Secret Order — Dahoon Lee

I picked a service I found awkward to use day to day and proposed a redesign. Secret Order was spreading quickly across university campuses, so I took it on solo: from the research through to the information architecture, the order flow, and the four core screens: Home, Stores, Menu and Membership.

Where it stood

“Secret Order” is the mobile ordering app for Bluepot, a café chain found inside universities, hospitals and public buildings. Most of its users are students ordering before a class or in the short gap between them, yet the app made that quick order surprisingly hard.

Small screen, smaller text, smaller buttons

A heuristic review and my own daily use turned up the same friction again and again. Text too small to read comfortably, buttons too tight to hit with one hand, an order flow that threw you back to the start the moment you switched stores, and labels like “None” that explained nothing. For someone who opened the app to order quickly, every one of these was a reason to pause.

Why people use the app: a faster order

I tested those assumptions with a survey and interviews. The clearest signal was waiting. People used the app precisely to avoid queueing, yet before ordering they had no way of knowing how many drinks were ahead of them, and that open-ended wait was the frustration they named most often. Loyalty rewards and a faster order followed close behind. I distilled the findings into three personas and used them as the reference point for the design.

Seeing the queue before you order

I lined Secret Order up against Starbucks, Twosome Place, Gong Cha and b;eat, feature by feature, and pulled out the patterns already proven elsewhere: location-based store suggestions, an instant hot/iced switch. The most important change, though, was one of order. Before, you could only see how busy a store was once you arrived. I moved that check to the front of the flow, so the real-time queue and estimated wait appear before you order, letting you decide whether the trip is worth it first.

From structure to screen

The design system set the ground rules: a type scale that holds up on mobile, touch areas sized for fingers, and colour with a clear job to do.

The home screen lifts the live queue count and estimated wait to the top, and splits ordering and payment into two large buttons.

The order screen makes the hot/iced switch immediate, turns size and cup into buttons, and reveals personal options like shots and syrup only as far as you need them.

The store screen drops the alphabetical list for a distance-based one, with nearby stores, favourites and a map together in one place.

What changed, and what’s next

The redesign reorganised the busiest screens around a single principle: see the queue before you order. That principle has not yet been tested with users, so the next step is to put it in front of real students and find out whether showing the wait actually improves the experience. There is a brand-side question too. Showing the queue up front may cost a few orders, and it is worth weighing whether that loss is a fair price for the trust that comes from being open about the wait.