Happy Hour
Discover nearby cafés and enjoy discounts
Overview
What is Happy Hour?
Happy Hour is an online platform that helps users discover restaurants and cafés nearby with discounts. This platform is for the European market. Users can reserve a table at restaurants and enjoy happy hour menus and special discounted offers and for cafés they can have discount vouchers that are valid for a specific period of time.
This case study presents the mobile application.
The application is designed for people on a tight budget: students, job seekers, and anyone who wants a good breakfast, drink or snack without paying full price.
Stakeholder Needs
The stakeholders had a simple idea: fill quiet cafés hours with discounts. They wanted to turn it into an app people would use every day.
- Design a mobile application where prices, reviews, photos and discounts stay up to date.
- Eliminate discount confusion with clear validity periods and easy voucher redemption.
- Make the whole journey easy, clear design, accurate search, instant reservation, and a clear confirmation.
Design Process
We used the Double Diamond to design Happy Hour: discover, define, develop and deliver. It kept us close to the business needs while giving us room to explore before choosing a direction. The process was not linear: after testing, we went back to earlier phases, reworked our decisions, and moved forward again.
Discover
As a first step, we needed to understand the problem from the user's side. We explored how people look for café deals, what makes them trust an offer, and where they get stuck.
Interview
To understand users’ pain points and needs
- Interview with 14 users.
- Responses grouped and categorised in an affinity diagram to surface patterns and themes
Affinity Diagram
Pain points
Outdated or fake information
Menus, prices, photos and ratings are often wrong, so users cannot trust the discount they see. They arrive at a café and find the offer no longer exists.
Unclear discount rules
Users don't know which items are discounted, or how long the offer lasts. They find out at the counter that their order isn't covered.
No clear confirmation
After booking, users aren't sure it worked, and the voucher is hard to find again. They end up searching through the app while standing at the counter.
Competitive Analysis
To better understand, we analyzed platforms such as TheFork, OpenTable, Too Good To Go, GROUPON, NeoTaste and Lieferando to identify weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities for improvement.
Define
Persona
Based on all our research, we defined who the persona is and identified his key needs and Pain Points.
Site map
Based on our research, we defined the information architecture and created sitemap
Design system
The moodboard established a warm and inviting visual direction for finding nearby cafés with discounts, combining vibrant café imagery, natural tones, soft neutrals, and friendly interfaces to create an experience that feels appealing, approachable, and easy to use.
Mood Board
UI Kit
Develop
Usability & Iteration
Final design
Reflection
What we learned
- Every round of testing surfaced something we had missed, and users made the next step obvious.
- Sometimes the fix is to remove, not to redesign.
- Working on Happy Hour taught me that a clear and straightforward interface builds more trust than a beautiful one.
What we would improve
- Use AI to harmonise and enhance all in-app images uploaded by café owners and customers, ensuring consistent quality, visual style, and relevance across menu items and café atmosphere photos.
Note.
UXLand bootcamp gave us the brief for Happy Hour and played the role of stakeholder. They defined what the business needed, and we had limited time to research, design, and test a solution.