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About the Project 🎯

I undertook this project while I was working for Zomato. Zomato, is India’s leading food delivery & discovery platform with over 70 million app downloads.

Context

Zomato being in the hospitality & food delivery business was heavily impacted by the pandemic, the food delivery GMV had hit its lowest point in two years. Consumers were scared of ordering food online due to fear of transmission of the widespread coronavirus.

Problem Statement

How might we create a safer food delivery experience for our consumers which will help restaurants generate revenue and also help sustain the business financially. This is the main problem what we
set out to solve for.

Contributors

Product Manager  +  Product Designer (Me)  +   Design Manager (Mainly for supervision & feedback)

Outcome ⭐️

  • This exponentially witnessed an increase of 110% of the pre-COVID GMV, which was a significant driver in the rebound of the business.

  • Seventy million orders were delivered in a year since the pandemic!

  • Inspired more restaurants to follow safety measures

  • Inspired more people to tip delivery riders to help them during these
    rough financial times.

I only want to see the final experience

The consequences of the pandemic 😷

It all began in early February when India started recording its first few cases of the dreadful disease. With the number of cases rising rapidly the country was put into lockdown.

Like every other business Zomato was heavily impacted, the food delivery GMV hit its lowest point in two years. I was part of the core team assigned to identify and solve problems to help sustain the business.

MAIN CHALLENGES TO SOLVE FOR

  • Global pandemic was causing little to no business in multiple cities

  • A lot of restaurants being forced to shut down.

  • High spike in user anxiety to order food online.

  • No business leading to 100,000+ delivery riders with zero earnings.

PROJECT STRATEGY

As covid had such a strong impact in such a short amount of time. we had to come up with a process which was fast and iterative. This process helped us ship product features much faster than our competitors

Understanding the change in user behaviour 👨 👩

One of the first most important steps we did was talk to users and everyone around us. What was crucial was understanding behavioural insights and changes post the breakout of the virus.

CONDUCTING USER INTERVIEWS

The Interviews were conducted via direct phone/video due to covid-19.

The total number of participants for the research were around 10.

The target audience were essentially users who order from our app.

The questions were mostly centred around how they currently felt about ordering food.

Behavioural insights FROM USERS

Scared of catching the virus through multiple points of contact.

More preference for sanitised and high budget restaurants.

Anxious to know what safety measures are being taken at restaurants.

Tired of cooking on a daily basis and want to indulge in outside food.

CREATING AN EMPATHY MAP

With this new change in behaviour we decided to create an empathy map to help us understand & have a depper understanding of our user’s behaviours and attitudes. This helped us keep a mental model in mind while creating design solutions.

Identifying touchpoints 🔍

Based on our research, we decided to find out how our users feel through each phase of the ordering process. We identified key touchpoints where we can intervene and reduce the user’s anxiety levels.

How we made food delivery safe for India ✨

DECISIONS WE TOOK ON GROUND TO ENSURE A SAFER EXPERIENCE

We took some hard calls to enforce safety in our delivery system, We ensured to cover all stakeholders in the user journey and thus reduced the chances of a person catching the virus.

CONDUCTING DELIVERY Rider safety checks & training

We trained our riders and advised them to wear masks.

Riders were made to sanitize their hands at the restaurants before pickup.

We conducted daily temperature checks and trained our riders on personal hygiene so that your order is deliverd to you safely.

Restaurants following WHO advisory on safety practices

Kitchen staff are trained to follow all sanitisation protocols

Restaurants are Hygiene rated by expert third party auditors.

Kitchens of restaurants are sanitised every few hours, daily temperature checks, all staff wear masks to ensure food is cooked safely.

ENFORCING CONTACTLESS DELIVERY

The rider will leave order on the clean surface and will send a photo.

You receive a photo of your order and can pick up at your own convenience

The delivery rider will leave the package outside their home, ensuring no human-to-human interaction and hence lowering risk of any transmission.

👉  INTERESTING STORY

How did we teach delivery riders to deliver contact-less orders ?

  • Due to the pandemic there was no way we could conduct physical training for delivery riders. Hence we created and animated a video which would help them understand how to deliver contactless orders

  • This was also dubbed in different languages to help riders from different parts of the country understand it completely.

The new experience on the app ⚡️

VISIBILITY OF SAFETY MEASURES ON THE HOMEPAGE

To ensure maximum visibility of the safety measures we were taking we decided to show these cards upfront on the homepage, We decided to create mini snippet cards which quickly convey the measures we are taking. Tapping on a specfic card would take you to a detailed page of that safety measure

HOME PAGE DESIGN

SAFETY MEASURES INFORMATION SCREENS

Each of these opened up a detailed page explaining the specific safety measure. Again we used illustrations and icons to convey it beautifully. This instilled trust in our users.

Creating a visual language for easier communication

Colors, shapes, visual elements were carefully considered and designed to help communicate information much easier. We used cool colours like blue, teal and green to instill trust in our users and make them feel safe.

I also spent time in creating Illustrations which could be used by the team in the future in the app or for any marketing collateral. They were designed to be friendly and positive

HELPING PEOPLE DISCOVER RESTAURANTS WHICH FOLLOW SAFETY MEASURES

Post Pandemic, Users are very selective about choosing a restaurant to order from. They are extremely worried about the safety measures being followed at the restaurant. We then decided to bucket all these safety measures into one tag Safety MAX.

HELPING PEOPLE DISCOVER RESTAURANTS WHICH FOLLOW SAFETY MEASURES

INTRODUCING CONTACTLESS DELIVERY

Contactless delivery at the time was a concept which was getting implemented in countries where the pandemic had
already shown it’s wrath. None of the big players at the time had implemented contactless delivery in India. Contactless delivery will get your order delivered outside your door with zero contact ensuring no human-human interaction.

👉  INTERESTING STORY

Redesigning the Rider Icon

As a gesture of respect, we also wanted to celebrate our riders for risking their lives for us on the frontline.
At Zomato, our riders are our superheroes. They're on the line getting people the food they need. We wanted to empower and support these heroes 💪, Introducing Super Z ⚡our
new rider mascot!

ELIMINATING USER ANXIETY WITH LIVE UPDATES

Users still felt anxiety with their particular order. We wanted to solve this problem by giving them live updates of their order. The post-ordering experience solved calming user anxiety by displaying the rider's temperature and notifying the user when the rider would wash his/her hands.

Encouraging people to tip and help delivery riders

In a bid to aid and support its delivery partners, most of whom are dependent on daily wages due to the contractual nature of their work, we added a section on the order tracking screen. By using visual illustrations and copy we tried to connect with people to persuade them to help our frontline warriors.

THE OUTCOME 🏆

The response we received on social media was ASTONISHING!
From bollywood celebrities like Raveena Tandon, Dolly Singh, Andre Borges from Buzzfeed, everyone was pouring out love for the experience we created during the toughest times! My work was also covered by lot of media online!

Learnings and Future Improvements

EMPATHIZING WITH THE USER HELPS YOU SOLVE PROBLEMS

Through empathy, we are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes and connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance, or situation. By creating a mental model of the user, it helped me create solutions which were more suited for the target audience.

PEOPLE DON’T READ

People like to scan, using visuals and videos can help communicate messages and information far better than text

USE USABILIITY TESTING TO TEST FUTURE ITERATIONS

Furthermore, as additional data and real-world problems are discovered and analysed, we continued to alter and improve the entire design to keep our consumers informed in the best way possible!

I want to say a big thank you to the entire team at zomato for executing this project with sheer brilliance, the brilliant product managers and engineers which worked day and night to ship these features extremely quick. And, of course, my product design team for providing such fantastic feedback! ❤️

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