Competitive Analysis
As part of the redesign process for Golden Boy Pizza’s website, I conducted a competitive analysis comparing both direct and indirect local pizza shop websites. I evaluated key business and website features such as sit-down options, delivery, site navigation, brand clarity, and overall usability. This analysis helped highlight where Golden Boy’s current site was falling short—particularly in navigation, calls to action, and visual clarity—compared to competitors with more modern, accessible, and user-friendly designs. These insights directly informed design priorities to improve user experience and better reflect the brand’s unique identity.
The Problem
This project’s initial assumption is that consumers who are wanting to support local and sustainable food sources have difficulty discovering and navigating all the options available to them.
Through research I discovered this was true, it’s overwhelming for users to learn of local food sources, markets, restaurants, etc. as well as planning their grocery trips focusing on local sources. There’s a gap in the market for a centralized solution to discover local food sources combined with a planning tool to keep users organized as they shop local.
The Goal
Understand why users decide to shop local & sustainable food products, what their desires are and what their pain points are.
Define the problem and user story through synthesis of user research findings and hone in on a proposed mobile app solution.
Build and test an app design to improve the experience of users trying to shop local and support their community.
User Persona
To build this user persona for the Golden Boy website redesign, I synthesized insights from my research and surveys to represent a key segment of the target audience: tech-savvy, urban food lovers. "Adam Watson" captures the mindset of a typical user who enjoys discovering new restaurants but values efficiency, clear information, and a modern online experience. His goals and frustrations helped guide design decisions that prioritized intuitive navigation, up-to-date content, and ease of ordering. This persona served as a reference point throughout the project to ensure the redesign stayed aligned with real user needs and behaviors.
In order to improve the user experience of the Golden Boy website I plan to update the overall look and feel to be more modern and bright, as well as adding more organization of information with pages that can easily be accessed via navigation. This will make the website more useful to users who want to learn more about Golden Boy and make it easier to support their business with the added feature of ordering.
Sitemap
I created a sitemap to organize the basic structure of the website starting with Home Page with clear navigation to the main pages: Menu, Locations, About and Order. This was lacking in the original website and navigation was the main pain point in our surveys on the usability of the old website.
Wireframing
HiFi
Once the layout and content structure were solidified, I transitioned to high-fidelity prototyping, focusing on visual design, branding, and usability. I chose a bright, energetic color palette of reds and yellows inspired by the restaurant’s signage and atmosphere to reflect Golden Boy’s bold personality. I vectorized the iconic sign to use as a logo, selected bold, legible fonts (Noto Serif and Roboto Flex), and gave UI elements a more rounded, approachable look. My design system ensured consistency across typography, buttons, and components.
Finally, I brought everything together in an interactive prototype that reflects the full user experience—from browsing the menu to finding a location or placing an order. The result is a modern, cohesive website that captures the essence of Golden Boy while improving functionality and accessibility for users.
Usability Testing
I built an interactive prototype in Figma and performed a mix of moderated/unmoderated tests with 8 participants. I asked participants to freely use the prototype and then fill out a catering request and find contact info for one of the restaurants.
Most of the feedback was positive as users liked the improvement of the design and the organization of the website. Some areas they had feedback on were around the location of the catering form (at the bottom of the Ordering page) and the outlines of the photos being too dark.
Priority Revisions
Based on the feedback above, I attempted to revise the prototype. I added the catering form to the homepage while also keeping the original location on the Ordering page.
I tried out different colors for outlines and I feel it threw off the design as the black was helping give a more retro feel. Given that feedback only came from one person, I decided to keep the black as is but lightened the stroke a little bit.
Learnings
This was my first project working with a real client, although offering my services for free. This came with challenges of trying to coordinate with a busy client as well as trying to explain the design process and principles to a client who is unfamiliar to them. I found value in breaking down the process into small pieces and providing the client a detailed timeline of what to expect helped them feel more comfortable going into the project.
It was also difficult at times getting ahold of my client so there were times where I couldn’t get their feedback on the designs. I learned that with this particular client providing them 1-3 options to pick from was the easiest way to get their input. I also had to learn to make decisions on my own with my client’s interest in mind, which I feel I was able to do more easily near the end of the project.
I was familiar with Golden Boy from living in San Francisco so I felt a familiarity with the restaurant, the brand, and its reputation and history in the community. It was exciting to try and help them with their website redesign and I hope to see them implement the designs in the near future when they have the bandwidth.
