Case Study: Enhance UX of food delivery app DoorDash
Individuals struggle to find time to cook at home in today’s fast-paced culture due to the hustle and bustle. Dining out, which used to be a convenient alternative to cooking, has become more difficult as a result of restaurant limitations imposed to combat the current COVID-19 outbreak. Restaurants are increasingly relying on digital solutions to assist in food delivery.
In this case study, I’ll try to identify some of the issues that users encounter when trying to order food via the popular food delivery app DoorDash. Later, I try to figure out a feasible solution in UI design to overcome certain difficulties.
Duration: 5 weeks
Role: UX Researcher, UI designer
Tools: Figma, FigJam
What are the challenges?
When I first arrived in the United States from India, around 6 months ago, I got to know about the renowned food delivery app DoorDash. I was quite eager to use it to place a food order over the weekend. However, when I used the app, I was surprised by how many UX issues there were. Despite the numerous challenges, I was forced to use Doordash because several of my favorite restaurants are only featured on that app. After a few months, I decided to work on these problems and find possible solutions.
User Research
Timeline: week 1
After noting down the issues I’m facing, I decided to do some research on the problems. To have a better understanding of the issues, I decided to interview a few users. The interview’s target audience is a DoorDash user who orders food once or twice a month.
I prepared the questions for the semi-structured interview. I keep most of the questions open-ended to understand the user's problem thoroughly.
In addition to interviews, I read the reviews of the DoorDash app on the App Store. I highlighted the user’s difficulties and pain points.
Analysis and Brainstorming
Timeline: Week 2 — Week 3
I began analyzing the actual issues that the user faces after collecting the user’s responses. I used both interview data and App store reviews in my analysis.
I moved on to brainstorming for possible solutions to the given problems after analyzing all of the pain points.
Design the solution
Timeline: Week 3 — Week5
I decided to implement some of the solutions into the user interface. I used Figma to design the user interface.
Precise Food Delivery:
One of the major issues that user faces is food delivery at the wrong location. The Majority of the users complains about this problem during interviews and on app store reviews. There are a couple of reasons behind this issue, one is the complex location of the apartment. In many cases, apartments look very similar in nearby dropoff locations. Second is the lake of clear instruction for dropoff locations. In many cases, dashers don’t have accurate instruction regarding the dropoff location. Moreover, dashers are always in hurry, so they drop the food delivery to a nearby location if they don't find the desired location.
To solve this problem, I decided to add a new feature of uploading an image of drop-off location. With help of this, user can upload picture of their front door, office dropoff location, etc. So that dasher can easily identify the precise location for their delivery drop-off. DoorDash can also verify the wrong delivery by comparing the user’s drop-off location picture and the dasher’s delivered location picture.
Search by dish name:
Whenever I search for food dish on DoorDash, they only show me the restaurants which are selling that dish. I personally found it really frustrating. User need to check out the complete restaurant menu to find out the searched dish. In order to solve this issue, I redesign the search page. When user search for any particular food dish, they can able to see the search dish along with the restaurant details. And if the restaurant sells more than one user’s searched dish then user only sees the one dish which is most seeling or popular in the restaurant.
With help of this user can easily search any food dish from multiple restaurants at the same time and they can also quickly add to the cart and checkout without going through the restaurant menu or restaurant page.
Search by distance filter:
While searching for the food dish or the restaurant, DoorDash is not providing the distance filter. Due to that users are not able to find the nearest restaurants or the restaurants in particular miles. To solve this issue, I designed the distance filter on the searching screen. With help of this user can choose the range of miles from the location they want to search restaurants.
Rating of individual food dishes:
When a user is surfing through the food menu, and when they are confused in selecting a food dish. At that time rating of the dishes will help the user to take a decision. To implement this feature, Doordash must give the option to rate the individual food dishes along with the restaurant at the end of food delivery. This will help to give more clarity about dish to other users.
Address indicator on the search page:
Many times users are not ordering food for themselves, they are also ordering for their loved ones. In that case, while searching the food dishes, the search page doesn’t show the address for which the user is searching. To change the address user needs to switch to the home page and then change the address. An address indicator with a dropdown on the search page can solve this issue.
Takeaways
The case study was fun and beneficial because I learned new things about user interface and experience design, as well as the food industry. For me, the most challenging and exciting part was getting out there and interacting with the users, and discovering their issues. To summarize, interacting with users early and often is an important part of product design. It’s never enough to rely on our assumptions about the problems (and possible solutions). It’s also interesting to see how these minor changes to the design can have such a significant impact on overall product usage.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Be sure to 👏🏽 clap below (You can give 50 claps at once, click and hold on the clap button) and leave your comments and suggestions. If you have any feedback or want to chat with me, drop me a message at gadhiaamish@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.
