Swiggy Group Order
Solving for when you have to order for a group of friends and food choices that do not match.
Swiggy Food Delivery App
Swiggy has been a savior in the food delivery space in India and a personal favorite of mine. The idea of seamless food delivery was first introduced to me in my college days by Swiggy, and since then the app has only made the experience better and better. As a regular user of Swiggy, I have ordered numerous times from a restaurant and have eagerly waited for my food to reach the doorstep. The real struggle begins when I have to order for a group of friends and food choices that do not match.
Design Prompt
The design prompt given was to introduce a Group Order feature in Swiggy, which will help users order when hosting a party — maybe a Friday night chill?
👉 I am not associated with Swiggy Design in any way. This was a concept project.
LET’S DIVE IN
Let’s start by doing a little brainstorming about the idea of group orders and researching around it. The initial thoughts that came into my mind were
- Do all users face this problem?
- How frequently does a user need to order for a group?
- How do they feel when they have to order multiple orders one for different people in a group?
- Multiple order accounts for multiple payment checkouts, what is their view around that?
RESEARCH PHASE
In order to get the answers to some of the above-stated questions, and validate the issues to be solved, I spoke to 5 people who regular users of Swiggy. I tried to validate some of my thoughts that I assumed before and got the issues that the users faced when tried to order for people in groups.
Some pain points which was newly found in the research was:
- The problem with the coupon is a huge issue
- Spending more than the budget is annoying for a host
After the insights from the above research, adding a “Group Order” feature seems fairly logical and will help users place orders with a less hectic approach.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEMS BETTER
To understand the exact problems and pain points, we have to get into the users’ shoes. To do that I tried understanding around the scenario of a Swiggy user when ordering multiple orders for the group.
Scenario:
Swati, a young professional wants to host a party at her place at the weekend. She wants to keep everything sorted — the decoration, drinks, and dinner. She thought of ordering food prior to the party so they can engage more in talking and less in arranging these things. But she does not know what to order, as everyone might have different food choices, so she decides to order after the guests arrive asking their food choices. She thought as it is a small group of people, it won’t take a lot from their quality time.
But, she found the whole process to be more chaotic from what she expected, even though there was a small group, the overall mood of the party went for a toss rather then people enjoying. So some of the key pain points were:
Key Pain Points
- The whole experience is overly unorganized and chaotic
- Swiggy is catered to the needs of an individual only until now
- Usage of other apps to communicate before and after ordering food
- The host spends more money than expected
- Some people do not have choices, takes time for the host to decide for them
- Irritated by the coupon criteria
THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
How can we make multiple simultaneous food ordering experiences concise and seamless, to cut down the chaos and inconvenience faced by both the host and the invitee side?
Hence, the initial idea of introducing a feature “Groups” seems valid now, considering based on the research done.
IDEATION
In the above process, I tried to understand the specific problems of the users that they are facing. In this step, I started brainstorming and tried filling the gaps between the app and the user which will make the experience seamless as a whole.
Brainstorming of Ideas
I started with the brainstorming of the most important functions the feature needs to have. It gave me clarity on what are the main problems the users are facing as an overall experience and roughly how can that be solved.
Introducing “Swiggy Groups”
Assumptions
Some assumptions I had to take to start designing the flow:
- “Adding Friends to the Group” — I assumed that users will be able to connect with their friends through social media or by allowing access to their phone contacts.
- “Internet Connection and Swiggy app” — I assumed all the users will have an internet connection and Swiggy app to enable participation.
- “Coupon Criteria” — coupon criteria available in Swiggy(used once in 2 hours) for an individual order can be made applicable too for a group order(used once in 2 hours for one group order).
- “Delivery charges” — Delivery charges to be added as a whole and split equally from each person’s budget limit.
1) Creating a group order(by Host)
The host does all the main decisions in the group — like adding members, updating the location to deliver, payment, etc. The flow has to start with the host performing tasks within the Swiggy app.
Food orders can be broken down in two ways :
a) Single restaurant
This will allow invitees to order from a particular restaurant decided by the host.
Issues solving
- Faster delivery
- Little freedom to the user to choose what they want
Cons
- Limited options
- Different food and cuisine choices
- The invitee may feel undervalued
b) From multiple restaurants
Allows all the invitees to choose between multiple food options and multiple restaurants. So the invitees can order their choice of food from multiple restaurants, here the delivery will be individual for all orders.
Issues Solving
- Invitees are given a wide range of choice
- Menu not limited to one restaurant
- The happier mood of the guests and delivers will be prioritized separately
Cons
- A wide variety of options may lead to delay of choosing an item for an invitee
- More number of deliveries, hassle to receive so many deliveries
- Separate delivery fees for all the orders
Limitations to Consider
Looking at the above points, some limitations had to be added so as to make the overall experience seamless.
- Even if it’s group orders, the app will only allow ordering from a maximum of 3 restaurants at a time for the group(the host can choose the restaurant prior to the app). This will solve the problem of receiving deliveries and also save unnecessary delivery fees
- The invitees will have a time limit of 20 mins to add their choice of item.
- After that limit, the only person who can modify — add or delete from the final order would be the host.
👉 I found that in making a group order feature to be a success, the second method of order can be considered more valid. After all, most people do not have similar food choices.
Proposed “Group Order” Full Flow
Options to Focus
Schedule order — Swiggy does not have order scheduling yet but could be introduced in the case of groups, as it will decrease the in-party chaos.
Set Budget or Don’t — This totally depends on the host, if they want to set a budget or not for the invitees
Free to choose — Invitees are free to choose between ordering or declining the host’s request. In this case, if someone declines, the apps notify the host to confirm between:
- Dividing the amount among all
- Remove the amount from the main budget
Create a Request — Flow by the Host
Place an Order — Flow by Invitee
2.) Accepting/Declining and Ordering Flow (By Invitee)
As mentioned above Invitees are free to choose between ordering or declining the host’s request. In this case, if someone declines, the apps notify the host to confirm. Below shown is the flow of it:
Limitations to consider here:
Even if the invitees are free to choose what they want, they can only choose from three restaurants max. chosen by the host.
Final Payment by the Host
The host has the authority to edit the order, add or delete items. Once all members have placed the order, the host can go ahead and pay for the order and place the order.
Situations Possible
1) The total order for less money than the allocated Budget
As we saw the host is the final decider of what to order, the person can add more items or ignore the budget and go ahead to pay for the order.
2) Solving the Coupons issue
The coupon will be applied to the order amount as a whole. The assumption we had taken before is to keep the criteria, to apply the coupon once in 2 hours for group order also.
Conclusion
Next, is the testing and the iteration part, where users will be given tasks to complete in the app and their actions and views will be observed. Due to the short duration of the task, I could not do that yet. But it takes multiple iterations to get a product people’s favorite. The initial pencil sketches were the base of my design, due to the short time I could not make all the mid-fidelity wireframes.
