Client:
Zing
Mobile App Concept
View Live Version
Zing
Year
2018 - 2019
Scope of Work
Product Designer | Mobile App Design
Location
Los Angeles
Zing was a startup based in Los Angeles, with the goal of creating a metasearch platform for online food delivery. Zing aimed to define how customers engage diners by optimizing connectivity between delivery services and restaurants, allowing users to compare restaurants, delivery times, and prices.
The Problem
It's a great time to be a food enthusiast. With a wide range of options for online food delivery, such as UberEats, Grubhub, Doordash, and others, having your favorite dishes delivered to your door is no longer difficult. While diversity in choice is an asset, users might also lose out on cost savings or time on their orders. Users must switch between multiple delivery applications to find options without knowing which platform offers lower service costs and faster delivery.
Challenges
- Validating user demand
- Getting data from food delivery apps
- Uncovering pain points and opportunities from third-party apps
- Figuring out how to create a user-friendly aggregate food application
Research
To determine the pain points in the ordering process for users and validate user demand, I surveyed 80+ participants in Venice Beach, CA. The responses allowed me to uncover usability issues, confirm user behavior in comparing between apps, and see what is important to users when comparing.
User Insights
- 64% Used one or more food delivery apps in the last three months
- 78% Compared price or delivery time across different apps
- 80% Switched apps due to restaurant unavailability
- 56% Switched apps because of surge pricing
Market Research
Our research identified six common experiences between different apps: sign up/login, search, order placement, payment, order tracking, and review. Customers can find restaurants by location, search, and filter (e.g., time, cuisine, and discovery feature). Order customization is a crucial attribute for all apps. After examining the survey results and information collected from researching different services, I started to group the recurring frustrations into overarching themes and tasks. I used a 2 x 2 to plot the themes, prioritizing users' needs and business goals while highlighting a few low-hanging fruit requiring small changes.
Main Issues: Users have to switch between apps to make comparisons. In addition, users are more likely to leave an app if the restaurant they want is unavailable.
Low Hanging Fruit: Users are limited to the restaurants provided by each delivery service.
Design Exploration
There is no point in consolidating multiple applications if it meant a loss of efficiency -- the UX needed to provide users with a familiar and seamless shopping experience. I worked through idea sketches, user journey mapping, wireframes, visual design, and prototyping to account for crucial features.
Information Architecture
I broke down the existing framework of an ordering flow into specific categories to establish rules and behaviors for each screen while adding extra steps to the user journey to highlight new features that allow easy comparability and unified transaction flow.
Reducing App Bouncing
By centralizing food delivery services from various applications into one platform, we offered users more options (restaurants) while making price and delivery time transparent to customers. Users can have visibility to see early in their shopping experience which delivery service operates with a particular restaurant and get an estimate of the delivery time.
Account Creation
When it comes to creating the signup flow, there were a few scenarios we explored. In Flow 1, the customer can link their existing food delivery accounts to Zing -- syncing their information (e.g., address, favorites, order history). However, we quickly realized that the design would violate the delivery service companies’ policies -- so we pivoted to Flow 2. The customers would instead navigate a linear registration flow in which they would have to create an account, input payment information, and add an address.
Compare Services
To help customers compare shops without making them do extra work, we created the Compare Services page where users can see the cost between different delivery services (including delivery fees) and the difference in estimated delivery times. We also provided a sorting feature based on time and cost. The customer can then proceed to checkout with the service best suited for their needs, whether it is the cheapest or fastest option or anything in between.
Beyond Compare
Understanding that delivery time is a significant customer concern; we created multiple layouts for order tracking. Having various configurations allows Zing to be flexible when scaling with different delivery apps -- delivery services could either show map tracking or status update.
Creating Filters
The filter feature is a half-layover module with two key functions: sort by cuisine or other qualifications such as price or delivery time. These filters aim to help users narrow their search and discover options that fit their needs.
Usability Testing
These new features can significantly enhance the ordering experience, but we also wanted to make sure users would find the improvements valuable. To validate this, I performed user testing with five participants. I had them answer questions and perform a series of tasks.
Scenarios
- Imagine you’re out of town on a vacation at a remote location. You’re hungry, but you’re not sure if the delivery service you commonly use is available in this area. Please show me how you would order a pizza.
- You’re with a group of friends, it’s football night, and you’re trying to order food before the game starts. Please show me how you would order three burgers with an estimated delivery time of no longer than 25 minutes.
