A food delivery chatbot app for a restaurant in a city run by food aggregators: A UX Case Study
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Product:
A clean and simple solution that allows users to order food from the restaurant by enabling ways to provide customized order instructions, accurate delivery tracking & prompt issue resolution.
Project Duration: 14/03/21–14/05/21 (2 Months)
The Business Context:
The food ordering market in India is a duopoly comprising of 2 food aggregators — Zomato & Swiggy. Users prefer to place orders via these aggregator platforms over private apps. As a result restaurants lose control on their pricing and margins. This also dilutes the quality of their service levels, ultimately impacting their brand image.
The Problem:
User recruitment onto private apps is a barrier to entry. While this is easily remedied by incentivizing users to onboard onto a newly designed platform (price offs/ discounts run by the restaurant). The biggest challenge has always app stickiness.
- How do we ensure that users keep coming back onto the app to place any orders with this restaurant?
- How do we make the restaurant’s app the default choice for ordering take out?
The Goal:
To design an experience that would trigger the user to switch apps while ordering from our restaurant. Ensure that the user starts defaulting to the restaurants private app every time they were in a mood for take out from our restaurant.
My Role: End to End
1. UX Research
2. UI/UX Design
3.Prototyping
Project Type: Academic
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Primary Research: I started my journey by conducting a simple survey with a 3 pronged objective,
1. A user’s mindset while using delivery tracking apps
2. Current satisfaction levels of the Indian user with restaurant aggregators.
3. Identify gaps/user frustrations that can be solved to design a smoother , delightful user experience
Competitive Audit (what I call FAB): Features | Attributes | Benefits
Here is a snapshot of my findings:
The Issue resolution processes in food aggregator apps focused only on the delivery. Personalized preparation instructions, allergen related ingredient substitutions and care , the cornerstone of a personal dining experience were traded of for a modular system of polite messages and partial refunds. This was a definite gap that could be fixed for user delight!
Sampling Rationale of target user:
- Our target user is well educated with a high amount of disposable income who regularly consumes digital media.
- Age range of user 19–50.
This gives us 3 distinct user groups:
College student (19–23) | Young Professional (23–35) | Affluent Boomer (+35–50). 10 participants from each generational cohort were selected at random and then asked to fill in a simple survey.
User Personas:
Based on the user groups identified earlier , I created a set of personas to help visualize our users in their natural environments.
This exercise drilled a layer deeper, to uncover our user’s goals and frustrations.
This subsequently allowed me to frame our Problem questions, of which there were 3..
Problem Questions:
- How might we create a comprehensive order-delivery experience that offers supporting information and feedback to users at each stage of their digital journey?
- How can we reduce user anxiety during the order tracking process & make the experience more reliable and delightful for the user?
- Can issue resolution processes be streamlined for quick efficient completion ?
Defining the user journey and getting a glimpse of the user’s headspace
STARTING THE DESIGN
Part 1: Wireframing ft Paper: Once the broad sequence of actions that formed the user flow were determined , it was time to start wireframing the most important pages of the App.
Onboarding →Home Page →Ordering System
Part 2: Digitizing the finalized ideas!: Let the fun and games begin!!!
Part 3 : Low-Fidelity Prototypes
Going a level deeper: A system usability study
Basis:
The system usability study conducted with the lo-fi prototype would help catch bottle necks in the flow and further streamline the flow before the UI design phase .
The above findings helped detail out the user journey by the addition of new screens and re-designing older flows to be completed in simpler steps, efficiency!! It was in this step that I learned:
“ Iteration is the only path to perfection”
Here is an illustration of the powers of iteration!:
”Iteration uncovers common sense solutions, a not so common intelligence that underlines good design.” ~ Avinash Pillai
UI Design & Accessibility Considerations
Part 4 : High Fidelity Designs & Prototypes
Impact of Design
A beautiful turquoise green comes together with an azure white in a simple combination to create a clean, elegant user experience. The design ensures minimal data inputs from the user while solving all of their problems in a snappy trendy interface.
Way Forward
This was my first documented UX Case study. I will be publishing more of my original work on this publication , soon.
Connect with me
If you are reading this line, you stuck till the end. I appreciate your loitering support ;) You can hit me up at avinashpillaidesigns@gmail.com. Cheers!