People’s food choices have evolved towards healthier options, and more and more people are using health-related applications to build a better routine. Food delivery applications have the potential to transform people’s eating habits and lifestyle. After experimenting with multiple delivery applications, I decided to apply my redesign vision to DoorDash.
DoorDash wants to provide delightful food delivery service for any appetite. But the experience isn’t that“delightful” because:
- it does not organize information clearly and effectively
- it does not offer customized experience for different user needs
And I want to build a delivery experience that is:
- Fast and easy
- Customizable
User Research
Users prioritize very differently based on the circumstance, and there are generally three kinds of users.
- user who orders for convenience
- user who orders for the quality of food
- user who orders for occasions (event organizers etc.)
Observations of Current Design
- The current homepage overloads the users with unorganized information.
- The “best value” section sorts restaurants by delivery fee. But, the interpretation of the “best value” varies from user to user. This section would be redundant if the user can sort the restaurants by themselves.
- DoorDash categorizes restaurants by general types — Indian, Chinese, American etc. Going into each categorization will yield many choices that are unsorted. Some users care more about other factors than the type of food. For example, someone would want to eat healthy and is less worried about whether the food is Japanese or Italian.
- To save time is one of the most common reasons why people choose to order delivery online. The current design fails to guide the users to choose the best option for them. It’s rather a matter of chance that the user gives certain restaurant a try.
- Customers based their decisions a lot on online reviews. The current design doesn’t have a review section, which can serve as an important guidance.
- It requires redundant interactions going into each food section and see what options are available.
From the user research and the observations above, I conclude that there are two main problems that will be addressed.
Solution Overview
1. People are bad with making choices and want guidance, but the current design only overloads them with unsorted information.
Low-fi Sketches
In this sketch, I focus on categorizing and sorting information to provide the user with a clear overview of restaurant options without overloading them with information. The redesign makes more effective use of the interface estate and curate a more personal and customizable experience. Some of the major changes I made are as follows:
- the categories of restaurants are now divided into two types — categories (of food), and activities. Under “categories (of food)”, the restaurants are categorized by the type of food they serve, while under “activities”, restaurants are categorized by situations, scenarios, and different needs.
- a sort function to sort restaurants in different orders (e.g. delivery fee, popularity, price range and delivery time etc.), allowing users with different priorities to more clearly visualize their options. The sort function gets rid of the obscurity that the current design presents with its “popular” and “best value” section.
- redesign the tabs. The current design’s repetitive “popular ____” is replaced with a “hot” tag on the top right of each tab. The price range of the restaurant, which is very important to some users, is displayed next to delivery fee.
In this sketch, I make more effective use of the interface estate by aligning tags of popular search words instead of listing them like the current design does.
The redesign of the menu page reduces one action step by directly displaying dishes under respective sub-categories. I also added a “reviews” section and an “about” section as parts of the restaurant page so the users can get more comprehensive information about the restaurant.
I added a bookmark function to “favorite”a restaurant. I also added a share function to share experience to friends or on social media.
Hi-fi Mocks
- Restaurants are categorized based on types of food and different situations
- Information is organized and sorted for more effective display, providing a more intuitive selection process
- Restaurants that have been bookmarked by the user is labeled by a star
- The sorting will allow the user to sort the restaurants based on their priorities
- A more efficient display of popular search words and search history provides better guidance for making decisions
2. People want customization, but the current design lacks a personal touch
Review Page
Low-fi Sketches
The screen on the left uses a tagging system, extracting key words of existing comments to reflect the general experience with the restaurant. On the right is a more traditional rating system.
The review system shown on the left sketch will give very direct impression of the restaurant’s characteristics and specialties. It is also designed so that when the user selects one keyword, relevant reviews will be filtered out, allowing the user with different priorities to find relevant opinions more easily.
Hi-fi Mocks
On-boarding page
- on-boarding pages: collecting eating habits data for a more personalized service
- the restaurant page: any potential allergic reaction or incompatibility with eating habits will be marked by the red warning sign with the ingredient highlighted
Express Order & About page
- Express checkout allows old users to order with one click
- The about page of the restaurant is helpful when the user wants to learn more about the restaurant, wants to call the restaurant directly or wants to know the directions to visit the physical store.
User Flow
Prototype
Idea Symposium
User research has revealed that there is the possibility to make the delivery experience more communal. Users can create groups in which each participant can respectively put in what they want on their phones and send to the restaurant as one order; doing so will reduce food waste because each person is held accountable for their order and will make splitting bills easier.
As people’s lives get busier, more and more people are looking for convenient, high-quality and healthy food options delivered to their households or work places. Applications that involve food can sync the data with other relevant healthcare applications.
