THE TAMALE FACTORY

Redesigning a responsive website for The Tamale Factory, a local restaurant in Riverside, CA.
PROJECT TYPE
CONTRACT
INDEPENDENT UX DESIGNER
WEB DESIGN
MY ROLE
USER RESEARCH
UX/UI DESIGN
INTERACTION DESIGN
BRANDING
PROTOTYPING
USABILITY TESTING
TOOLS
FIGMA
DURATION
MARCH - APRIL 2023
VIEW THE FINAL DESIGN ➞

Overview

BACKGROUND

The Tamale Factory is a local, family-owned restaurant in downtown Riverside that has been in business for about 25 years. Their website was originally designed on Wordpress in 2016 and needs to be updated.

The Problem

The current website is outdated

Customers complain of outdated menu items, descriptions, and pricing

Poor usability and accessibility

The current mobile website navigation is not very accessible and doesn't scale very well

Homepage is cluttered and text-heavy

The current website layout is busy with text and filled with too many images that are not representative of the current atmosphere in the restaurant
The Solution

Redesign responsive website for the restaurant

Rethink current design and redesign with improved UI, usability, and accessibility

Update the menu

Redesign breakfast and lunch menus with item descriptions, prices, and allergens. Add drink menu and kid's menu with a scannable QR code to access all menus

Refresh the brand image

Identify their brand values and colors, come up with a new logo and incorporate them into the website
PROJECT CONSTRAINTS

Existing website

Limited to templates in Wordpress since the existing website is hosted on Wordpress

Brand style

The Tamale Factory owners want to keep the original text logo

Time crunch

Only 80 hours to work on this complex project

REFLECTION

OUTCOMES
This website redesign has not launched yet, due to time and engineering constraints. I was not able to get in contact with the person who designed the original website 7 years ago on Wordpress. The restaurant owners also did not want to implement an online ordering system to their website yet, so we stuck with just phone orders. However, we were able to update the restaurant menus and pricing, with a scannable QR code for customers to view the menus.
IF I HAD MORE TIME
I have a good relationship with the restaurant owners and would like to revisit this project if I have more time to figure out how to update the website on Wordpress. I will need to play around with Wordpress and watch some tutorials though, as I am unfamiliar with this website builder.

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