Dezone
Overview
This was a 4 month-long project where we created a mobile app to help streamline the ordering process for a home-based business serving Indian Muslim cuisine, Dezone. The team consisted of a UX writer, an engineer and myself. The product took 4 months to be ready for use.
The Problem
Dezone wanted to expand beyond their usual loyal customer base. The business grew in popularity during the Covid lockdown period, and the client saw an opportunity to reach more customers. However, they received feedback from the regulars and their staff that the order process was messy:
Dezone commonly took orders from Whatsapp and Instagram, which would make scaling the business difficult
Most of their advertising is done on social media, and their loyal customers have complained that it is inconvenient to have to constantly refer to Dezone’s social pages for the menu’s availability.
Looking at the landscape
As the client was keen on getting a solution as soon as possible to help with their growing orders, the team and I did not have the luxury of time to delve deep into research. Nevertheless, we wanted to explore the food ordering landscape to gain as many invaluable insights as we could before we started our product ideation.
We learnt that a modern and clean interface was popular within the food ordering community, and successful food ordering apps made their ‘add to cart’ function very accessible, and value added with extra functions like ‘making it a meal’.
User Research
Despite the tight timeline, we wanted to allocate as much time as we could to engage in user research. We had a couple of weeks to explore and research:
customers’ process of ordering a product through a home-based business
identify the pain points and possible improvements a home-based business could make
We started by interviewing 7 people that matched Dezone’s target audience profile.
We learnt a lot from our conversations with them! Here are some of our high level findings:
Most home-based business utilised social media to receive orders. It was common for customers to order via Instagram DMs or Whatsapp. While it wasn’t the ideal situation, due to it being a common practice, customers have come to expect it.
Lack of a consolidated platform can be frustrating for customers. Many of our interviewees voiced out that it was common for home-based business to advertise on different social media platforms. This made ordering and keeping up to date with the latest menu items difficult.
Uncertainty of stocks and delivery timing did little for customer confidence. To be able to clearly see if an item is available before ordering, and being able to select a preferred delivery timeslot would be ideal.
Compiling our answers into an affinity map to highlight key issues that were common amongst users
Empathy Building
With our user research data in hand, the team and I proceeded to create 2 user personas to ensure realistic representations of our key users. After some back and forth (we really wanted to get this right!), say hello to Terence and Liyana! 👋🏼
User Journey
With our user personas guiding us, the team and I charted out user journeys to have a visual representation of what our users go through during the home-based business ordering process.
Brainstorming on the product
After a couple of weeks of research, we now felt that we were ready to insightfully delve into conceptualising the end product. We started the process by mapping out an information architecture. This allowed us to identify the content needed in the product and its organisational hierarchy, which would give users a smooth user experience.
Due to our time limitations, we had a discussion with our engineer on the feasibility of completing certain functions of our mobile app. This led to long chat that resulted in a feature prioritisation matrix.
Low Fidelity Wireframes & Testing
We wanted to ensure that the designs we created provided a good user experience, so we decided to show our initial group of interviewees low fidelity wireframes. With just the blueprints, we hoped to remove as much bias as possible and have our interviewees focus on the product’s functions.
The response was overwhelmingly positive! Our interviewees found the app easy to use, and were excited that they could finally have a platform to order from.
It’s High Fi Time
Propelled by the positive response from our users, we dived right into designing the high fidelity wireframes.
Delivery was something that our users valued, so we ensured that it would easy for our users to view their addresses, add & delete addresses.
As food vouchers are loved by all, we also implemented them into our app after discussions with our client.
Results
Following the launch of the mobile app, Dezone saw:
117% increase in new customers over a month since release
Roughly 2.5x repeat orders from existing customers
