Reimagining McDelivery App
Reimagining the McDelivery App was a project that was close to my heart. This project spanned over a period of 10-days. It included the conducting of user interviews, personas creation, customer journey maps, usability testings and a high fidelity interactive prototype. It was completed as part of a project submission at General Assembly Singapore, User Experience Design Immersive (UXDI) programme.
Backed by extensive research, our new prototype comes with the following:
- A new burger customiser feature that allows users to fully customise their menu.
- An order process tracker.
- Ai driven customer support system.
Our new prototype scored an impressive 86 on the System Usability Scale (as compared to 58 on current McDelivery App), an industry standard tool that measures users overall satisfaction with a service, website or app.
The Team
Immanuel Goh, Patrick Yeo, Benjamin Ong
The Process
The steps that we took for this 10-day project in chronological order:
- User Interviews
- Usability Test On The Current App
- System Usability Scale On The Current App
- Affinity Mapping
- Problem Statements
- Persona
- Customer Journey Map
- Low-Fidelity Prototype
- Usability Testing
- Mid-Fidelity Prototype
- Usability Testing
- System Usability Scale On The Reimagined App
- Reiterations
- High-Fidelity Prototype
The Tools we used for this project:
- Sketch
- Photoshop
- InvisionApp
- Post-it Notes
- Paper
- Pencil & Pen
The Research
McDonald’s business model proposition is to not just serve food of constant quality, but also quickly and consistently across the globe. Based on our research findings, we believe that the current McDelivery app is failing in delivering the same consistency in branding, services and the seamless fast food experience that we are familiar with.
According to The McDonald’s Business Model Canvas, their main customer can be broken down into these 4 segments: Families, youngsters, the elderly and business people.
Therefore, we targeted our user interviews on families, youngsters and business people who use the McDelivery app to discover user behaviours, pain points and usage trends. We also conducted a usability test on the current app to simulate the typical usage scenarios of the app to discover any usability concerns.
To evaluate and measure the usability of the current app, we asked the interviewees to perform a simple task:
- Order a double McSpicy meal (with cheese, fries with no salt and an iced milo) and have it delivered to a specific address asap in guest or login mode.
At the end of each session, we have them score the current app’s system usability by using the industry wide standard System Usability Scale (SUS). It consists of a 10-item questionnaire with five responsive options for respondents; from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree.
Out of the 9 participants, more than half gave the current McDelivery app’s usability a failing grade. The average SUS score from all participants was 58 which translates to a grading key of F (Any score below 68 is considered a standard that is below average).
Affinity Map
Through our research (user interviews and contextual inquiries), we discovered users’ behaviour, usage pattern, motivations, goals and their pain points. With these findings, the next step was to synthesise them.
After grouping them accordingly, it became clear to us the things that were affecting our users. We numbered them with the top being the highest priority of change:
№1 most complaint was that users found it inconvenient to give feedbacks or reach out to customer service every time they have issues with their orders on the McDelivery app.
№2 complaint was the missing customisation feature on the McDelivery app. As a regular customer of McDonald’s services and food, I know that this was inconsistent as the website and self-service kiosks at their brick-and-mortar stores offer the customisation feature.
№3 complaint was the lack of a delivery status update system. Customers want to know the progress of their order upon order confirmation.Problem Statement
After synthesizing, it was clear to us from our research that we have 3 problems.
Problem Statement 1:
“I had to email the customer support to complain about the bad service. Even then, they didn’t reply me.”
Customer support needs to be more accessible and convenient, because the current experience feels long-drawn and troublesome.
Problem Statement 2:
“I requested for more sauce on the special remarks section, the burger came with no sauce”
Users with special meal / dietary requirements need a convenient and accurate way to customise their orders because the current method of doing so is ambiguous and inconsistent. Additionally, a proper customisation system will allow staff at McDonalds to receive orders with minimal confusion, providing a better experience on both ends.
Problem Statement 3:
“Knowing the status of my delivery gives me assurance and I can plan for other things too.”
Users need a way to track the status of delivery so that their expectations of food arrival are managed.
Personas & Journey Maps
We created three user personas to represent real customers and their pain points, and a customer journey map as a visual representation of their experience at every stage of the ordering process.
Persona 1: Robert, an IT professional.
Robert wants to be able to contact customer services easily but the current McDelivery app does not provide any platforms for him to do so. So whenever there is an issue with his order, he finds it a hassle to contact the customer service and then gives up eventually. This is when his experience with the app is at the most unpleasant.
Persona 2: Nadia, a professional in life-science sector.
Nadia is a regular customer of McDonald’s and she requires customisation on her orders almost every time. But after going back and forth multiple times searching for the option on the app, she gives up eventually. She then tries to type out long specific instructions in the special remarks column. This is when her experience with the app is at the most unpleasant.
Persona 3: Krish, a National Serviceman.
Krish is a National Serviceman who has a very specific window period for McDelivery orders each day. Because McDonald’s services does not include food status update on their website and app platforms, he has no idea when the food will arrive. When the delivery is late, he calls the hotline only to be put on hold or get rerouted to the branch. This is when his experience with the app is at the most unpleasant.
Lo-Fi Prototype
With all these findings at hand, we were confident to begin sketching a low-fidelity prototype. Upon completion, we conducted a usability test by getting participants to complete the following tasks:
- Task 1 was to order a double McSpicy meal (with extra cheese, unsalted fries and iced milo) and have it delivered asap to a specific location.
- Task 2 was to figure out what to do in the event of a wrong or late order.
[+]
I felt that the ordering flow was alot more intuitive and I get to choose my burger, sides and drinks easily.
The arrows at the meal ordering screen were obvious in upsizing my fries and drinks, it was straight forward.
[-]
The word ‘guest-mode’ doesn’t feel assuring, it feels like I have to restart the order. Perhaps the word ‘Proceed as guest’ or ‘Proceed without logging in’ might be better.
I was prompted to log in after ordering, I prefer to log in to my account from the start.
We ammended according to the feedbacks we received. While our reimagined McDelivery app was able to address all the pain points from our personas, it also brought some confusion as to when should the user be prompted to login or proceed as guest. At this point, similarly to the current app, users must login or be identified as a guest before they can even view the menu.
But we completely changed this. When a patron visits a McDonald’s restaurant, he or she does not need to register, sign in or be identified as a guest to enjoy all the wonderful food. He or she simply walks in and order.
We wanted our reimagined McDelivery app to reflect this seamless ordering experience and consistency which is a part of McDonald’s business model.
Our solution: when the app opens, the user is immediately greeted with McDonald’s very own food menu. There is no need to login or be identified as guest to view the food menu. Based on our contextual inquiry, we saw that almost every user went straight for the food instead of setting delivery time and location. With this in mind, we decided to give the user the freedom and ease to set the delivery time and date at any point of the buying process (except burger customisation screen). The user is also able to set or edit the delivery time and location at the order summary page.
When the hi-fi interactive prototype was near completion, we conducted another usability test by getting participants to complete similar tasks as before. Even though most of the feedbacks were positive, we noticed a handful of users were a little confused by the placement of our cart and menu icons. At the same time, we were also undecided if we wanted the layout of the product category landing page to be designed the same as the current app’s. Hence, we decided to perform A/B testing to let users decide what they prefer for both issues.
The results were clear as to which layout pattern the users prefer, so we changed accordingly.
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
Finally, after all the reiterations, we present to you the reimagined McDelivery app.
We are really proud to say that the reimagined McDelivery app scored an average system usability scale of 86, which is high above average standard.
For future developments, I would like to create an onboard tour to show users what’s new in the app and to guide them through new features. I would also want to add animations to app interactions, eg. a genie effect for add to cart.
After Thoughts
As a regular patron of McDonald’s services, I found this UX case study to be challenging but most rewarding. When we decided to work on this app, I was thrilled. Because I am well familiar with the app, I made sure that I validated all my assumptions through questionnaire and testings. It was overwhelming at first, especially the idea of having to speak with strangers for user interviews and testings. However, that quickly proved to be an amazing experience because I get to understand and discover what actually ticks for them. I am truly convinced now that behind every great design is an even greater research.
Thank you for reading!
