The Challenge Ahead

Delivery Hero, a leading multinational online food ordering and delivery platform, sought to enhance its mobile ordering experience for customers in 45 countries. As a Senior Product Designer within the global team, I was entrusted with the responsibility of providing user-centric solutions, conducting user research, and translating feedback into actionable design improvements. The challenge was significant, as we needed to create a mobile app that would compete effectively with users’ manual order processing while ensuring an efficient and rewarding digital flow.

Unveiling the Obstacles: Understanding User Context

The design process began by acknowledging that the environment in which our product would function was ever-changing, with users often juggling manual and digital workflows. Prioritization of the backlog was crucial to address users’ most urgent needs. We focused solely on features related to the end-to-end order process and aimed to minimize the level of interaction required from users.

As we delved deeper into user research, we realized that observing users in their work environments was paramount to understanding their challenges with the app. Moreover, we learned the importance of preparing all parties involved in a rollout process for design changes, including customer support, operations, and, most importantly, the final users.

Iterative Insights: Learning from User Devices

User testing provided valuable insights, but we encountered a discrepancy between results from controlled environments and real-life usage. We discovered that users’ devices and their daily interaction with the apps influenced the overall experience.

Understanding the holistic user experience became our mantra for future improvements, as we grasped the significance of focusing not just on how but where and when users interacted with the app.

Collaboration as a Driving Force

Interaction with various team members, including developers, product operations, customer service and product managers, played a pivotal role in the project’s success.

For example, our collaborative effort to build a robust design system was instrumental at Delivery Hero. It exemplified the power of aligning design and development, fostering consistency, and boosting productivity.

This collaboration included defining clear style guides, naming convention and repositories, carefully selected tools such as Zeppelin and Storybook and comprehensive documentation.

Transparency and ownership became the guiding principles in embedding the design workflow within existing agile approaches and promoting the use of user research information to make informed decisions.