The ‘Beef’

Wendy’s is known for square hamburgers and mean tweets like no other fast-food brand. As the value wars have grown more rampant in the QSR industry, customers are not only seeking the best deals, but also the most convenience when ordering. Surpassed in quickness by major competitors, Wendy’s understood that the current order flow didn’t offer the quickest and most efficient way to get an order placed and retrieve it. We talked to customers and got to the bottom of what the biggest holdups were and then it was time to break the chains of the old, repetitive, and monotonous experience and start pitching square burgers with speed.

The Problem Reframed

Wendy’s leadership presented us with a simple goal.

“I want to be able to order Wendy’s at a red light.”

After the report function was sealed, the rest of the experience could be built around it. We had to adhere to 508 Accessibility standards throughout due to this being a government site. This posed a challenge in some places, but the real challenge was trying to find creative ways to portray information while following the guidelines. For example, we took advantage of hover-states throughout the site to show interaction in a manner that was both appealing and in accordance with the guidelines. We also encompassed a modular structure within the site. This allowed for USPIS to continue to tweak their own content once we passed over the keys while remaining adherent to all of the guidelines previously mentioned.

After we added our touches visually and performed some usability testing, we knew we were on the right track. The client for this project was thrilled with the result, but the next step for us was to make sure that development followed our designs to produce our primary end-goal. I provided full annotations for our designs and worked in coordination with our internal development team to create the site that exists today.

The bottom line & What i learned

Prior to our relaunch, less that 10% of users would actively trust the site enough to report a crime. This statistic stood to damage a police force that gets a ton of its leads and information from day-to-day users like you and me. After our relaunch, more than 80% of site traffic resulted in a new crime being reported that ranged anywhere from mail theft to illegal narcotics being sent through the USPS.

The USPIS had reached a point in its life-cycle to make a change. It was an organization enriched with history and roots throughout the upbringings of America that needed a new, more modern look. It needed new life, and in order to convince the public eye that it still existed, it needed a digital footprint. With the collaboration of the client and our team, we did just that. The USPIS now has one of the best looking government sites on the web, and has the recruiting and reporting power to pack a punch. We are extremely proud of this site and can’t wait to see it grow in the future.

For myself, this was my first real experience with 508 accessibility as well as my first experience owning the entire UX piece of a project. I worked with a large-scale team and had direct interaction with the client on multiple occasions in order to showcase our progress and creative work. My relationship with the creative team provided the groundwork for this agency to follow on future projects. We were working towards a more fluid process within MRM at the time with a goal to make UX more a part of the creative team and remove silos from the workflow.

A final look at some more of my process

Below, I’ll share a collection screenshots from my process shown above, including things like my sketch file and annotations from the work on this project.