A food subscription — research project
User Research is backbone of any good design, it gives clarity to any solution by removing most of the possible ambiguities.
User research also helps in validating your solution .
This case study is about my first research based project & aims to explain what process I followed, mistakes I made, what I learned & how I finally reach to the solution.
Have an informative read 🥂
What I am Solving
There exist two types of problem statements, a business problem statement, which tells what a business is looking to offer to its users, and a research problem statement, which tells what is needed to be understood from the users in order to create the best possible experience for them, for the solution that business is willing to provide.
Business Problem Statement :
Due to the pandemic, a lot of people have been ordering food from a food delivery app. However, it has been noticed that most people don’t order every day from them. To make sure that these customers order every day, they are planning to launch a food delivery subscription. Create an experience in a food delivery app based on users needs.
Research Problem Statement :
A popular food delivery app wants to introduce a food delivery subscription. As a UX Designer you want to understand the behaviour of people with respect to food. You want to understand their lifestyle with respect to their diet schedules, nutrition, and how it affects their daily life. Plan a research to identify the changes in lifestyle, for the business to provide a better experience to the users.
Disclaimer : This is to clarify that this project is based on a hypothetical problem statement and I in no way claim to be associated with Pizza Hut. Pizza hut is used just for some of its base UX and the solution being provided is not intended to solve any problem related to & for Pizza Hut.
These steps need not to be followed in the same manner, this is what I did & a design process can vary depending on the problem statement, types of user, given timeframe, availability of resources and other factors, there is always scope for flexibility.
My Role : Researcher, UX & UI Designer.
Understanding Given Problem
I come up with few questions using 5Ws, to begin with my secondary research, also I noted a my assumption for these 5w’s:
Why users orders their food online : This could be because of easy delivery, more varity of items and also because they don’t know how to cook or don’t want to cook.
What is behaviour of users towards a subscription: Wanting to purchase it because of provided benefit or not wanting to spending on it becuse of the money it cost.
Why users purchase a subscription: for extra benefit that comes with subscription.
What food is mostly being ordered on food delivery apps: fast food .
When users prefer home cooked food over online : when they want to save money, when they want to eat something healthy.
Where users orders mostly (the online platform): on famous platforms like Zomato, Swiggy.
Who is mostly using online food delivery platforms: young generation.
Finding Nemo — ( Secondary Data)
Out there exist ocean of data & our motive is to find relevant data from it, “Secondary research” or desk research is where we get data from a secondary source, data that already exist for a similar situation/problem.
similar to finding Nemo, we come across many interesting facts throughout this search, it’s a process on its own where we keep filtering data as per our requirement.
1. More than 77% of the 1,003 adults (501 men and 502 women, aged 18 and older) surveyed said they would rather eat a homemade meal than go out for dinner, with 59% of millennial-aged respondents prioritizing cooking more meals at home next year.
The top reason for cooking at home rather than dining is the cost savings of preparing your own meal, 77% of respondents said they cook at home to save money. Over half 51% of those surveyed said they eat at home to be healthier.
Source : Link
2.As per the report by Zomato, pizza was among the most-ordered foods on the food delivery app. Till November 2020, there were more than 17 lakh orders for pizza. A person in Jalgaon, Maharashtra ordered 369 pizzas this year.
Zomato delivered biryani, 22 of them every minute in 2020. About 1,988,094 veg biryanis were also ordered.
2.5 million momos were ordered in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune. Delhi alone ordered more momos than the three other cities combined.
Gulab jamun emerged a favourite with over one lakh orders placed during Diwali.
Source : Link
3. Frequency of ordering food from food delivery apps across India as of August 2021 :
Age group 16–24 :
8% orders several times in a day, 7% orders once in a day,
13% orders 3–6 times a week, 17% orders once or twice a week,
15% orders several times a month, 19% orders less than once a month
Age group 25–34 :
13% orders several times in a day, 13% orders once in a day
18% orders 3–6 times a week, 20% orders once or twice a week
14% orders several times a month, 14% orders less than once a month
Source : Link
4. List of Best 8 Food Delivery Apps In India for 2022
Zomato : 100,000,000+ installs, 4.0 rating, 4,631,802 reviews.
Swiggy : 50,000,000+ installs, 4.3 rating, 2,389,440 reviews.
Domino’s : 10,000,000+ installs, 4.3 rating, 563,143 reviews.
Travel khana : 1,000,000+ installs, 3.7 rating, 34,182 reviews.
Faasos : 5,000,000+ installs, 4.3 rating, 115,575 reviews.
Box8 : 1,000,000+ installs, 4.4 rating, 56,620 reviews.
FreshMenu : 1,000,000+ installs, 3.8 rating, 37,906 reviews.
Pizza Hut : 500,000+ installs, 3.1 rating, 2,458 reviews.
Source : Link
5. People in the U.S. are continuing to cook more, with 71% saying they will continue to do so after the pandemic ends,
according to a new survey by consumer market research firm Hunter. This habit is driven by the increase in home cooks’ creativity and confidence in the kitchen, as well as the motivation that cooking at home helps to save money (67%), eat healthier (56%) and feel good (56%).
6.Major reasons for purchasing a food subscription is because they are :
Time saving
Waste reduction
Flexibility
They make excellent gifts
Low Costs
Source: Link
7. Some reasons why people order online are:
Simplicity and Convenience
Real-time Updates
Better Customer Satisfaction
Discounts and Offers
Accurate Order Delivery Service
Hassle-Free Payment Options
Availability of Vast Food Choices
Source: Link
8. Subscriptions are an increasingly common way to buy products and services online.
Although streaming-media subscriptions have been popular for some time — 46 percent of consumers in our survey subscribed to an online streaming-media service, such as Netflix — shoppers are now also turning to subscriptions for consumer goods. Our research indicates that 15 percent of online shoppers have subscribed to an e-commerce service over the past year. Most e-commerce subscribers have streaming-media subscriptions as well .
Source: Link
9.In an 82-page report published, titled “Is the Kitchen Dead?”
investment bank UBS echoed many other studies and made a bullish case for increased global online food ordering sales. UBS forecast delivery sales could rise an annual average of more than 20% to $365 billion worldwide by 2030, from $35 billion.
Source : Link
Target User
Depending on the data collected in secondary research I decided a few things to look for in the people I target .
How Relevent Is Nemo? Interview Time!
Now that I have Nemo (Secondary data)😉, I will interview my target users to validate my desk research and get more space to empathise by trying to understand their behaviour throughout the conversation,
this process is called “primary research” & brings many aspects of a particular situation, it also helped me in understanding my user’s problem areas more clearly.
I recruited 5 people for the interview who matched my defined target user’s demographic.
The Interview
Question for this interview were created to understand how users behave while :
1. ordering food, 2. buying subscription, 3. other online apps and, 4. what their diet & schedule of a day looks like.
after conducting my first Interview I realised some of the questions were not very much conversational, so, later I iterated over my question-set.
Below are few output of the 1st interview because of which I had to iterate over my question set.
Q. What challenges do you face while ordering from online food delivery apps
This bought me a few word answer : I don’t feel any challenge / it’s easy.
Q. What features of your subscription do you like the most
The answer it got me: I don’t have a subscription of my own (I realised its a wrong way to ask,.. asking about features they like, is not right plus like is subjective)
Meet my users
Ankita: Ankita is a aspiring UX designer, she likes art and loves to read design blogs.
“I am too lazy to cook, so I mostly order online and when I am on a diet I would order even my salad online”
Simaant: Simaant is a recruiter, and a aspiring UX designer, he likes to sketch in his free time.
“I like cooking but on weekend I prefer ordering my food online because I want to rest and enjoy my weekend”
Shravan: Shravan is a banker, he likes playing and watching football, he likes teaching and reading about Indian history. In his free time he would sometimes listen to music or spend his time taking rest. After work he would spent some time scrolling through Instagram for memes.
“I don’t think much while ordering, I simply search my prefered restaurant, compare its price on other platform and place my order”
Nidhi: Nidhi is a sales officer, she likes traveling, singing, dancing & watching web series in her spare time. After work she spent her time scrolling through Instagram.
“Even though other apps provide offer but mostly I use that app to which I feel familiar “
Shalu: Shalu is a developer, she likes dancing and sometimes sketching, after work she she cooks dinner and spent her time scrolling through Instagram.
“I don’t trust online food delivery system for healthy food.”
“Instead of purchasing a subscription I would spend that money on something more useful.”
Listening To Data
I started “analysing the data” collected from primary research. I started brain storming to find insights.
As a first step I noted down all the pointers of primary data on figjam & marked all the similar pointers then I grouped them .
After going through all the data, grouping them, finding similarities, I further brainstormed to derive :
1.Discount and offering attracts users.
2.Users of this age group is busy with office work & after office they feel tired and spend time on apps that are entertaining and doesn’t requires much attention.
3.Users mostly orders on weekend when they are free have no office work to put their attention to.
4.Users enjoy subscription without having to pay for it :
5. Users don’t want to pay for a subscription if it doesn’t justify for the amount they are paying.
6. This user group is actively using:
— Investment apps
— Entertainment Apps (for memes mostly)
— App to interact for work related communication7.User feels the subscription is value for their money if it comes with good content, content of their interest, a solution that helps in making life a little easier & a package of subscription at lower price compared other available subscriptions.
8. Health conscious users doesn’t trust online food delivery apps they prefer making healthy food on their own.
9.Users don’t want to spend on subscription because whatever is being offered doesn’t interest them as for amount they are paying.
10.Some users order healthy food online when they are maintaining a diet, (‘which is rare’ as quoted by one of the user).
11.Mostly ordered food type by this group of users are fast food and main course.
12.User prefer using apps that they are familier to.
All the behavioural insight from secondary data validated with the insights of data collected during primary research!
User sets
Based on relative insight I created two user sets The Conscious One & The Care Free Bird.
Understanding What Users Say, Think, Do & Feel
Our users cannot always express their true emotions while communicating, What they say could totally be different from what they think, do or what they feel, as a designer/researcher its our job to find out all these aspects of a conversation.
lets talk Empathy mapping 🧠🫀
My Target (Persona)
Persona represent set of users, purpose of a persona is to have a more realistic representation of data, which can be remembered easily while referring to during the design process.
“How’s” And The “Might’s”
This is when I started thinking about, how might I solve for the challenge(s) faced by my users.
I created HMW questions for the challenges faced and come up with a possible solution for each of them.
let’s have a look at How Might We 🤔?
1.When analysing data I found that before placing a order users look for great deals they also compare multiple deals offered by different platform while buying a subscription which hence means deals attracts users.
How might we provide our users with great deals.
2.Primary research data says that users purchase those subscriptions that they think are value for their money.
How might we provide a value for money experience to our users.
3.Our users goal is to have a quick and easy experience while using any app.
How might we provide a quick & easy experience to our users?
4.Worrying about ending up paying a higher amount while placing an order is annoying for users.
How might we provide an experience that gives our users relief from worrying about the amount they are paying.
5.Users feel frustrated when they are not able to find all content in a single subscription.
How might we provide a wide range of food options for our users?
6.Users feel frustrated when they have to check multiple apps to find the better price offering.
How might we save our user’s time that is taken for comparing prices on different platforms?
7.During the interview a user said though she has multiple apps serving the similar purpose, but she goes for the one she feels used to, because she has used it for a long period of time and it looks familiar.
How might we provide a familiar experience to our users?
Ideas I Could Think Of
As a first step of my Ideation stage I wrote down all the possible solution I came up with, without thinking whether these are achievable.
1.How might we provide our users with great deals?
- Giving them combo offer
- Giving extra discount
- Giving them free items/gifts
- Offering a price lesser than other platforms
- No delivery charges
2. How might we provide a value for money experience to our users?
- Less price more offering
- Quality products on the page
- Quick delivery
- No delivery fee
- Multiple benefit
- Offering that is different from other websites
3. How might we provide a quick & easy experience to our users?
- By making users familiar to our app
- A clean UI
- Quick actions for possible activities
- Providing an Option for scheduling orders
- Providing an Option for automated process
- Providing voice control ordering
- Providing option for ordering over text/call
- A virtual assistant whom they can ask to place their order
4. How might we provide an experience that gives our users relief from worrying about the amount they are paying.
- By providing them necessary details of the payment
- By providing them details about the food they are ordering
- Showing them memes to cheer them up.
- Making them believe whatever they are paying is worth it
5. How might we provide an entertaining experience to our users?
- Showing informative content on the app
- Showing funny content
- Showing short video content
6. How might we provide a wide range of food options for our users?
- By adding more options in the menu
- By adding more restaurants in the app
- By providing any food that user orders
7. How might we save our user’s time that is taken for comparing prices on different platforms?
- By assuring them that our price is the best offering
- By showing them comparison of prices
8. How might we provide a familiar experience to our users?
- Making them use our app frequently
- Creating a experience similar to other competitor in the market
- Creating a experience similar to mostly used app by users
- Providing them the option to customise their experience of the app.
Observing Available Food App Experiences
Before deciding on ideas I went on to check experience offering across other similar platforms and here's what I observed:
Data Contradicting ideas
We go back to collected data throughout the process to get insight, empathise & verify.
After finalising few ideas, I verified them against the research data insight.
- Quick delivery.
- Multiple benefit.
- Giving them free items/gifts.
- By making users familiar to our app.
- A clean UI.
- Quick actions for possible activities.
- Showing them memes to cheer them up.
- Showing funny content.
- By adding more options in the menu.
- By assuring them that our price is the best offering.
- Making them use our app frequently.
- Creating an experience similar to other competitor in the market.
What I observed :
1.The ideas generated based on users pain points, most of them did not appeared competitive.
Verifying this further with data collected from users in the interviews I found
2.Users only purchase subscription if they feel its value for their money. User feels the subscription is value for their money if it comes with good content, content of their interest, a solution that helps in making life a little easier & a package of subscription at lower price compared other available subscriptions (data insight point 7).
3.User does multiple comparison while placing orders and also while purchasing a subscription (says empathy map for Care Free Bird & pointers collected in interviews). which means there is higher chances for users to know what all other platforms are offering.
At this Point I felt very indecisive about what to do next, if I should do more research to understand whether the Subscription is the required solution
or if I should proceed with my solution and do the usability testing and find users reaction and behaviour for this experience.
Improvised Plan Of Actions
1. Ideate again
2. Certain level of secondary research (if required)
3. Wireframing & Prototyping
4. Usability testing
5. Feedback incorporation
New Ideas
I brainstormed again to make my ideas better, I added some new ideas to the list along with the ones I filtered earlier.
1.How might we provide our users with great deals?
- By allowing them to Bargain for the items they think are priced lesser on other platform.
2. How might we provide a value for money experience to our users?
- By allowing them to Bargain for the items they think are priced lesser on other platform.
3. How might we provide a quick & easy experience to our users?
- By providing an easy decision making interface.
4. How might we provide an experience that gives our users relief from worrying about the amount they are paying.
- Strong refund policy in case of bad quality
- Allowing them to taste the food by providing a food sample with their order and if they don’t like it they might return it.
5. How might we provide an entertaining experience to our users?
- Giving them option to watch funny content on the interface
- Giving an interface similar to what entertains them (in this case reels)
6. How might we provide a wide range of food options for our users?
- Letting users customise their complete food as per their taste.
7. How might we save our user’s time that is taken for comparing prices on different platforms?
- By keeping them engage on our platform
- By making them familiar to our platform (this will build trust)
- By providing an comparison solution on our interface
8. How might we provide a familiar experience to our users?
- Creating an experience similar to the apps users are using more frequently.
Final List of Ideas
I selected the solutions by prioritising users goal .
— 1.By providing them multiple benefit (Because user purchase subscriptions that provide them multiple benefits).
— 2.By providing a clean UI (for easy dicision making).
— 3.Allowing them to bargain for the items they think are priced lesser on other platform(s) (because users love bargaining and also it will keep users from leaving the app in case they find a food priced lesser on other app).
— 4.By providing free food items/gifts. (from all the data we can see, users love free food)
— 5.Giving an interface similar to what entertains them (in this case reels, this will increase user engagement which in other words can also mean this will attract more users).
— 6. Making them familiar to our platform (this will build trust, because user trust the platform that they use more often).
I still wasn’t much sure about whether these would work for my users but considering the time I decided to move with these for now till testing.
Observing available Video feature
For more engagement and a solution to help users decide what to order, I observed reel & similar feature on different platform (because reel is something users interacts with often).
Paper Sketch
I filtered the ideas by prioritising users needs, frustration and goal.
below are the rough sketch for some of the ideas
Low Fidelity
After putting my ideas on paper I moved to create screens digitally on Figma, these low fidelity screens helped me to get a better clarity of how these ideas would look visually.
I selected PizzaHut as my base app, what it means is I’ll be using most of its base UX to introduce my solution.
Reminder : This is to clarify that this project is based on a hypothetical problem statement and I in no way claim to be associated with Pizza Hut. Pizza hut is used just for its base UX and the solution being provided is not intended to solve any problem related to & for PizzaHut.
High Fidelity
After having my ideas roughly designed on the low fidelity screens I finally started to create my solutions in high fidelity.
for the high fidelity I kept referring to my observations of other apps (mentioned above) and also the existing interactions of PizzaHut App.
Below are my high-fidelity designs.
Willing To Improve
During My testing phase I got mixed reviews but most of them were not positive for a subscription.
Task given to users
I shared the Hi-Fi prototype links with my user and asked them to share their screen,
then I asked to perform few task related to the solution and asked them to think out loud. Some of those task are :
Try placing an order as you normally would do.
Try using this feature named “free food”.
Could you try the “ pizza play” feature.
while users performed these task — I was observing how easily they are able to use these interactions, where they feel confused, what options/feature they are not able to notice, if they are proceeding with the flow as per the intention with wich it was designed and more.
Observations & Feedbacks
- Free food feature is not understandable for users, users are not able to understand how things work around it, like
why they are being awarded these coins,
How they can collect these coins. - I was able to observe that on every screen, to go back users would look for a back button despite of having a navigation bar.
- When exploring “Bargain” feature user’s reaction by the end result was not satisfactory . By facilitating the conversation I got to know that “bargain” gives them this idea that — they have a say on what price they want(pure negotiation).
- A user mention even though “Bargain” looks like a lot of work but he would still use it because “why loose some extra discount”.
- I observed that feature of the base app (which I added just for rich visual looks) were confusing users because they thought these were part of my solution.
- Users said they would not purchase a subscription that comes with only these benefit, since there are no benefits like free delivery or discount coupons, they would rather buy another food subscription that gives them more coupon benefits and discount on delivery.
Improved Experience
Observation and feedback from testing really helped me improve my design and now I feel much confident about my solution. User testing is a saviour.
Click Here to check final prototype.
Key Learnings
This is my very first “Research Based work” and I have learned a lot of Do’s and very important Don’ts
(For example — never skip understanding WHY the buisness is asking for a certain solution and whether this solution is even required or not).
Desk Research
- Keep source links handy, of every article, videos or any other content that is relatable to the problem statement and you are using the insights of.
Screening form
- Keep the form as short as possible, it is only for targeting users.
Primary Research
- Give some extra time and think about all possible scenario related to a single question for interview, while designing them.
Wireframing
- Understand your client and their problem in the early stage, this will help in identifying whether a certain solution is required.
- There is no end for research it can go as deep as we want, to know when to stop is by knowing within how much time we need to produce output.
Hi-Fi Prototype
- we do not need to wait for the high fidelity prototype to start usability testing.
If you have read it, I would love to know some feedback & few claps on this article would definitely make me smile.
~~😁💛~~
you can find me on Linkdin as Sana Zafeer 🍃
