Branding Design

My visit made it clear that this diner (along with most others) tends to focus on their food and community culture instead of presentation. That being said I thought centering in on this simplicity would work to the strength of River View East.  Taking inspiration from Johnny Rockets and Shake Shack, I decided to focus on building a look that emphasized the nostalgic value of diners, while remaining clean and simple. The big red neon sign in the front was too iconic to let go, so I modified that font to work with a flat website design, and added buns around the typeface to allude to their status as "Home of the Hot Dog".

Website Design and Testing

For the website, I began with doing some competitor research. I found that most restaurant websites were getting in the way of the information and functionality I would want out of them. While I did not have the resources to do usability observations of other websites before beginning, I took what usability pain points I noticed and addressed them in the website I built. These features were:

• Pictures to judge the quality of the restaurant.

• Operating Hours

• Directions

• Contact Information

• Menu

Including these in a seamless scrollable website helped me bring the content forward in a simple way.  This being said, because of this scrolling navigation, I ran into some challenges. I needed to know what order would serve the user better. To do this I observed my friend whenever we were looking to eat out. Over the next few weeks I noted what was most important in this decision making and made adjustments to the order of the features.

Overall I was glad with the outcome of this website as it breaks the trend of restaurant's sites getting in the way of customers. I am also glad that I have the added comfort of user testing behind my approach.