Written by Liting 2022 Cohort
《The Founder》Teaches you How to do UX Design
Do you know how McDonald’s got its start? “The Founder” will explain. The movie shows how McDonald’s restaurants developed from drive-in restaurants to symbols of American culture. But I was surprised to discover that the film effectively describes the usual user experience design process. Let’s take a look!
- Find problems (18:00mins) In the beginning, the leading actor Ray Kroc’s business of selling mixers was complex. Suddenly, a California restaurant placed an order for six mixers. Ray Kroc went to this restaurant out of curiosity, but he discovered the unique and efficient operation mode.
From the movie’s 18 minutes, the McDonald brothers shared McDonald’s development process. I designed the following table as an illustration. McDonald’s restaurant sales were not smooth initially, so they wanted to figure out the problem with the traditional drive-in model. Across this process, they discovered many pain points in customers and services. The most crucial of these is that they identified the food categories’ pain points (87% of customers will only order hamburgers, fries, and drinks).
2. Define the problem 18:55
After Mac and Dick find the problem, they continue to define it. The key to changing the customer base is to change the way of service. Therefore they set up a series of changes, such as cutting dishes, deleting costly food delivery, uniform waitresses, etc. They hope to create a family-friendly environment. But they know the key to improving customer experience is reducing the waiting time.
3. User experience design19:31
“Orders ready in 30 seconds, not 30 minutes,” Mac and Dick hope that. As a result, they started rethinking the entire food production process, and eventually, they created the world’s first-ever system to deliver food fast. The method they used is similar to the operation of user experience design. We usually start by observing the user journey map, then plan a new service blueprint, and ultimately build many prototypes to get the best user interactive way.
McDonald’s has brought significant reforms to the fast-food industry: they let the restaurant go from “at least 20 minutes” to “it only takes 30 seconds for a burger to be made to the counter”. Their customer base went from passing drivers to stable families, and eventually， the company is now the most well-known restaurant brand in the United States. Of course, in addition to the design strategies I mentioned above, there are many brand strategies in the movie that are worth learning, so I will let you watch for yourselves!