UX Case Study: Domino’s Pizza Singapore Mobile App
Introduction
The world loves pizza. Whether it is the sweet and savoury toppings or the serotonin-inducing carbs that keeps us reaching for another slice, it is undoubtedly the ultimate comfort food for many people.
But it wasn’t the love for pizza that compelled my teammates and me to choose Domino’s Pizza Singapore (hereinafter referred to as Domino’s) as the case study for our capstone project. Rather, the decision was fuelled by the frustrations that some of us had personally faced when making an online order from its website.
Let’s set the record straight before going further — Domino’s is by no means an illusive brand in Singapore. In fact, ask (almost) anyone on the streets if they have heard of the it. Chances are most of them have, and would have also eaten their pizzas before. After over 50 years in the pizza industry, Domino’s opened its doors in Singapore in 2009. Over the last 22 years, it has maintained a successful presence here with a current total of 34 outlets across the island.
So why did we feel that a UX redesign was needed? Here are some of our personal experiences that made us notice opportunities for improvement:
- Cluttered website with unintuitive ordering process
- Inability to track and edit items in cart while still completing order
Goals/Objectives
It was important to set the objectives of our project so that we could fall back on them as a guidance when conducting research and exploring solutions.
We wanted to:
- Identify factors influencing decision making when users choose an online food delivery platform
- Understand users’ perceptions and experiences towards Domino’s website
- Identify frustrations users face when making an order on the website
- Explore ways to help users complete their online orders efficiently
Process
Before we could think about solutions, we started off with research and used various tools (of which some will be shown below) to gain a deeper understanding of Domino’s and its users’ perceptions and pain points.
Desk research
We wanted to better understand how Domino’s fared in terms of website engagement as compared to one of its main competitors — Pizza Hut Singapore. Through similarweb.com, we gathered that between March to August 2021, Pizza Hut generally had a higher total number of visitors to its website than Domino’s. The former also faced a lower bounce rate than Domino’s.
We also found some less than ideal reviews on TripAdvisor.com. There were a couple of customers who had complained about a badly designed website which was difficult to navigate.
Online surveys
We prepared a survey (on Google Forms) broken into three sections with subquestions to find out more about consumers’ online food ordering patterns, habits and preferences when ordering pizza online, and features that are essential to them when ordering pizza online.
Key insights: From a total of 50 respondents, we found that 88% of our respondents prefer to order directly from the brand (and not a third party website). Of these, 94% of them use mobile phones to place their orders. The top three most important functions were having a variety of payment gateway methods, being able to checkout as a guest and being able to review and edit orders before making payment.
User interviews
We conducted user interviews through more personal conversations. Our interviewees were individuals between the ages of 25–50, who frequently make food delivery orders online and have ordered from the Domino’s website before.
We asked questions such as their experience with ordering from Domino’s website (what they liked/disliked about it) and suggestions that would improve their experience.
Key insights: Our interviewees echoed similar sentiments as us regarding the difficulty in editing items in the cart.
One user had the following to say:
“Domino’s has great bundle deals for large orders, but keeping track of and navigating the process of editing orders is quite a headache.”
Another user talked about the lack of a breakdown of orders at the checkout page:
“I was confused at the payment page; I couldn’t see the breakdown of my order as it only showed me a grand total. I couldn’t remember exactly what I was paying for.”
Others mentioned that they would like to be able to make an order without having a user account and that the website looked overwhelming with too much information.
Affinity mapping
The team came together to analyse the results of the survey and user interviews and used affinity mapping to categorise related observations. This helped us uncover pain points and what matters to users when they order from Domino’s. This provided us with a better understanding of the needs of our target audience.
Persona
While the results of the survey and user interviews presented a variety of insights, we came up with two personas that could embody the characteristics and data that we have uncovered.
In this post, I will be focusing on one persona that I believe represents more opportunities for development in terms of addressing the issue of tracking and editing orders.
Customer journey map
Next, I created a typical online ordering process for my persona. This map details the steps he would go through in order to accomplish his goal and highlights his emotional experiences along the way. This helped me better understand the frustrations users face and where opportunities for improvement lie.
Solutions
It was glaringly obvious from our survey results that most users prefer to use their mobile phones to place online food delivery orders. While users could most definitely launch the responsive web on their phone’s browser, I decided that creating a mobile app would result in a more wholesome user experience.
Here’s why:
- Mobile apps have the opportunity to boost customer loyalty through gamification/incentive programmes (think rewards, point systems, etc)
- Mobile apps can improve engagement with customers through push notifications (e.g. communicate latest promotions/updates)
- Mobile apps make it easier for customers to track their orders
The proposed solutions will address the following pain points:
- Being able to complete an order without a user account
- Keeping track of and editing items in the cart before making payment
- Having an itemised bill at the checkout page so that users do not struggle to recall what they have ordered
User & Task flows
At this point, I’ve had a rough idea of how the current user flow could be simplified. I spent some time analysing the current user flow and pinpointed specific processes that could be simplified. This helped me to really think through the process and identify opportunities for simplification.
I then came up with a proposed task flow that represents my persona’s journey through a specific task. In this scenario, the user has an existing Domino’s user account. He is ordering a bundle meal from the mobile app for a family gathering and wants the food delivered to his home.
Wireframes
The next step was to craft the wireframes so that I could have a visual understanding of how the app should work. The focus was on the layout of each screen and functionality of the app.
The following are a few selected screens that address the main pain points of our users.
Moodboard
Before delving into the user interface design, I gathered some images in the hopes of sparking inspiration on how the app should look like. I wanted the UI to be clean and minimalistic while still being vibrant.
Styleguide
A simple styleguide was also created as a means to ensure ensure consistency throughout the app design.
Besides Domino’s brand colours, I decided to only use two other colours to keep things minimal — one a light beige and the other an almost-black colour. The light beige had been a generated suggestion using coolors.co.
I decided to use Montserrat, a very rounded san-serif font, that brings about feelings of modernism and minimalism.
UI mockups
Finally, it was time to put in the visual UI details. The screens were kept clean and minimalistic, whilst still evoking vibrancy through the red and blue brand colours.
Conclusion
Challenges & learnings
Learning about and putting into practice the design thinking process helped me appreciate the hard work that goes into UX/UI design.
Learning how to effectively use Figma (e.g. components, variants, prototyping) was tough but essential.
Designing the app also made me more conscious of good practices such as ensuring buttons, icons and texts were not too small, making sure everything was aligned and consistent, etc. I feel like it is a science as much as it is an art, and I enjoyed that.
Next steps
I will be putting the prototypes through usability tests to evaluate if my proposed solutions work and work on further enhancements to the UI or user/task flows.
Possible future features
- Gamification (e.g. play a simple game to earn rewards/pizza personality quiz)
- Animations when users customise their pizza
- Voice order