Employee Visual Directory

The Cheesecake Factory has over 300+ restaurants under their name. And if you know Cheesecake, they have a large menu with 250 items made from scratch daily. To ensure the highest quality service, they employ a large management team to run the operations.

With about 7-14 people managing each restaurant, employees at headquarters often referred to multiple static databases to figure out who they need to contact and how to contact them. Additionally, they have to manually connect the dots to figure out which regional VP and assistant director of operations had oversight of a restaurant. There must be an easier way!

• Decrease manual search time
• Simplify key word searching

Ultimately, we determined that the best solution was to build a visual directory that combines an organization chart with a map. This solution draws employee data from an internal PeopleCenter database and uses APIs from Google Maps Platform to connect people and restaurant locations.

Additionally, the team built a proof of concept using a generative AI chatbot incorporating NLP and LLMs.

The intended user group was leadership at The Cheesecake Factory headquarters. They needed efficient methods for finding contacts, and there was already a desire for a visual directory from past attempts at building a new solution.

If this project was to be a success, my solution had to offer a simple user flow and ideally a way that they can interact with a map to find the right people.

Hmm, I know an application like that...

Listening to the different use cases for a visual directory, it became clear a map application such as Google Maps would provide the interaction leaders desired. A connected search feature and clickable map visual would speed up the process of finding a contact.

So I designed an interface that reflected a customized Google Maps interface, using location information to reveal employee contact information. Users can search for a specific employee or restaurant location to pull employee information.

Once the solution was approved, I researched and reached out to Google Maps Platform to discuss API use cases and the integration of Google Maps into our internal portal.

I worked with our internal development team to discuss realistic implementation of the map and redesigned the mockup to combine our current system and the map application. Additionally, I built input and output response flow charts and database additions for developers, as well as an implementation plan to ensure smooth transition after my internship.

Towards the end of my internship, a generative AI chatbot proof of concept was added to this project using ChatGPT. This enabled users to use natural language prompts in their queries.