Cashless tips app & e-menu for UAE market

Summary

Tippy — is a contactless tipping service for the Arabic market. The service consists of a web application for clients, where users can leave tips, as well as admin panels for managers and owners, where they can add employees, distribute funds between them, and view establishment statistics.

Tippy is already operating in the Dubai market, with 100+ establishments connected and daily transactions taking place.

My main goal in this product was to analyse the needs of establishments and users, develop design strategy and make the service from scratch, propose an optimal approach to the design system, and also to help with team recruitment (Designers and Front-End developers)

Constraints of the product and my approach to reduce TTM

The main challenge at the project's start was limited resources.

Therefore, the first thing I did was propose using an out-of-the-box design system (Ant Design) to build admin scenarios. I also helped attract a React developer to the product, because Ant Design was using React and we needed and expert in it.

Additionally, it was crucial to eliminate unnecessary flows and focus on creating an MVP solution that could be developed within 2-3 months and acquire the first users. From these initial users, we could then collect more detailed feedback and iteratively improve the product.

Success Criteria

The main success metric for the first launch was the quality of user experience. Since we closely communicate with users during the development and launch stages, we quickly receive feedback from establishments and users and learn about all the inconvenient aspects of the application very quickly.

Ease of completing main product scenarios at admin app, conversion to successful tip payment.

Discovery

I studied the main platforms for receiving tips, went through their primary scenarios, and highlighted interesting solutions. Additionally, I examined applications from the financial sector and e-commerce.

Together with a team we also created a board to display the main actions user should do in the system.

Tippy management system for establishments

I started designing with the admin panel, as it included the most complex scenarios.

As I mentioned, for this panel I used Ant Design system with small adoptions to our product. We saved around 2 months

So, I designed the following flows:

• Registration/authorization (for manager and owner)

• Main page and entry points

• Onboarding

• Adding/removing/editing employees

• Staff management flows

• Tip distribution

• QR code generation for the establishment and for employees (personal and general tips)

• Managing employee groups

• Employee personal account

• Flow for withdrawing funds to IBAN

• Operations history

I started designing with the admin panel, as it included the most complex scenarios.

In the admin panel, we planned 2 roles: for the establishment administrator (full rights) and for the establishment manager (limited rights). Therefore, some scenarios were repeated for these roles, while others were unique

Authorisation

Main page

On the main page, we show the user a simple onboarding with steps of what needs to be done to start working. This does not block functionality and serves as a reminder of what needs to be completed to fully use the service. Also, on the main page, users can switch between establishments (for managers, there might be a case where they are employees of two establishments and can easily switch between them). All the main service functions are accessible from the main page.

Staff management

The employee management flow allows inviting a new employee to the system, editing or deleting their data, and adding an employee to a group (either during the creation of their profile or afterwards).

Groups management

To make tip distribution among employees convenient, we created the "groups" feature. You can add, for example, all waiters, and fix the percentage that each group member will receive from the general tips. This simplifies the tip management process.

Tips management

I created a simple tip distribution flow — in the MVP, we provide the ability to distribute only among employees for now, but later there will be an option to distribute immediately to groups. Here you can choose to distribute among all employees or mark specific ones.

Operations history

Personal cabinet

In the personal account, everything related to personal funds and user data is located. Here you can link an email to receive receipts, link payment methods. You can also log out of the system or exit the establishment.

Tippy web app for customers

In the MVP version, the client application turned out to be simple, where there is an option to choose the tip amount, the ability to leave a rating for the establishment, and select a payment method.

First results

Tippi is already launched and operational, we continue to track issues encountered by users, but the average NPS is 9/10 based on qualitative interviews that we regularly conduct with establishments and employees.

Promo and landing

In addition to design of the app and e-menu, I created all the promotional materials. This includes creating a landing page, basic logo, and communicational materials.

tippy.one

Next steps — e-menu

The next huge product part is to create an admin and client interface for the customisable digital menu. In progress