THE FLYWHEEL EFFECT: ZOMATO
A UI/UX DESIGN CASE STUDY
I won the FIRST PLACE in the ‘Design Jam’ organized by IEEE RIT-B on 31st of October 2021.🥳 And the following is a brief case study and design I created and presented.
Duration: 6 hours
Note: The following case study and process may seem brief due to the time constraint of the competition.
Who doesn’t love food?😋 Since the pandemic the increase in usage of food delivery apps has been tremendous.
I have been posed with a design challenge to “Choose an app that I am acquainted with and love and to use and design an additional feature for the already existing app”.
Being the foodie that I am; I had to choose Zomato.
For the purpose of this challenge, I will be using the ‘Design Thinking Principles by Don Norman’.
EMPATHIZE
Now, the first thing I had to figure out was what aspect of the app to improve. For that purpose, I decided to do a little Secondary Research. These are the highlights of what I discovered.
Few Essential Features of a food delivery app:
- Reviews and ratings
- Easy order placement
- Social media integration
- Push notifications
- Discounts and rewards
Basic features to keep in mind:
- Simple User Interface
- Easy Navigation
- Mobile Responsive design
- Ensure clear communication
source: netsolutions.com
The Flywheel Effect: A Principle used by Zomato
According to the Flywheel Effect coined by Jim Collins, a lot of effort is required to get started but after the flywheel acquires momentum a constant effort is enough to keep improving the output (i.e. the flywheel moves faster)
“Larger scale and sharper execution can bring the lower fulfilment cost, driving up customer experience & satisfaction, which in turn may drive up transaction frequency, giving it flying wheel effect.”
source: Dolat Analysis and Research Themes
How did the pandemic affect the usage of food delivery apps?
- People didn’t prefer to eat out to follow social distancing norms
- People started ordering for the whole family
- High-value fine-dine restaurants also started onboarding the platform
- Lesser options to eat out due to lockdown restrictions
After researching online, I decided to ask real users and perform PRIMARY RESEARCH.
A few questions I included:
- How often do you use a food delivery app?
- Describe your process on the app
- How long does it take you to decide what to order?
- What factors do you take into account whole ordering?
- Does the high amount of options help of confuse you?
- What problems do you face on the app?
- What do you think could aid your decision-making process?
RESULTS FROM PRIMARY RESEARCH:
USER 1
- She uses the app about twice a week
- She spends about 2 hours deciding what to order on the app
- She goes through current offers and spends time scrolling through the options.
What she orders depends on:
1. Her mood
2. The offers available
3. The pricing
4. The location of the restaurant
5. Reviews and ratings
- She isn’t happy with the search page as it doesn’t aid her decision-making process
- She feels the availability of a lot of options makes it more confusing for her to decide what to order
HICK’S LAW: “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices”
USER 2
- She is a regular user of food delivery apps
- She goes to the app knowing what she wants to eat
- The time she spends varies
- She looks through categories
Factors that play into her decision:
1. Pricing and offers
2. The name value of the restaurant
3. Reviews and ratings
4. People’s recommendations
- Instagram plays a role in her process (she looks through what other friends or influencers are promoting/recommending).
- She would like to know the affordability of a restaurant in advance (before she adds everything to the cart and then realizes the pricing is not in her favour)
Note: Due to the time constraint of this competition I was restricted in terms of my primary research. The validation of this data is compensated in the secondary research.
DEFINE
I utilized HMWs (How Might We questions) for this stage.
1. How Might We increase the speed of decision-making process for the users of the application?
2. How Might We provide the users with maximum relevant content in a short amount of time?
3. How Might We enable users to have the smoothest user experience on the application?
4. How Might We ensure the users understand the functionality of the new feature without any difficulty?
5. How Might We feed the current flywheel to accelerate the loop?
IDEATION
With the current trend of utilizing SHORT VIDEOS to attract users and provide the required information I thought it could be a useful addition to the app.
But first I went online to check the facts.
STATSTICS
- 84% of people were convinced to buy a product or service based on the brands’ video
- 71% of Gen Z spends more than 3 hours every day watching online videos
- 72% of consumers prefer videos to text marketing
- 68% of people will happily watch a business video if it’s under a minute
The team at Animoto recently surveyed 580 consumers. Here are some of their key findings:
- 93% of consumers said video is helpful when purchasing a product
- Consumers said video was their #1 favorite type of content from brands on social media
- Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the top three platforms consumers use to find the most new products or services
- When learning about a new product or service, consumers prefer video over reading about a product or looking at photos
source: stackla.com
So, with the popularity of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, here is my attempt at creating ‘Discover’ for Zomato.
PROTOTYPE
So, firstly I made a ‘Discover’ tab on the home page.
Next using the reels on Instagram as inspiration I made a discover page representing the various functionalities it offers:
- A short clip from the restaurant to attract the users or a review from a customer that is verified by Zomato
- The name of the place
- The user ratings
- An option to bookmark along with the number of bookmarks
- An option to visit the restaurant page to browse the menu options and order
- A scrollable interface just like reels
WIREFRAMES
USER INTERFACE
I used the official colours and icons as per the app and brand description.
During the competition, I was given 2 additional tasks.
ADDITIONAL TASK 1: Improve an existing menu
I decided to improve the search page as a part of the additional task by including trending searches and frequently searched as it is a useful feature. (found in primary research)
ADDITIONAL TASK 2: Create a logo
Within the last few minutes I made an effort to attempt at a logo design. Could definitely be a lot better.
USER TESTING
The users who gave the feedback loved the solution as they were familiar with the reels interface (Jakob’s Law) and it helped with faster decision.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank you to IEEE RIT for this amazing opportunity. Definitely learnt a lot. Especially the importance of time. Never thought I could achieve this much. UX is a field of learning and I’m here for it.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this short read. This case study has definitely made me hungry. I’m off to order my Sunday dinner on Zomato now. Bye, take care!👻
UX Case Study by Sanjana Somanath Sannamari
For more creative content follow me on instagram and LinkedIn🥰
