The cafeteria at Square played music during mealtimes, but there was no way for anyone occupying the space, either eating, socializing or working to listen to their preferred music on the speakers. I worked on the project on my own with feedback and guidance from my design manager, Effy.

A tablet app that allows cafeteria-goers to request and enqueue songs of their liking using Square’s existing register API.

1. Alvin: cafeteria-goer who wants to request and listen to a specific song
• considerations: There needs to be a smooth and intuitive flow for Alvin to purchase a song to add to the queue.
2. Bryan: cafeteria-goer who wants to know what song is currently playing
• considerations: When no one is requesting a song, the tablet should allow people passing by to easily glance over to see brief details on what song is currently playing.
3. Carl: cafeteria-worker who needs to moderate the usage of the DJ 9 tablet
• considerations: There must be admin controls that are easily accessible by Carl. Since these song requests are paid for, regular users should not be able to pause or skip or lower the volume of a previously requested song (that’s just not nice). However, Carl should be able to make executive controls on the music, in the case that an inappropriate song begins playing or if the volume needs to be lowered for an announcement to be made.

The main portion of the user interaction would happen in the request and checkout flow, so I made some lo-fi wireframes of that user flow. The typical user flow would be to start at the landing page and search for the song the user has in mind and add it to the cart to checkout.

Since the foundational function of the app is to request songs, the search function is extremely important and so should be visible and accessible on all screens. Other important parts of the app that should also always be on the surface would be the cart and the current song playing bar, which includes the button to pull up the upcoming queue.

The admin controls would be accessed by holding down the home button and entering the admin passcode, which would satisfy Carl’s user needs.

However, for Bryan to see the current song, he has to look at the small footer at the bottom of the tablet. So, as an iteration, I thought that when the actual request flow is inactive, a full-screen display of the current song details would work well.