Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Jasmine Rosen

To Improve User Search Experience & Highlight An Unused Feature

OBJECTIVE

To explore the human-centered design process through evaluating the usability of apps.

I chose to do a case study on UberEATS because it is a great food delivery service mobile app that is really popular in the on-demand industry. I am not affiliated with UberEATS. I am just looking for ways to challenge myself as a designer.

Through this case study I discovered that:

1. The process to select food on UberEATS goes against most peoples’ natural food selection process.

2. All users were completely unaware of UberEATS’ “schedule in advance” feature. In order to order food in advance from a closed restaurant, a user would need to set the delivery time then search for food. Because this process isn’t what users naturally wanted to do, the pathway to this feature is currently hidden.

OUTCOME

As a solution, I did the following:

1. Redesigned the home page to provide a better searching experience for users.

2. Created a clear pathway to the “schedule in advance” feature that is currently hidden.

For UberEATS, this redesign would mean an increase in new user engagement and retention, leading to a higher customer lifetime value.

Image: Summary of my design changes

MY PROCESS

Image: Summary of Design Process

GUERRILLA USABILITY TESTING

In order to gain insight on the app, I interviewed and tested five people. I asked each participant to complete a series of tasks while verbalizing their thoughts. I specifically chose these tasks to understand the user’s food selection process and to validate some of the pain points I observed from testing the app myself. I translated each task into a realistic scenario to help engage the user.

Task Scenarios

1. You are in the office and want to order healthy food now, without spending too much.

2. You know your schedule is booked with meetings all day. Order food now so that it arrives for dinner.

USER RESEARCH

To better empathize with my users and to guide my decisions in this redesign process, I created and validated a proto-persona that reflects a typical UberEATS user.

Image: Created proto-persona to understand users

To further understand the users’ motivations and desired outcomes, I used the Jobs To Be Done Framework to create multiple job stories based on my interviews. Below are the two I decided to focus on:

Image: Create job stories to understand users

AFFINITY MAPPING

Once I developed a deeper understanding of my users and their needs, I identified the common pain points from my usability test through affinity mapping.

Image: Affinity mapping to identify major pain points

PRIORITIZATION MATRIX

I decided to primarily focus on pain points 1–4.

Image: Prioritization Matrix to identify primary focus

Primary Focus

Pain Point 2: Users cannot change the location

Making this more discoverable will improve retention rate, as users often change their location to view nearby restaurants. This is a very easy fix.

Pain Point 1:Users cannot find the search bar

Placing search bar where users expect it to be will reduce user cognitive load, increasing new user engagement. This, too is a very easy fix.

Pain Point 4: User is unaware he/she can schedule orders from closed restaurants

Exposing this path will bring in more users and drive sales. From usability testing, 0/5 users were aware of the feature to order food in advance and 3/5 users vocalized they were pleasantly surprised when discovering it. This is a relatively easy fix that can be a game-changer for UberEATS.

Pain Point 3: Users expect to be able to sort search results

Combining the search & sort pages will allow users to sort food options presented from search more efficiently, matching their natural work flow. It will be more challenging to redesign the layout, but it would be a huge impact to positively improve user experience.

Secondary Focus

Pain Point 5: User cannot interpret meaning of tab bar icons

Adding labels to the tab bar icons is incredibly easy, but not a priority because its ux impact isn’t as great as the pain points listed above.

UI SKETCHES

I sketched out a new Home Page that combined the search and “filter/sort by” features because users demonstrated frustration toggling between filtering options on the Home page and searching on the Search page. I quickly realized that I needed to validate an assumption I was making. I conducted supplemental research (surveying 20 additional users & conducting competitor analysis) to ensure my redesign was backed by data.

PROTOTYPE

Complete the task scenarios below to test the clickable prototype.

Task Scenarios

1. You are in the office and want to order healthy food now, without spending too much.

2. You know your schedule is booked with meetings all day. Order food now so that it arrives for dinner.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/2ca6a397c6aa6e777896d0b76b3b5ac7/href">https://medium.com/media/2ca6a397c6aa6e777896d0b76b3b5ac7/href</a>

VALIDATE PROTOTYPE

In order to validate my solutions, I tested five people with the same prompts described above.

Results

Task 1:

Original Design: 0/5 users can find cheapest option

Original Design: 0/5 could find the cheapest available healthy food option. Users settled for cheap options, but grew too frustrated to get exactly what they wanted (the cheapest option).

Redesign: 5/5 can find the cheapest option

Redesign : 5/5 could easily find the cheapest healthy food option by filtering their search results.

Task 2:

Original Design: 2/5 can order in advance

Original Design: 2/5 were able to schedule an order in advance using different methods. One user did it correctly, but on accident and the other users’ method would not work if the restaurant was currently closed.

Redesign: 5/5 can order in advance

Redesign: 5/5 could easily schedule an order in advance, even if the restaurant was currently closed.

TAKEAWAYS

From this case study, I learned the importance of not relying on my own assumptions when it comes to designing for others. When I decided to move the “sort by” off the Home Page and onto the Results Page, I surveyed the 20 additional users just in case what I thought was best, wasn’t the norm. As designers it can be so easy to assume we know what is best for the product, but we need to remember that we aren’t designing for ourselves, but for our users.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to see more of my work check out my portfolio here. If you enjoyed this case study or have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at jasmine.n.rosen@gmail.com.

*Note: I did this case study before Uber’EATS’ iOS update on June 30, 2017, which addressed part of pain point 5 (Changing “Schedule Order” to “Place Order.”)

UberEATS: UX Case Study was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

UberEATS: UX Case Study

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