Adding Food Inclusivity and Accessibility to DoorDash
A Designlab capstone project: Adding a Feature
This project was completed through Designlab’s UX Academy. I led this project solo end-to-end and took on the roles of researcher, designer, and tester. The estimated project length was 80 hours.
The Problem 🧐
At the time of writing this, I am on a personal food journey. My goal is to discover which foods fuel my body and mind and which foods negatively take away from my physical and mental health. A part of this journey involves ordering food online. About 1–3 times a week, my husband and I prefer to order lunch or dinner to be delivered to the house; this saves us time, money, and, usually, mental energy.
My household’s food delivery platform of choice is DoorDash. Currently, it is quite difficult to navigate DoorDash if you or someone you are ordering food with has a dietary restriction or preference. In my example, I have experimented with being gluten-free for the past ~6 months. Hence, I wish to order food from DoorDash that I am confident is gluten-free.
My current experience with ordering food on DoorDash is as follows:
- Decide with my husband that we wish to order food to be delivered
- We both open the DoorDash mobile app on our individual phones
- We scroll through suggested restaurants on DoorDash; when we find a restaurant that interests us, we check to see if they have gluten-free labels on their food items
- Often, the menus on DoorDash do not have any gluten-free labels, so we have to open up a web browser, search for the restaurant, and check if they have gluten-free labels on the menu on their website
- Repeat the above process for 45 minutes to an hour until we either give up on getting food delivered or finally find a restaurant that has gluten-free labels on their website, compare that menu to the DoorDash menu, and place the delivery order
This negative experience led me to wonder how do others with similar or more complex dietary restrictions and preferences navigate the DoorDash app? If my experience is this bad over an optional dietary restriction, what must someone’s experience be like who has an actual food allergy or restriction?
How might we customize the DoorDash experience to effectively and efficiently meet the dietary needs of an orderer?
The Who 👫
Meet Oswald
Through virtual interviews and third-party research, I developed a primary persona: Oswald the Orderer.
Oswald is vegan and often orders food to be delivered with his partner. Not only does Oswald want to order food based on his dietary preferences, he also wants to satisfy his girlfriend’s dietary restrictions and preferences.
If we could find a way to help people like Oswald safely and efficiently filter restaurants and food items on DoorDash based on their dietary restrictions and preferences, then we could create a better, safer, and more enjoyable experience to those users.
The Research 🔍
Competitive analysis
I conducted research to discover which, if any, solutions existed in the market related to catering an experience to a user’s dietary restrictions and preferences.
I was heavily inspired by Chipotle’s “Nutrition Preferences” feature. A user selects their nutritional preferences. They are then brought back to the interactive food menu where now specific food items are labeled indicating whether or not they fit the user’s selected nutrition preferences.
Market opportunity
Six in ten American adults say they restrict at least one nutritional component from their diet.
There is a large potential market opportunity for a feature that allows users to filter restaurants and food items based on their dietary restrictions and preferences. 60% of Americans restrict at least one component from their diet.
As of 2021, about 20 million people have food allergies in the U.S.
There is also a market opportunity to create a better experience for people with food allergies.
The Design 📱
I focused on four main flows for this project: Home, Search, Store, and Review. For the Home, Search, and Store flows, I focused on adding a “Dietary” filter button. I leveraged the existing brand and design system of DoorDash to create my new elements and screens.
Home
Oswald opens the DoorDash app. He isn’t sure what cuisine he’s in the mood for, so he wants to peruse the recommended restaurants on DoorDash’s homepage.
Wishing to only see restaurants that can accommodate his and his girlfriend’s dietary restrictions and preferences, Oswald selects the “Dietary” filter and inputs his preferences.
“It’s so nice not having to scroll endlessly to find a restaurant that looks tasty, just to realize the restaurant doesn’t meet my dietary needs,” Oswald thinks.
Search
On a different day, Oswald is craving sushi for lunch. He opens the DoorDash app and searches for “sushi.” He then inputs his dietary needs via the “Dietary” filter button.
“Finally, I don’t have to call every restaurant separately to ask if they have vegan options!” Oswald thinks.
Store
Oswald and his girlfriend are hanging out one Saturday afternoon. She tells Oswald she’s in the mood for McDonald’s. Oswald opens the DoorDash app and navigates to the Mcdonald’s page. Wishing to only see the food items that meet his and his girlfriend’s dietary needs, he inputs his preferences via the “Dietary” filter.
“I love that it’s easy to see which food items meet whose specific dietary needs, especially since my dietary preferences are different than my girlfriend’s,” Oswald thinks.
Review
After eating his meal, Oswald completes a review for the restaurant within the DoorDash app. He is able to provide input on the restaurant’s ability to meet his dietary preferences and restrictions.
“I feel good knowing that my review will help other vegans who are ordering from this restaurant,” Oswald thinks.
The Branding ✍️
Branding for this project was easy to navigate, as I chose to keep DoorDash’s branding style and elements. Rather than attempting to improve DoorDash’s established brand, I chose to focus on evolving their user experience.
The Feedback 🎙
Throughout my process, I continuously received feedback from potential users. The feedback for this project was specifically helpful in identifying inconsistencies within the experience — for example, when a restaurant suggestion was being made that didn’t meet the user’s dietary filter input, even after they selected the desired filters.
My Reflection 💭
Highlights
Ideating on how to improve a current experience or product is highly enjoyable for me. I specifically enjoy working with an existing brand and design system, as I feel I can focus more on the user experience and less on pieces of the brand such as the color palette, imagery, shapes, etc.
Next time
If I were to repeat this project, I would dedicate more time to alternate ways of testing wireframes and receiving feedback from potential users. I posted my wireframes on social media, such as sub-Reddits related to dietary restrictions and preferences, but received little feedback or response. Next time, I would pursue these types of forums more intentionally in order to gain a lot of feedback from a wide range of users in a short amount of time.
