Case study: Group ordering

Problem Statement

An interesting data pattern at Swiggy suggests that people order food from multiple restaurants to be delivered at the same address. These are larger orders when compared to the ordering pattern of the user from that location. The team has come up with the hypothesis that these orders are made for parties & large gatherings. They are exploring a new feature which allows multiple people to add food to a single order using their own devices.

Few Things to Consider

1. There are two big differences from the current experience
   ○ Users can order from multiple restaurants at the same time
   ○ Multiple users can add food to a single order
2. Consider how the decisions taken would impact partner restaurants and delivery partners
3. Assume that a single delivery partner is delivering the orders
4. Assume that the delivery timelines of different restaurants would align and not be an issue

The Assignment

This was the design assignment given to me for a Product Design Internship in a Bangalore based startup.

Duration : 2 days

Tools : Figma

Research

In a research conducted on 129 respondents who use food delivery apps like Swiggy, Zomato, UberEats etc., For Swiggy the hierarchy of factors affecting the usage of app found were :

Green color shows data for Swiggy

1. Speed of Delivery
2. Quality of service which includes how fresh food is
3. Discounts and Money Saving
4. Payment Options
5. Minimum order criteria
6. Time Saving

In the same study it was found that the comfort in ordering and good condition of food acts as an important positive factors . While things like late deliveries and cold food can negatively affect the user experience.

According to new FSSAI India guidelines, there is change in non veg symbol from brown dot to brown triangle so as to ensure that it becomes easy for color blind people to notice the difference between veg and non veg through shapes.

I searched and found that currently Swiggy shows restaurants within 4–6 kms radius with average delivery time 35 mins.

Competitive Analysis

Dunzo Food Court allows user to add food from multiple restaurants to their cart.

Define

User Persona & Story

So keeping the situation of user in mind, I created User Stories :

1. As a party host , she has to order food of everyone’s choice , so that everyone is satisfied
2. As a party host, she wants to order food in one go so that it avoids hassle of paying again and again and she can enjoy the party
3. As a party host, she wants everyone to add food of their choice personally, so that no one is left
4. As a party host, she wants to have delivery of food all at once, so that she doesn’t have to receive orders from different delivery guys at different times thus disrupting her party enjoyment
5. As a party host, she wants to have timely delivery of food, so that invitees can do more dance and fun without being hungry
6. As a party host, she wants her food to be fresh, so that invitees can enjoy the food
7. As a considerate human, she wants everyone to order food according to what they can eat, so that food is less wasted
8. As a food lover, she wants to order Dal Sultani from Sultans of Spice and Tandoori Roti from Urban Tamasha.

Brainstorming

Swiggy shows restaurants in 4–6 kms distance range of your location. Now suppose two restaurants are at extreme points A and B. A delivery guy takes 5 mins to reach restaura nt, it takes 10 mins for restaurant to prepare order , then reaching from A to B (12kms) will take around 12mins(No traffic clear roads) , food is all prepared at restaurant B and delivery boy just takes order and heads towards home and reaches there in 6 minutes. Total time : 5+10+20+8 = 33 mins and that too in optimistic case and in actual world time taken will be much more.

The time taken will depend on :

1. From how many restaurants delivery guys has to pick up the order
2. Distance between the restaurants
3. Distance between the last restaurant and delivery location
4. and various other factors like traffic, vehicle speed etc.

Main focus is to reduce the time taken as it will affect the delivery speed, quality of food and also the far the restaurants are the more will be the delivery charges. Hence affecting the major factors found in research phase.

Limitations :
Brainstorming led me to impose limitations that are :

1. Multiple restaurants means up to 3 restaurants. User can have food from 3 restaurants at a time.
2. The distance circle needs to be shortened somewhere around 2–3 kms.
3. While using app I found out that Swiggy shows restaurants sometimes in range of 9–10kms with delivery time 75–80 mins hence strengthening my limitation of reducing the distance range

Task Flow

It helped me to get an understanding how user will travel through the content. Below is the rough task flow when user invites other users to add items in the cart or when user want to add items from multiple restaurant.

Information Architecture

After understanding the steps user will take to achieve a goal in task flow, I made architecture of the feature to get an understanding of how the content will be structured and presented to users while they will interact with the design.

Multiple people adding items to cart

Empty Cart

The state of cart when no item is added.

Restaurant Selection

Host according to their budget will select the restaurants from which invitees should add items. Host can only choose up to 3 restaurants hence limit 1 is imposed.

Share Cart Options

I assume that people invited to party would be acquainted to host.

Shared Cart-Empty State

This is the state when cart has been shared but no one has added anything yet

Shared Cart-Items added

When members have added items to the cart.

Cart Details

Host can remove or add the restaurants and members from the cart.

Flow

Invitee adding items to cart

Shared Cart-First Time User Experience

When the invitee for the first time visit the shared cart.

Invitee’s Home and Cart

A card is shown on Home and Cart of invitee so that they can have different touchpoints to add items in shared cart.

Flow

Single person adding food from multiple restaurants

Cart

On tapping the ‘Add food from multiple restaurant’ section, a list of restaurants will be shown based on the delivery location and already selected restaurant’s location.

Flow

Tracking of food from multiple restaurants

The time order is picked up from restaurant 1, timeline would be aligned in a way that restaurant 2 confirms the order and starts preparing up for it so that by the time delivery guy reaches restaurant 2 order is already prepared there hence eliminating or reducing waiting time at restaurant 2. Keeping that in mind I designed the tracking flow.

Retrospective

What can be improved?

With real team and business development interviews and surveys could have been conducted to understand more about user behavior and emotions. Due to time constraint I made the solution with user in focus without putting much focus on how to promote business. Usability testing could be done to understand if the feature is working as per the expectations in terms of simplicity and intuitions.

Thanks for your kind attention !

My name is Nikita. I try to mock product solutions of the real world problems.

If you have any feedback, suggestion, wants to collaborate or just want to say hello, I am available at :

hinikitarana@gmail.com

References

1. https://www.fssai.gov.in/upload/notifications/2020/12/5fd87c6a0f6adGazette_Notification_Labelling_Display_14_12_2020.pdf
2. https://www.amity.edu/gwalior/ajm/paper_5.pdf