited time between classes navigate campus restaurants. Can we integrate with their campus card and help mitigate large volume wait times and redirect traffic between available options. We also wanted to ensure that we weren’t creating obstacles to getting to class on time.    

Our solution was to crowd source counter volume, cook time and availability. We had access to the POS systems to help determine volume, so that was a start. We also had historical volume data and could make recommendations based on day / day and week / week predictive models. That was a solve for the first part, but we needed to help stay the course so we went with a map view of campus. Simply load in your schedule and we can help map out the best option for you, and expose all other options.

Exploration

That was a great start, and got us pretty close, but we didn’t stop there. Because we had access to their POS we could create an app based ordering system similar to Uber eats, Doordash, and Grubhub. We already provided white label independent apps for these customers, but what if we could consolidate them. So we did just that.     

Breakout was born. From one convenient app you could get insights into wait times and how crowded a restaurant was. If you weren’t in a hurry you could head over and grab a seat, if you were in a hurry you could order and pay via the app or apply credits from your meal card.

the result

Our customer was happy with the result and it was released to closed beta. Our product and engineering teams were excited and our sales team was ready to get to work. This would become a flagship product for Vivonet and propel us from being being a hardware company into a software company. There were other projects that helped us make this transition as well, but this was a giant step in the right direction.

final thoughts

Today this may seem novel, but at the time this was cutting edge. It was a great example of collaboration, innovation, and forward thinking. This product didn’t receive the notoriety of some of its competitors but it was a solid foundation for what has become a standard in how we commerce. It was a step forward in how Vivonet thought about the tech they were building and opened a lot of doors for our sales team. I consider that a tremendous success.

final thoughts

The result

JASON REYNOLDS

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