DoorDash
Explore new restaurants as quickly as possible
About the project
DoorDash is a popular food ordering app which allows users to request food delivery from popular restaurants. In the United States, the food delivery market has more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. I added a search function and new meal option so that users can try out new restaurants as easily as they discover them on the street.
*Disclaimer: I am not a designer at DoorDash. This was done for the Designlab Project.
| Client | : | DoorDash (Design Lab UX Academy) |
| Role | : | UI/UX design, Research |
| Duration | : | 4 weeks, September 2021 |
| Tools | : | Figma, Whimsical, Photoshop |
The Challenge
- Users aren’t as excited about ordering food on delivery apps as they are at restaurants.
- It’s difficult to try new restaurants on delivery app
- It takes long to complete order and receive it
- Delivery food is pricey
The solution
I added 2 new features on DoorDash.
- Search function so that users can decide restaurants based on what they want to eat
- New meal option that users can eat pre-selected dinner for $15
Here’s how i solved the problem
RESEARCH
Interviewed with DoorDash users and created a persona
IDEATION
Analyzed direct competitors (Uber Eats, Grubhub) and ideated potential solutions
PROTOTYPING
Made a bunch of wireframes and hosted usability test
RESEARCH
Users want to reduce time and money spent on delivery food because they aren’t looking forward to lonely meal on the busiest day.
Interview with DoorDash users and restaurants
I conducted interviews with 4 people who have used DoorDash recently. There are 3 problems.
(1) It’s difficult to try new restaurants on delivery app
- They can’t ask questions about the menu on delivery app and it makes them hesitate to try out new restaurants.
- They switch between Yelp and DoorDash to check out authentic photos and reviews.
(2) It takes long to complete order and receive it
- Deciding restaurant and order is overwhelming.
- It takes a long time to match orders with a driver (DoorDasher) in big cities. This adds up the waiting time.
(3) Delivery food is pricey
- Restaurants increase price for DoorDash due to the expensive fee
- Delivery fee and tips for drivers
- They tend to avoid fancy restaurants for delivery food because can’t enjoy the experience and atmosphere like dine-out.
I conducted interviews with restaurants using DoorDash to understand their perspectives. The biggest problem was the very expensive margin (30% of sales). Thus they wish existing customers order take-out via their website or Square delivery (Square POS charges only 3% transactional fee for delivery order). They have been using DoorDash because they want to reach out to new customers.
It validated the problem that DoorDash should ease the way to find new restaurants.
Persona
I made a persona based on user interviews. Primary persona is a youth who orders delivery food for their dinner at home on the busiest day.
Problem Statement is “Matthew Horling is an extravert busy accountant who needs delivery food as quickly as possible because he doesn’t want to waste his money and time for lonely dinner.”
IDEATION
How might we minimize the cost and time spent
for delivery food?
Competitor Analysis
I did a competitor analysis to understand how other delivery apps reduce time for order. Interestingly, all delivery apps don’t have good search functionalities and it’s hard to find restaurants when users have something they want to eat.
Crazy8
I conducted Crazy 8 to think out of box ideas to reduce total time for delivery. My favorite ideas were delivering food with a giant food truck or a chef visiting a customer’s house to cook onsite.
User Jourey Map
A user journey map was helpful to find out where we can reduce time. They spend a good amount of time deciding orders and I initiated an idea of a quick dinner option for $15.
PROTOTYPING
Testing a new search function and quick dinner option
Wireframe
I made multiple wireframes for the search result page. Based on user insight that most people decide cuisine type first, and then search for restaurants in the category, I designed a result page with lots of dish’s photos from different restaurants.
Usability Test
These are the interesting findings from the early usability testing.
- All participants haven’t realized the search icon in the bottom bar although it is an original design.
- Users can’t decide what to order with food photos only. They want to see restaurant information alongside.
- There are 2 types of search behaviors. One is broad search like “Italian” or “Chinese”, another is specific dish such as “Fish and chips” or “Cheese pizza”
- Quick Dinner Option was so popular in the usability test.
Hi-Fi Prototype
After some usability testings, I finalized the hi-fi prototype as below. All participants could complete main tasks such as ordering meatball pizza and quick dinner in the final test.
Top page shows a banner about quick dinner. It also has more photos for new restaurant exploration.
Quick dinner page has only a few options to provide quick and affordable meals effectively.
Detail page: Users can’t customize the meal in order for restaurants to prepare it as quickly as possible.
Search result for cuisine like “pizza”
Search result for specific item like “meatball pizza”
TAKEAWAYS
I realized that there is a large room to improve in the home screen and search screen of delivery apps. Users open the DoorDash app only when they want to order food. They normally skip content on the homescreen and jump into category pages or a search screen. If I could have more time, I would like to design a better home screen to make more people enjoy using DoorDash even when they don’t order delivery food.
The Quick Dinner feature was so popular in the usability testing. However there are lots of other things I need to consider, for example, partnership with restaurants and operations. Therefore I would like to try this feature with a few restaurants first.
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