Overview
This case study was my submission to the 2022 Kleiner Perkins Fellows Program Design Challenge. The prompt was to "Redesign a feature from any of the companies participating in the Fellows Program." I chose to redesign certain features of the DoorDash Dasher app to provide a better delivery experience for DoorDash delivery workers (aka Dashers).
Duration: Jan 5-9, 2022
Role: UX Design, Visual Design
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Personal Experience
In August of 2020, amid the pandemic I became a Dasher to make extra cash during my remote fall semester of college. While I don't dash as often anymore, I've nonetheless become very familiar with the Dasher app's user interface, having made over 200 lifetime deliveries.
As a lead user of the app, I've been frustrated by its user experience and can especially empathize with complaints other Dashers have expressed online. Thus, I chose to redesign certain app features for this case study.
Research
Context
Dashers depend on the Dasher app to receive and fulfill order requests from DoorDash customers. It currently also allows Dashers to schedule dashes ahead of time, check their ratings, and keep track of their earnings.
Home screen of the Dasher app
Online Feedback
I started my research process by looking at Dasher app reviews as well as DoorDash driver forums online to find pain points. Ultimately, the Reddit forum r/doordash_drivers and Glassdoor gave me the most detailed and relevant feedback on pain points within the Dasher app. I organized feedback into 3 categories, as shown below.
Users complained most notably about the following three problems:
• Needing a cheap, reliable method of tracking miles.
• Wanting to see the pay/tip breakdown before accepting an order.
• Becoming distracted or frustrated while declining an order request.
Secondary Research (Data)
Clearly, knowing the pay breakdown of an order request is important for Dashers.
Source from DoorDash Medium Article by CEO Tony Xu
While Doordash did end up releasing an app update in mid-2019 showing Dashers their earnings breakdown after a delivery, the pre-acceptance order request screen still doesn't show it. This has been a consistent complaint among Dashers for a while, and competitors Instacart and Grubhub both already provide this information to their drivers.
Primary Research (Google Form)
I conducted a Google form survey in which 22 past and present Dashers answered questions about their experience delivering food for DoorDash.
81.8%
Wanted the Dasher app
to have a built-in mile tracker.
77.3%
Wished to see an order's earnings breakdown
before accepting or declining it.
68.2%
Found the process to decline an order
while driving distracting or frustrating.
I also asked Dashers specifically why they would like to see their earnings breakdown immediately upon receiving an order request. Some of their quotes are listed below, lightly edited for clarity:
"It would help me understand where my money is coming from better on a per order basis."
"To know if the customer is tipping enough for the distance."
"I want to know the tip amount. I prefer higher tip orders as tip amount and customer courtesy seem to be closely related."
"DoorDash concealing the actual pay amount is a very concerning practice that I fundamentally disagree with."
I lastly asked the 22 Dashers to list up to 3 of the most common reasons as to why they declined orders, based on the current list DoorDash provides. The two reasons shown below were by far the most popular, with the next most common reason, "I don't want to go to this store," only selected by 22.7% of respondents.
90.9%
decline orders due to the distance being too far.
77.3%
decline orders due to the order being too small.
Design Opportunities
1. How might Dashers track their mileage more easily?
Most Dashers track the mileage they accumulate while driving to use it as a tax deduction. However, despite showing the distance of each order pre-acceptance, DoorDash has no integrated mileage tracker that archives this information, forcing Dashers to pay for 3rd-party mileage tracking apps or manually track their miles.
2. How might Dashers gain better earnings transparency?
DoorDash doesn't show the earnings breakdown between DoorDash pay and customer tip for an order until after it has been delivered. The app currently just shows the total order value, limiting Dasher access to fair information about company base pay and tipping habits that as workers they should have.
3. How might Dashers decline orders in a safer, more efficient manner?
Dashers expressed frustration over the myriad of buttons and screens they had to click through to decline an order compared to the singular button one has to press to accept. This lengthy process is not only distracting but particularly dangerous to Dashers while driving and is legally questionable with regards to state hands-free driving laws.
Ideation
I began brainstorming and sketching out potential solutions to these three design opportunities, as shown below.
Mileage Tracker
Order Request Pay Breakdown
Decline Orders
Design Explorations
My workflow in Figma designing various app features.
Visual Design Considerations
While I was unable to obtain DoorDash's official font, TT Norms, I did substitute it where necessary with Avenir, a similar modern geometric sans-serif font. I also utilized the official DoorDash red color, Electric Orange, or #FF3008.
Mileage Tracker
I first redesigned the Earnings section home screen of the Dasher app to incorporate room for a button that would link to a mileage tracker screen. I also added in the relevant mileage to the Earnings History screens.
I then iterated upon what this "Dasher mileage" screen would look like if clicked on from the Earnings Section. I took design inspiration from the Deposits and transfers screen of the Earnings section.
Order Request Pay Breakdown
I first began iterating what a single order request with a pay breakdown would look like. I then applied the general design system I had created in V2 to other existing order request types.
I felt the differentiation between the DoorDash pay and tip for each order in the multi-order request screen wasn't very clear. Thus, I began iterating what the earnings breakdown could look like for requests that contained two orders.
Decline Order Pop-up
I first created a user flow to illustrate the current decline process.
I included the two most common decline reasons within the revised user flow below to speed up the decline process. These two specific decline buttons would combine the "Decline," "Tell us why," and "Submit" steps of the original user flow. I also included a Decline Other button that linked back to the original "Tell us why" section in the rare occasion a Dasher declined for a different reason, ensuring DoorDash could still collect holistic decline data.
Given this revised user flow, I prototyped new decline order screens.
Feedback
I asked two Dasher friends who had previously filled out my survey for feedback on each of the designs.
The first user has been a Dasher for over a year.
Mileage Tracker
Liked Dasher Mileage V2 best. Thinks current year's mileage statistics should be highlighted in red, while last year's should be in black.
"The red [download mileage report] button is in line with DoorDash's style too,... I feel [DoorDash] buttons should always be red."
Order Request Pay Breakdown
Preferred Order Request V2 over V1 due to clearer visual hierarchy.
Liked Two Orders Request V2 the best. Appreciated having only one label each for DoorDash pay and Customer tip. Felt the "1)" and "2)" numerals make things a bit cramped and that the plus signs weren't exactly necessary.
Decline Order Pop-up
Agreed on keeping the decline a 2-step process, only if you click "Decline other" does the original "Tell us why" menu appear.
Not a fan of any version's UI. Had a great idea of a speedometer-like design where there are 4 options (3 decline buttons, go back) nestled around the acceptance rate circle.
The second user dabbles in UX design and dashed for under a year.
Mileage Tracker
Had no concerns with the design of Dasher Mileage V2.
Order Request Pay Breakdown
"Having the captions under both orders’ dollar amounts in V3 and V4 is kinda funky, and I don’t particularly like the "1)" and "2)" style of numerals."
Felt the "+" is a good connector that fills the void between the amounts.
"I would suggest trying V5, but maybe with the numbers 1 and 2 in bubbles or some shape, or at least in a lighter font to visually separate them."
Decline Order Pop-up
Too many red buttons on the bottom encourages declining orders, not advantageous for DoorDash.
Appreciated the idea of incorporating common decline reasons into the buttons.
Liked the speedometer design idea for a decline order pop-up.
Final Designs
A new way for Dashers to track their mileage within the app.
A new order request screen that immediately shows Dashers their earnings breakdown.
I also included examples of how my revised design would look like with other possible order request formats.
A safer, more efficient way to decline orders.
I settled upon the "speedometer design" for the new decline order pop-up. This new button layout not only responded well to the existing acceptance rate graphic but also retained key visual and functional aspects of the original design. The "Go Back" and "Decline Other" buttons are still arranged below the acceptance rate in the same left-to-right order.
Reflection
Redesigning three different features of a widely-used mobile application within a week proved to be very tedious yet rewarding. I'm grateful to have learned much more about mobile app design in this project and effective methods of quickly crowdsourcing user research. It also was fun to fire up the Dasher app and go on a few Dashes again.
Looking back, I probably would have chosen to focus on redesigning just the decline feature of the Dasher app and testing it more through interactive mockups. Given the differing opinions about the placement of the “Go Back” button, it also would have been beneficial to have iterated further upon the order decline design. Additionally, I wish I could have run my Google survey for longer to collect more data. Nevertheless, I'm very satisfied that I ultimately solved all three original problems that I identified, and completing this case study has made me all the more excited to work on future product design challenges.
One problem area that I wish I could have tackled was finding a way to help Dashers deliver food to apartment complexes. 86.4% of Dashers I surveyed mentioned having past trouble understanding the layout of a complex and finding the customer's apartment, especially at night or when it's dark out. Unfortunately, Google and Apple Maps are not capable of providing walking directions to a specific apartment house number, even if it's outside. Additionally, creating some sort of consistent system to provide apartment complex maps to Dashers within the app would be logistically very difficult.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to give special thanks to my homie and Dasher buddy Arnav for all the user research and feedback he provided during this design sprint. No matter how many times I texted him a wireframe mockup late into the night, he'd always respond with insightful critique, and he gave me much of my inspiration for the final order decline design.
Shoutouts as well to my friends Jeremy and Cameron for their thoughtful feedback on the prototypes and general willingness to listen to me ramble about design. Finally, big thanks to my friend Angel for pushing me to apply to the KP Fellows Program in the first place and giving me all sorts of helpful design and career advice along the way.