Overall, this project has greatly affected my development as a UX Designer. It allowed me to take an existing website and analyze what works well and what doesn’t. This project was also a great opportunity for me to work with test participants and users to see how others perceive my work and designs. I also studied the designs of other existing restaurant websites in order see what industry standards and trends I should incorporate.
One of the main challenges I encountered with this project was ensuring that my designs were in line with existing UX Design principles and user expectations. Designs that looked intuitive to me were not necessarily perceived that way by the participants in the user tests. This allowed me to incorporate the user feedback as well as comparing my designs to other existing websites.
A main takeaway from this is that you won’t always be able to predict how users will interact with your designs, therefore emphasizing the importance of interviews and user testing.