Imagine all of your friends gathered to watch the Champions League final. All of you were dreaming of this moment since the start of the campaign. The beers are already in place; frozen and ready to accompany the main course, the souvlakia. You’ve already placed the order via efood to be there on time. And while everybody is starting to wonder where is the holy grail of gastronomy, your mum who lives on the other side of town, calls you and says: “Did you order a dozen of souvlakia? Because there is a delivery guy here that says so.” Everything is ruined; the dream collapses and you’re left with beers and pretzel sticks. Disaster. But who is to blame?
Goal
Entering or having selected the correct delivery address when ordering something online is one of the most crucial aspects that could make or break the entire experience. Even if the in-app overall experience is sublime, if the food or goods isn’t delivered at the correct place, the output is going to be evaluated badly. In other words, the customer’s dissatisfaction and annoyance will be huge. That’s why we want to make sure that the efood user is completely confident and sure that the delivery address is correct. So, we want to help him minimize any slips a.k.a the unconscious errors that are associated with the delivery address, while simultaneously providing him a fast and intuitive experience without many interruptions. This goal relates also to the Error prevention usability heuristic, one of the most important for a great user experience.
Users
We want to design the optimal experience both for those users who are familiar with the efood mobile app (registered users) and have already saved some delivery addresses in their account (approximately 2), and for those who will use the app for the first time (non-registered users) and apparently haven’t any saved addresses.
User goals
Registered users
Confirm that the delivery address is correct
Input a new delivery address
Search for the desired category and delivery location at the same time
Select a store according to the selected delivery address
Pick what he wants from the store
Place an order without any errors
Non registered users
Input his first delivery address
Check that the delivery address is correct
Confirm that the delivery address is correct
Select a store according to the selected delivery address
Pick what he wants from the store
Place order without any errors
User’s context
The “Where”
If it’s not clear already from what I’ve said, the user’s physical location doesn’t always coincide with the preferred delivery location. There are cases in which the user wants to order something and have it delivered to a different location. From my experience and from discussions I had with friends that use efood I ended up with the 4 most probable user locations:
Home
Friend’s Home — Other’s home
Work — Office
Commute — Outside
Correlation between user’s location and delivery location
Home = Most probable home
Friend’s Home — Other home = Most probable same but also high probability for home
Work — Office = Most probable office, or at home if perhaps supermarket
Commute — Outside = Home, Office, Other
For the first time, non-registered users I assume that the most probable scenarios are either the first or the second, without a mismatch between their location and the delivery location.
We should also take into consideration that a user might want to take away something that isn’t nearby his current location. So, by showing him shops that are nearby specific saved locations we don’t help him achieve his goal.
Example user story:
When I’m about to leave work,
I want to place a food order from a shop that is somewhere on my way home,
so that I can take it away as I return.
The “When”
An important factor for a possible slip is for sure the mental state of the user and his level of stress and concentration all of which are heavily impacted by the situation he’s into. So let’s associate also the possible user locations with the amount of anxiety and distraction they probably face.
Home = Calm — Low-stress environment
Friend’s Home — Other home = Noisy environment — Social pressure — Anxiety to handle the order correctly — Mid-stress environment
Work — Office = Time pressure — High-stress environment
Commute — Outside = Limited attention span — High-stress environment especially when commuting
If we combine the above associations we come up into the table below
Thus, the highest possibility of a slip exists when the user is either at one of his friends’ homes or when he’s outside or commuting. That’s why we need to pay special attention to these scenarios.
Let’s not also forget that if the user wants to order something for takeaway, then his current location may have to be overridden.
User Pain Points
When I order for many people I feel social pressure that translates into increased anxiety during the ordering process.
Because the delivery location is predefined, I sometimes come across some unfamiliar shops that I can’t recognize.
Some shops deliver to many nearby towns. So if the shop seems familiar with the location I intend the order to be delivered, I may not notice that the delivery location is wrong. That is, because via shops users may subconsciously confirm that the delivery location is correct.
When the user wants to take away something, he doesn’t want to see only shops that are nearby his current location.
If a user has multiple delivery addresses saved in his profile he can’t easily browse through them and pick the desired one.
If the delivery address is very long (which is often the case in Greece), it isn’t displayed properly on the home screen which harms the visibility of the system status.
Some users prefer to begin their journey by searching. But because they haven’t confirmed the delivery location they have a hard time finding the store they want.
Non-registered user specific
Some of them won’t be very familiar with digital products and services.
They feel insecurity (especially the older ones) when they don’t feel a human presence handling their requests.
They want to make sure that the delivery address they input is correct.
Part 2— Define
In conclusion from what we’ve seen above, the user’s journey may differ and we can’t always assume that his current location is the intended delivery location (or near it). So, we have to always keep in mind that those two might be completely different. On the other hand, we shouldn’t drop entirely the current implementation which auto defines the delivery location based on the user’s GPS data. Thus we should introduce a more sophisticated solution that doesn’t behave the same way every time.
For non-registered users we should make sure that they input the correct delivery address and that they also perceive it as the delivery address and not their current location. Also, we should deliver them a more personalized experience that resembles the real one in order to trust more the product.
Part 3 — Ideation
Firstly we could introduce a tag system for the delivery locations which will include: a. Home, b. Work-Office, c. Other
The delivery location won’t be preselected by default every time but only in two cases. When the user is near his home address, the “Home” tag will be applied automatically. The same will happen when the user is near his work address (The “office — work will be applied automatically). The reason for this choice comes from the analysis presented above. Because these two locations are the most frequent and have the smallest possibility for a slip, it would be nice for the user to have a frictionless experience considering that there isn’t so much risk of an error.
For the other two possible user locations (Outside — Other’s home) the delivery location could not be applied automatically but the user will have to perform an action and select the preferred delivery location.
We could introduce micro-copies that help the user understand the distinction between his current location and the delivery location.
Takeaway as a different option that the user can select before entering the shoplist. He should first choose that he wants to takeaway and then define the delivery location.
The delivery location should be more prominent on the home screen and rank higher in the visual hierarchy in order to create a match between the system and the real world. When you order by phone the first thing that is confirmed is the delivery address, so the user has already created this mental model.
When the user begins his journey from the search bar he should also have the option to enter the delivery address from there, as the search results will be wrong if the delivery address isn’t defined well in advance.
As for the non registered users, we could add the “Home” tag at their first delivery address, assuming that it will be the first address he will input. Also, we should let him move the address pin on the map to pinpoint the exact position.
In order for the non-registered user to make sure that the delivery address is correct we could also indicate the most popular shops in this location to identify them and be sure about his input.
Categorization of the delivery addresses that are under the common tag “Other” and also an indication for those that are inactive for long periods of time.
