The Federal University of Amazonas has a subsidized restaurant service for the academic community. Altogether there are nine restaurants spread across the campuses, both in the capital Manaus and in the interior of the State of Amazonas. The experience of using the University Restaurant presents problems in several contexts of the process: from the difficulty in knowing the menu of the day, to the process of identifying the user to release the meal. It was observed, then, the need to develop a solution that would make the user experience more efficient and satisfactory. Such research was requested by the University's Information and Communication Technology Center to the Usability and Interface Laboratory of the Department of Design and Graphic Expression at UFAM.

The research aims to develop a mobile application that helps in the user identification process, serves as a source of information about the services provided by the University Restaurant and allows the collection of satisfaction information for the application of future improvements in the service provided.

The specific objectives are: to analyze the problems of the current experience of using the University Restaurant; analyze the functional and aesthetic characteristics of a set of similar applications; develop solution proposals for the researched problems; develop a testable prototype of the interface designed to solve the problem.

The application proposal was developed using the method proposed by the authors Meurer and Szabluk (2010) called Project E. This method consists of six project phases: Strategy, Scope, Structure, Usage Storyboard, Skeleton, Aesthetics, and Execution. The functional, aesthetic and usability aspects of similar applications were also analyzed using the OAK AND ARAGON infographic creation method. In the Strategy stage, the guiding questions of the project were defined based on interviews with the staff of the University Restaurant, the team from the University's Center for Information and Communication Technology and with typical users. In the current configuration of the process, the user must purchase the physical ticket for breakfast, lunch or dinner at a window of the company providing the service. The user then presents the ticket corresponding to the desired meal in the restaurant along with an identification. This can be the institution's card or a printed bar code obtained from the student portal accompanied by an official photo ID. It should be noted that only at this moment is the menu of the day known. Then, at the end of the meal, the user may or may not give feedback on his experience in a notebook allocated at the restaurant, an action that is rarely performed by the user.

In defining the Scope, the possibilities for solving problems encountered in the user experiences reported by users were defined, taking into account the restrictions raised with the sectors involved in the implementation of the project. Among the restrictions, the application was asked to follow some guidelines imposed on products from university institutional institutions. In the Structure step, the flowcharts of navigation and user interaction were designed and the functionalities of the application were defined. Based on the flowcharts, the Usage Storyboard was created expressing the ideal user experience of the application, highlighting the user in a typical usage situation and the interface solving the studied problem. The storyboard presented the following situation: when the user is hungry, he checks the restaurant menus and chooses one, going to the queue. At the moment of identification, the user presents the QR Code present in the application to be scanned and thus validate the meal. The student serves himself, consumes his meal and, after 15 minutes, receives a notification to evaluate the user experience, assigning a score to the items presented and leaving comments.

In the construction of the Skeleton, proposals for the layout and composition of screens in low complexity were designed based on the references collected in the analysis of similars.

In the Aesthetics stage, a new brand was created for the Restaurante Universitário, more consistent with the new service proposal; and low complexity screens were digitally redesigned by applying color, shape, iconography, and typography to the diagrammed elements, resulting in high complexity screens.

In the Execution phase, these screens were prototyped according to the flows designed in the Structure stage with the help of specialized Adobe XD software.

The research resulted in a testable prototype of the application and the new brand of Restaurante Universitário. With the prototype, it is possible to simulate all the projected subsystems, namely: weekly menu, student identification, satisfaction assessment, and accessibility options. The project is in the final stage of development and is scheduled to be launched in 2020 in partnership with the Information and Communication Technology Center of the Federal University of Amazonas.

In the future, it is thought to add functionality to purchase tickets through the application. Such a subsystem could not yet be implemented due to the institution's limitations in terms of logistics structure and information technology.