Role: Sole UI/UX Designer & Researcher
Tools: Figma, Principle
Designing the Uber Eats app in order to encourage users to buy from small local restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Uber Eats. This was a personal project I decided to pursue in order to explore how to help small businesses.
During the pandemic, I have been trying to support small local restaurants by only ordering food from them. As I was using Uber Eats, I found myself having trouble learning more about local restaurants. It made me think - what about those who are not as aware of the struggles of small businesses? There may be individuals using food delivery apps, not aware of the importance of ordering from small restaurants. This problem inspired me to create a design that would highlight small local restaurants and their stories.
As stay-at-home orders prevent people from eating in at restaurants, many small local restaurants face an economic struggle. Small restaurants are dependent on business in order to survive, so they are experiencing a hard hit due to the pandemic.
I wanted to learn more about people what people thought of supporting small local businesses and how they interact with the Uber Eats app, so I conducted interviews. I listed below the main takeaways from the interviews.
01
02
03
On the original design, users could only access a page of local restaurants by clicking the banner at the top.
01
Their first instinct was to look at the tabs at the top of the screen.
02
This brought attention away from supporting local restaurants.
03
Instead of supporting local spots.
On the top of the page of local restaurants, Uber Eats included text to emphasize how local restaurants need business and to explain the $0 delivery fee.
01
Participants did not read the information.
02
A participant mentioned that they would like to filter the restaurants so that the results would cater more to what they want.
03
The only access point for the page is through the sliding banner.
Before moving on to designing new screens, I established design goals based on the interviews I conducted and my analysis of the app's design.
01
02
03
01
02
03
Opening a single restaurant page.
04
05
Buying a meal for a healthcare worker.
06
This was a project I decided to go back to and redo using what I learned from Design Collective(a fellowship where you receive mentorship while working on a personal project). It was an interesting experience to be able to look back on my old design work. I was able to reflect on how much I have improved as a designer and be able to apply my new skills to an old project. The mentorship from Design Collective taught me how to redesign my screens so that they strictly followed Uber Eats' design system, make important design decisions that contributed to my goals, and create animations in order to showcase realistic interactions.
As for the next steps, I would like to be able to test out my designs with users in order to improve the user flow and gain feedback on the new concepts I introduced to the Uber Eats app. I would also like to be able to interview small restaurant owners in order to make sure that my designs address their needs and concerns.
Made with 💖 by Katherine Ngo.
katherinengo13@gmail.com | LinkedIn