Just Eat App
Just Eat started as a food delivery service for local takeaway restaurants at a time when ordering fast food online was still gaining traction. As they grew, especially through acquisition, they encountered headaches and inflexibility with its code base and creaking user interface. Just Eat needed to slicker, more agile, more nimble and the apps were the best place to start.
THE CONTEXT & OBJECTIVES
Just Eat needed to combine their apps for all of their acquisitions into one central mobile B2C app platform. This would get every market on the same code base and gave us the chance to consolidate, update and improve the interface and user journeys for the apps, along with rebranding them with Just Eat’s shiny new brand. WithUber Eats and Deliveroo were becoming stronger competition with fresher, more modern looking apps, Just Eat was due for a glow up.
The main business objectives included:
- Creating a new interface that could integrate features popular with users of other newly acquired platforms, helping Just Eat to be more competitive – features like order tracking, estimated order times in our restaurant listings, better item search and restaurant filtering
- Working in a more collaborative, squad manner to increase pace and ensure user research validation was done for every feature to help minimise risk and overall cost
- Integrate more photography and better branded UI elements to help freshen up the interface, make the prospect of ording food more enticing with users, and keep pace with competitors
- Try to maintain the WCAG AA accessibility compliant UI as much as possible as Just Eat had a higher percentage of users with accessibility needs – many people who were housebound or had mobility issues and considered home meal delivery very useful
- Ensure we considered the impact of language and currency localisation in how the UI was designed, especially in relation to CTAs and text wrapping
THE SET UP
- My role: Senior Product Design Manager B2C & B2B
- Company: Just Eat
- Main Team: B2C UI & UX designers, user researchers, B2C product management, delivery, development
During this project, I was running the UI teams for both the B2C products (apps and websites the customers order from) and the B2B products (the products the restaurants used to receive and update orders).
Our team had designers dedicated to particular verticals and would work closely with UX designers, researchers, devs and product managers for those verticals, but they physcially sat and had multiple reviews with the other UI designers to help ensure visual, brand, and user experience consistency. This was crucial as many verticals were working independently and at pace – many did not have capacity to ensure consistancy across the overall product experience. Our team was the customer journey sanity checker and brand backstop, as it were.
THE PROCESS
Fundamentally changing the process. We transitioned our process to work in design sprints with all the of the sketching, voting and brainstorming involved with endless workshops with designers, product managers, developers and key business stakeholders. There were weekly “huddles” with all involved in the work on specific verticals to ensure everyone was on track and had visibility of the other moving parts affecting the overall output and to reduce duplication of work or hold up of delivery.
Asking the users: There was a whole lot of hypotheses and usability / validation testing too. A few sessions built around What Users Do were coordinated before larger pieces of work were tackled. Usability / validation testing was mostly accomplished through in person moderated testing at regular intervals (about every 2-3 weeks) in the lab at Just Eat. Some additional testing for smaller pieces, like UI specific patterns, was also executed through unmoderated remote testing.
Then getting the full app out: Rolling out new build to users progressively, while still maintaining an aggressive post launch roadmap to help catch up to competitors and help ensure our dominance in the restaurant food delivery space.
There were challenges
Too many cooks – As can happen with projects this big and with this tight of a deadline, it can be easy for too many to be involved at too granular a level. At the time this project kicked off, a design agency, with no clear remit or relayed plan for adding value was added into the design sprint process. This led to confusion and some avoidable slow downs as people lost track of who was responsible for certain aspects of the design and research process and whom had the authority to sign off work. This is the main reason I left Just Eat before this project was launched.
Loads of unnecessary design rework – as mentioned above, there was already a UI refresh project that had been underway with nearly identical objectives that was parked to start this work. It was initially agreed that design work on features would start with what had already been designed, validate that work and update / adjust as necessary as new features were added, new approaches considered, etc. Some of that did happen, but most design started from scratch. A lot of time and money could have been saved had the earlier work been used a foundation.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS AND FEATURES
- More and bigger food photos: Photos impact the choice of cuisine and restaurant in a big way
- Implementing a Legends label: This highlighted award winning and popular restaurants, giving local restaurants a fighting chance against big chains
- Menu section descriptors: Helping users navigate to the dishes and dish types they want more quickly
- Delivery minimum prompts: Letting users know how much more they need to purchase to quality for delivery of the food
- Upselling in the basket: Offering sponsorship opportunities for brands like Coca Cola and a last chance to add more to the order
- Real-time order tracking: Finally catching up with Deliveroo on a feature that was incredibly popular with customers
Home screen
Search Screen
Filtered Search
Restaurant Detail
Menu Page (before photos added)
Customise Item Drawer
Basket
Check-out
RESULTS
This app launched about two months after I had left Just Eat, so I was not privy to specific numbers, but all metrics pointed to the app launch ultimately being a great success and having a positive impact on revenue for the year.
The majority of results I was privy to dealt with some of the feature experiments we were able to run live on the current apps that required light UI changes or features we could be more easily phase in before the “big release” as the journeys or UI treatments could be worked into the current structure of the apps
WANT MORE DETAIL?
This is just the topline . I am happy to go into more relevant detail. Just contact me and let me know which areas you’d like to know more about.
