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The Project
The Project
The product
Deep End Pizza is a brand new deep dish pizza place that offers pick-up and delivery on a wide range of pizzas. They offer several healthy options such as cauliflower crust or beyond beef meat alternative toppings. Project overview Project duration: Deep End Pizza is looking to have their app ready and deployed by the end of March 2022. Design work took place from October 2021 to February 2022.
The problem
Deep End Pizza is the new fish in town and wants an efficient, functional app to offer customers for placing orders through their mobile devices. Deep End Pizza intends to increase its market share by directly competing with all the other pizza places with mobile ordering apps and reaching the demographic that prefers ordering through mobile applications.
My Role
UX Designer on the Deep End Pizza mobile ordering application from conception to finalization. Project responsibilities included: initial user research, paper and digital wireframing, low and high fidelity prototyping, competitive auditing, conducting usability studies, accessibility design, and iterating on designs.
The User
The User
Initial Research
I conducted initial research to determine the most essential features for users to include in a food ordering app. Two main groups were identified as the primary users of this type of application. 22-36 year old people working nearby looking for a quick and affordable meal during their lunch break, and business people ordering food for larger groups. Secondary research shows that younger demographics order more pizza than others, so Deep End Pizza offers many healthy options to capture more of this demographic.
User Pain Points
Time
Most working adults don’t have time or simply do not meal plan.
Health
Adults, especially those aged 25-34, are more health conscious than other groups but still want to eat pizza.
Group Meals
Cooking food for larger groups can be very time consuming and requires planning.
Accessibility
Most applications do not offer alternate colour themes such as high-contrast or colourblind options.
Persona: Jake
Jake is a busy engineering student who needs healthier food options because he wants to have more energy and doesn’t have a lot of time to manage his health.
Age: 23
Education: High school diploma
Hometown: Edmonton, Canada
Family: 2 older brothers
Occupation: Student
Goals
To do better and choose healthier meal options.
Spend minimal time on food while deep in workload.
Minimize interaction with other people when ordering food.
Frustrations
The cost on some food delivery apps has hidden costs.
Heavy course load makes cooking difficult.
My orders are often incorrect.
Bio
Jake was born and has spent his entire life in Edmonton, Alberta with his two older brothers. Currently Jake is attending college to be a electrical engineer and finds it difficult to manage his school and part time work schedule. He often doesn’t feel like making food and relies on fast food or skip the dishes for many of his meals.
Persona: Aisha
Aisha is an elementary school teacher who needs a quicker way to order healthy food for lunch because her lunch meal plans often get disrupted by her large family.
Age: 35
Education: Masters Degree
Hometown: London, UK
Family: Married with 3 children
Occupation Teacher
Goals
Balance busy work life with family and community responsibilities.
To nurture and inspire each and every one of her students.
Have healthy options on food ordering apps.
Frustrations
Juggling meal plans with busy life.
Running out of leftovers for lunch after family eats it all.
Food apps can take too long to navigate.
Bio
Aisha has been teaching Math and English for 10 years and has loved almost every minute of it. She met her husband during her teaching practicum while he was doing his. They got married and had 3 children which are in the 7-10 age range. Managing her busy job while also raising 3 children leaves her with almost no free time so anything that saves time is more than welcome.
User Journey Map
Conducting Jake’s user journey map solidifies the importance of making a friendly UI that doesn’t overwhelm the user
Initial Design Process
Initial Design Process
Competitive Audit
While the project design underwent a significant redesign later, the competitive analysis results are still valid. The only main change is that Subway swaps from a direct competitor to an indirect one.
Paper Wireframes
Initial wireframes were done for a sandwich shop before the project pivoted and was rebuilt into a pizza place for various reasons. Some abstract UI options were initially theorized but were discarded due to potential user confusion.
Digital Wireframes
I developed the first digital wireframe based on several other food apps. Still, I found it too cluttered and messy, so it was scrapped. Much was learned from this endeavour, though.
This design conforms closely to what a user expects from a cart page. The ultimate goal was to reduce users' time making their food orders. Reducing unexpected elements/ actions is crucial to that goal.
Lo-fi Prototype
The low-fi prototype served its primary function of determining which elements worked and didn’t work when testing with users. Some additional visual elements were polished to reduce UI confusion and improve the overall experience.
Usability Study
Round 1 Findings
Users want to spend as little time as possible ordering food.
Users like having healthy options.
Users don’t like alternate icons (hamburger instead of cart icon).
Round 2 Findings
Users want the option to make an account to save/ track orders.
The visual design has mixed reviews.
The additional information section was too cluttered and doesn’t offer enough value to users.
Refining the Design
Refining the Design
Mockups Pre-Redesign
Mockups Users wanted the option to create an account so now the first screen is account based instead of the home screen.
Redesign
The visual design was vastly changed from a healthy sandwich shop to a nautical-themed deep dish pizza place that offers healthy alternatives. Overall, this pivot is surface-level. The UX research and principles can carry over from the original design. The primary driving factor for the redesign was simply that I was not happy with the quality and saw my dissatisfaction as an opportunity to make a change. The final high-fi prototype had a much cleaner UI, a more cohesive design, and offered minor “fun” details aimed to delight the user and make them come back for more.
Accessibility by Design
Accessibility by Design
High-contrast colour theme option offers those with visual impairments an easier time seeing menu items and action items.
Primary or higher traffic pages like the home screen, profile page, or settings have multiple methods of accessing to reduce confusion.
Most menu items are “floating” and can easily scale, move, or fit many screen sizes without any loss of user experience.
Going Forward
Going Forward
User Impact
“The submarines are so cute, I love them!” -A happy user
“This design looks way better than the previous one!” -Another content user
After reflection on the redesign, I stand by the decision to change from a sandwich shop to a pizza place. Obviously, in a real-world case, clients do not change their core business to have a nicer user experience on their mobile application. However, through the lens of a portfolio project showing one's best work is ideal,
Lessons learned: I learned how difficult it is to completely redo a UX project. It's not a matter of simply changing the visual design as the new design has to align with the prior research or the research has to be redone. This was my first major UX design project and I learned so much about making things easier for yourself if you do it properly in the beginning.
Next Steps
I would like to add more to some of the menus.
The settings menu links don’t actually go anywhere.
Add more screens after the order is complete such as order tracking and recent orders.
Finish the high contrast theme as well as a colour blind theme for accessibility.
Redesign the home screen slightly.
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