UberEats - Feast Your Eyes
Enhancing restaurant visibility whilst enabling users to make quicker and more diverse food choices by letting the food do the talking
This redesign uses the app's algorithm and AI to recommend tasty food picks, because who wants to make decisions when they're hangry anyway?
My role: UX Designer and UX Researcher
Timeline: 2 weeks
Methods: Market Research, User Interviews, Customer Journey Mapping, Preference Testing, Sketching and Wireframing
The problem
UberEats is one of the most popular food delivery apps in the UK with a market share of 27% (Edison Trends, 2021). The app already has a clean and accessible design, however there are pain points which this project seeks to improve.
- For merchants, cost-effective customer reach
- For customers, a long decision-making process
Merchants find current customer reach tools unaffordable for most restaurants
Restaurants currently improve customer reach within the UberEats app by:
- Paying UberEats for profile-boosting services/ad spend
- Offering their own price promotions to be featured
Most restaurants cannot afford this: more than 60% of merchants on UberEats are SMEs (Uber Eats Merchant Impact Report, 2023), and running an independent restaurant isn't easy. Two-thirds of restaurants fail within the first five years and low profit margins and high running costs contribute to the challenge (The Impact of UberEats in the UK Report, 2023).
With the UberEats platform being so saturated, merchants are having to compete with each other to gain visibility through promotions and sponsored ads. This in turn leads to customers choosing restaurants with the best offers or restaurants they have ordered from before, limiting the opportunity to try new restaurants and cuisines.
Users find exploring food options via the existing process time consuming and overwhelming
The current decision-making process requires users to sift through exhaustive lists of restaurants and delve into each menu to compare items and decide. This process not only proves time-consuming but can also become overwhelming due to the abundance of choices. This often leads to users choosing restaurants they've ordered from before.
The Solution
An explore page where the spotlight is on menu items, and a Collections feature to easily access your favourites
Without the physical restaurant experience, customers ultimately care most about whether their food tastes good and is as pictured/described when delivered.
Discover new eats and order straight from the menu
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Choose order through exploring menu items
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Recommendations are based on time of day, order history and preferences using AI
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Better placement and more exposure for merchant stories
A bigger space to display menu items and an option for video uploads
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Reducing decsion-making time with a clearer view of menu items
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Introducing a video upload option for menu items to increase engagement and provide a way for restaurants to communicate with customers
Introducing Collections for easy access to favourite restaurants and menu items
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Personal categorisation through Collections
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Favourite specific items you've previously ordered or would like to try, speeding up the order process
Why should UberEats care about this?
There is a business need to attract and maintain merchant relationships and enhancing user engagement through streamlining the decision-making process and increasing order frequency.
In the wake of the pandemic and amidst current economic challenges, merchants are in need of support now more than ever.
And so,
How might we enhance UberEats customers' user experience by encouraging them to try new restaurants/cuisines and reducing their decision-making time, whilst improving restaurants' visibility to expand customer reach?
But first, how did I get there?
Understanding UberEats users
I sat down with 3 UberEats users to better understand:
Where do users currently go to choose their food orders?
An overview on the homepage
Restaurants and groceries are advertised on the homepage with the option to filter by food type/cuisine at the top of the page.
Choosing by category on the browse page
Results are divided into categories based on offers, ratings and cuisines with the top categories shown above the fold. The rest are shown in a long scroll.
Specific search in the search bar
Users can enter specific searches in the search bar available on the homepage and browse page.
Favourites list and order history
Users can go through their favourites list for saved restaurants and their order history to reorder from.
What's the customer journey and how are they feeling?
Based on user feedback, I created a customer journey map to uncover their decision-making process and customer needs. Using this information, I identified pain points and opportunities to enhance customer experience and boost customer retention.
Insights:
Understanding UberEats restaurants
I conducted market research through reading reports and social listening to better understand merchants' challenges and priorities. With economic uncertainty and high inflation, merchants' main priorities are to increase revenue, reach new customers and reduce overhead costs.
UberEats Merchant Impact Report, 2023
Given the current economic environment, many merchants do not have the ability to spend additional marketing/platform promotion costs, and some have found ways around this with 'deals' that are actually markups of the original price.
u/Zederex, Reddit
How do restaurants currently increase their visbility on the app?
Increasing traffic through sponsored ads
Ad campaigns improve restaurants' positions moving them much higher than where they might organically appear.
Bringing the menu to life
Clear and aesthetic images as well as accurate food descriptions to catch the customer's attention so they know exactly what they're ordering.
Good food, good value
Offer customers value for money through promotions on menu items, and provide a good customer experience by fulfilling orders on time as well as receiving good ratings/reviews.
Insights:
Ideation
Based on my goals to encourage new restaurant/cuisine exploration and enhance restaurant visibility, I explored solutions that address these challenges as well as benefits each stakeholder in the UberEats ecosystem.
My guiding principles:
Idea 1: "Get lucky" feature
Feeling lucky? 3 restaurants for customers to choose from, with food items already picked for you
The "Get lucky" feature is a fun and interactive solution for users to select when they're feeling indecisive and adventurous. Based on the time of day, user's order history and preferences, the app uses AI to suggest 3 restaurants with food items already picked for the user so they can easily add items to their basket without having to go through much decision-making. I initially had the idea of adding a questionnaire for this feature for more personalised results however I concluded that it would overcomplicate and prolong the process, taking away the element of surprise.
This feature:
Idea 2: Explore page, enhanced graphics and Collections
An explore page where the spotlight is on menu items, and a Collections feature to easily access your favourites
As the "Get lucky" feature only displays 3 results at a time, I developed a second solution that maximises restaurant visibility through their menu items. I transformed the browse page into an explore page that introduces a new way for customers to choose their food order. Without the physical restaurant experience, customers ultimately care most about whether their food tastes good and is as pictured/described when delivered.
Explore page iterations
An explore page is designed to facilitate discovery and enhance user engagement, it should also be where restaurants are able to have direct communication with customers. In some countries, UberEats already have a merchant stories feature on the homepage where restaurants can share updates and promotions. I decided to include this feature at the top of the explore page to increase visibility as it currently sits lower down the homepage of the app.
I developed iterations on the layout then conducted preference testing with my participants to evaluate which design delivers the best user experience and why.
0%
66%
33%
Results show that option B was the preferred design with 66% of the participants voting for it. Option B is designed to resemble the grid layout showcasing menu items in rows of three. Users found this layout refreshing and appreciated it for its simplicity and familiarity akin to popular social media platforms. Feedback highlighted the ease of browsing and engaging with menu items, emphasising that this design removed an extra step to expand categories, allowing users to access and browse more options directly.
Further development and iterations
Moving forward with option B, I developed more HiFi screens to expand on the user experience/journey while maintaining the UberEats aesthetics throughout the redesign. I introduced a video upload feature for restaurants so they can provide customers an immersive preview of menu items. Additionally, I expanded on the existing favourites feature to apply to menu items, empowering users to curate personalised Collections.
"I think the video feature is very helpful"
"What if I had more than 4 collections, am I supposed to scroll within the add to collections pop up? There isn't much space for that"
"The collections list looks a bit bare and the images could be bigger"
"I like how the favourites list gives a clear structure and layout"
A more seamless add to collections process
Moving the swipeable add to collections modal to the bottom to give option to expand if needed
Maximising screen space
Minimising the negative space and utilising all grid columns to show collections more effectively
How does this solution benefit each stakeholder?
This solution introduces a range of benefits tailored for each key stakeholder within the UberEats ecosystem. It also brings about shared advantages, encouraging increased order frequency, and enhanced customer trust and loyalty.
What have I learnt?
Aside from fighting the urge to grab a snack while I was inserting all the food photos, I had a really fun time working on this project and speaking with users and merchants! I developed a greater understanding of each UberEats stakeholder's needs/priorities, and creating a solution that could satisfy them all.
Initially I fought hard to design something more different to a typical explore page you'd see on social platforms such as Instagram, however after getting user feedback I realised that sometimes it's best to stick with what you know, this is in line with Jakob's Law as the grid layout is what users are familiar with and provides the most visibility and engagement.
Even though the interactive prototype wasn't live with real data/content and therefore impractical in terms of relevancy, user feedback was helpful to understand how the solution enhances user experience.
The next steps of this project would be to continue testing and refining as well as designing for desktop as I took a mobile-first approach.