Tucked away on a quaint street in the heart of New York City's Chinatown lies the stylish and sophisticated eatery Casino. Drawing inspiration from Southern European cuisine, this must-visit spot boasts a menu filled with innovative dishes, cutting-edge interior design, and chic cocktail offerings, making it a fixture of the Lower East Side's dining landscape. 

Before delving into website redesign decisions, I made sure to thoroughly understand Casino as both a business and a brand, especially in comparison to other restaurants in Lower Manhattan. I wanted insights into various aspects, such as the dine-in experience, online versus physical experience, customer sentiment, design influences, and industry best practices. This involved analyzing customer reviews, recent press, industry trends, and competitor websites.

Early heuristic evaluations offered valuable insights into usability issues, which then guided improvements and formed testable hypotheses for initial usability testing.

From this evaluation, I developed two hypotheses: users might struggle to identify Casino as a restaurant from the homepage alone, and unclear page names and call-to-action buttons could hinder business goals. I also wanted to gather user feedback, focusing on reasons for visiting the website, impressions of the current site, and users' likes and dislikes.

The preliminary usability test revealed significant issues, including challenges with booking private events and difficulty recognizing Casino as a restaurant from the homepage. Although users liked the design's simplicity, they expressed dissatisfaction with organization, navigation, and the amount of business-related information. These findings strongly indicate that the current website design is hindering business objectives.