Project Overview
The first 2 weeks of my UX Design course were treated as a boot camp to know more about design fundamentals, how to conduct user research, do rapid prototyping, learn about visual identity and create mockups. To apply all this knowledge, I was placed in a group of 5 people and we were given the task to develop a food delivery app from start to finish.
Roles & responsibilities
For this project, everyone in the team acted as a UX designer and researcher, so we collaborated on the creation of the app, as well as the final case study presentation. Given that we only had 2 weeks to work on this project, I also decided to take the initiative to help schedule team meetings, and assist my team to stay on track by setting realistic internal deadlines. This was a crucial thing to do given that we were all in different time zones.
Initial Research
We received a client brief containing:
- Name of the brand
- Targeted demographic
- Color palettes
- Typography
- Environmental impact
- Type of food and restaurants
From this, we were able to do some competitor research. We conducted several usability tests with our control app– ChowNow.
In order to deep dive into the app and its shortcomings, we asked people in our target demographic (college students) to test out ChowNow and its features.
We chose this app because we wanted to analyze products outside of the leaders in food delivery apps, in order to find pain points that hadn’t been worked out and find ways to improve on these pain points.
Once we narrowed down some of these pain points, we moved onto creating the user persona, its journey and brainstorming the main concepts for the app.
- User Persona
Veera is a 21-year-old culinary student who is used to busy schedules, working hard, and wanting to try or make new foods.
Task goals
- Get some fresh food/ingredients
- Be able to order a quick bite or snack
Experience Goals
- Easy to navigate
- Good communication and transparency
Pain points
- Technology
- Bad with technology - gets frustrated when things get too complicated
- Waiting time
- Not many late-night options
- Messed up order
- No car or close food options
- User Journey Map
To better understand how the user journey would go, we decided to also look into their possible feelings, their actions, and possible opportunities to improve.
Once the template was complete, I decided that as a group we would summarize our findings from this user journey and the usability testing we did with the competitor apps in 3 key areas:
- Insights in yellow
- Pain points in red
- Opportunities in blue
- Brainstorming
This is one of my favorite parts of the design process. I think of them as my SFDs (shitty first drafts as per the work of Brené Brown). You always have to start somewhere, so you might as well start with a first draft.
During the course, I was challenged to do the "crazy 8's", shown in the picture above, basically 8 minutes to draw 8 frames (1min per frame) about possible pages or features that could be included in the app.
I told my team we should use this as a way to explore new, crazy, and maybe impossible ideas. We all posted our work on our Miro board and gave each other feedback. It was challenging to think on the spot but good to get my "creative juices" flowing as my past art teacher would say.
Even though we were given an initial client brief, and we were well into our wireframes with a concept in mind, the client decided to change the color palette and typography upon revising our first ideas.
Then, when we gave a short update to our class about our project, our instructor mentioned that the name of the app might not be well received in South Africa (where the in-person students were taking the course), as it referenced a different business that dealt with women's nudity.
We called an emergency meeting with the team. I told my team we did not have enough time to start from scratch and that some of the work could still be salvaged. I told them we just needed to think again as a group on app names, color palettes, and typography, but stick to our main concept of interactivity and community.
We started a brainstorming session, and I suggested what it's now known as "BusyBee". The inspiration came from thinking about our user persona, always with busy schedules and working non-stop. The name would clearly reflect that, but it would take a positive and upbeat attitude.
We wanted a product that played into what the younger generations frequently use and consume - social media.
- InteractivityTaking inspiration from Tinder, the app would allow include a randomizer feature. Helping indecisive users or just anyone who wants to have fun swiping left and right to discover a new restaurant.
- Sense of CommunityInspired by all social media out there, the app would have a friend feed. Using this feature, the user will be able to see recent activity from friends they add to their profile. They can see the restaurants they liked or comments they made about the food, or photos of what they ordered, with the option to show/hide their activity to protect their privacy.
- Boost engagement and happinessMaking the app more customizable, like having a profile page where users can save their favorite food/restaurants, check promos, gain points and interact with friends, makes ordering food can be fun and enjoyable while remaining transparent and easy to use.
