DoorDash Redesign
A case study on how to make food ordering simpler.
The first online food order was a pizza from Pizza Hut in 1994 and since then consumers have shown a growing appetite for ordering via an app and eating at the comfort of their own homes. The market is growing at such a rapid pace that UBS forecast delivery sales could rise an annual average of more than 20% to $365 billion worldwide by 2030, from $35 billion.
Predictably, growth in market size has also led to a growth in a cutthroat competition. We can now order food via a number of services like Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Caviar, Postmates, etc. While an increase in competition means more discounts for consumers, it has created a wartime scenario around the entire food delivery space where every difference matters.
With this project, I suggested some changes in DoorDash’s app that focuses on increasing the conversion rate by decreasing the number of interactions and making the interface more intuitive to use.
Jan 17 - Jan 31, 2019 (2 weeks)
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Motion Design
Solo Project
Increase the order conversion rate by decreasing the number of interactions and making the interface more intuitive to use.
To start off, I conducted contextual interviews with three different users to understand the challenges that they face inside the app. I have used these interviews throughout the project to guide my design decisions.
The biggest challenge of any redesign is the lack of user research and quantitative data and thus I held myself back from introducing any standalone features in the app. Instead, I primarily focus on interviewing certain users and observing their behavior with the app. From my interviews, I found following pain points and later ideated the solutions:
1. Ineffective Home and Category Page
The biggest problem that I discovered with the home page is the inconsistent real estate distribution between different restaurants because some restaurants have food photos while others don’t. In the above situation, I observed that all the users completely skipped ‘Kin Da Restaurant’ because it tends to get lost between two restaurants with big photos.
Existing categories flow
Solution
Existing home page
Proposed home page
Key changes and rationale:
2. Inaccessible filters
While I like the fact that the sort/filters are displayed as quick actions on the app where a user can directly tap and implement it, but I also found some limitations to it.
Solution
Existing filters
Proposed filters
Key changes and rationale:
3. No vegetarian filter
While the DoorDash app supports a user like Rohit on the restaurant discovery phase by giving him a vegetarian filter, it hardly does so in the food selection phase. During the interview, I found Rohit going through the description of every dish to make sure they don’t contain any meat. This disrupts the whole food ordering experience for vegetarian users and is a big pain point.
Solution
Key changes and rationale:
Introduced a Veg only switch after the basic restaurant information. On activating the switch, only vegetarian options will be shown in the menu. This will allow user groups like Rohit to quickly find vegetarian options for any restaurant.
This will give an edge to DoorDash over other food delivery companies as it will drastically reduce the order time of vegetarian people and improve their overall experience.
4. Opportunity for a better food selection experience
Solution
Section Navigation
Existing section navigation
Proposed section navigation
Key changes and rationale:
Adding an Item
Existing adding an item interaction
Proposed adding an item interaction
Key changes and rationale:
5. Accidental checkout prevention
Have you ever been in a situation where you accidentally transferred money to someone? How did you feel? Frustrated, right? I noticed the same frustration when one of my interviewees accidentally ordered because all it needs is a single tap. Fortunately, he was able to cancel the order before the restaurant accepted it.
This could be a major setback for a user like John who is budget conscious and goes an extra mile to save money.
Solution
Existing checkout interaction
Proposed checkout interaction
Key changes and rationale:
Revised the payment process trigger from tap to right swipe. This will prevent accidental order placements and will lead to better user experience. Further, I introduced a subtle animation that will inform the user about the interaction.
I am sure that the good folks at DoorDash must have spent countless hours creating what we see now. They have access to a huge amount of data gathered from a number of qualitative and quantitative researches and know better about user behavior and their goals.
Because of the lack of access to DoorDash’s user research, I held myself back from introducing any new features. Instead, I focused on improving the existing design based on user interviews.
The vegetarian filter introduced in the restaurant page will vastly help user group like Rohit. Images for every food item will augment the ordering experience for visual users like Sarah. Further, the cart value on the cart button and the swipe checkout will help DoorDash to cater to budget-conscious users like John.
Additionally, the design optimizations by reducing the number of steps in the section as well as item addition phase should increase the conversion rate of the DoorDash app and give it a necessary edge over its competition in this wartime scenario surrounding the food delivery space.
What’s Next?
The amount of research that was done by me was very limited because of lack of time and thus a lot more research and usability testing need to be done to prove the viability of my designs.
Anyways, I had a great learning experience while working on this project. I got to deeply observe the various UI elements and interactions in the app and appreciate what the current design team has already accomplished. Further, I had a blast exploring the Principle for interaction design.
Other Works
StardogProject type
DocOn TVProject type
TargetProject type
Lift AcademyProject type
DoorDash RedesignProject type
RootsWeb Design
If you have a project in mind, especially if it revolves around strong user-centered design, I'd love to hear about it.
Made with ❤️ and 🍺 by Jashan Gupta