Case study
My role
User interview
Product designer
Design QA
Platform
iOS app
Android app
Product
Dahmakan
(Current day Pop Meals)
Year
2019 - 2020
↑ Sneak peak of Dahamkan’s order tracking
Dahmakan is a Malaysia-based food delivery service with over 4 million orders delivered within the last 4 years. Dahmakan consists of 5-star chefs to plate up delicious meals and this service allows users to order food via the app or the website 7 days in advance. They constantly gather user feedback and update the menus regularly. Dahmakan is very famous especially among the workforce who enjoy their meals at their desks. Once ordered, the users can track their rider’s location via the mobile app.
Dahmakan riders usually deliver an average of 4 orders per route. The old order tracking was not optimised enough to show these multiple orders.
After interviewing users and also analysing the data, we identified 3 problems with our old order tracking on the mobile app.
1
Dated → Users felt that the order tracking was dated. Especially when compared with the order tracking on competitor apps such as Grab Food.
2
Unable to see the route riders taking towards the user → On the old app, only the current location of the rider was displayed and not the route they were taking towards the user. This built trust issues and unease among the users. This was also a reason why the users sensed the tracking was dated.
3
Sometimes riders won't show up on the map → Usually one rider delivers an average of 4 orders per route. On the old app, the rider was not viewable on the map until the order is delivered to the previous customer. For example; the 4th customer in a route won’t be able to track the rider until the 3rd order is delivered. Sometimes if the previous drop was nearby, the rider’s location wouldn’t show up on the map for a longer period of time. This means if the previous order is at the same building or in a closer location, the user sees it as “Rider arrived” suddenly, without showing the rider' on the map. So the users had concerns trusting the rider’s tracking.
↑ Old version
How can we make the rider tracking modern, accurate and relevant?
Rider’s path on the map → The user should be able to track the rider’s location throughout the route and they should be able to see the path the rider is taking towards them.
Modern → The user interface and the experience of the new order tracking should feel refreshed and modern.
Touching an established product → Since the old order tracking was active for over 2 years, users were quite familiar with the design. Therefore, I had to be more cautious to make only the relevant updates without making any drastic changes.
Solo designer → As I was the only designer on the team, the biggest downside I had was not being able to get any designer point-of-view feedback from the team.
↑ How Dahmakan works
After we identified the problems, I had a discussion with the product manager and the stakeholders on possible solutions. We decided to let the user track the rider’s location throughout the route.
The old solution - limited tracking
As explained, on the old app, if the user is not the first customer in the route, they can only track their rider's location for a limited time.
↑ If the user is not the first customer in the route, tracking is only for a limited time
The proposed solution - tracking area expanded
In the new version, we expanded the trackable area.
↑ Proposed solution: Tracking is available throughout the ride
After deciding the solution for the tracking, I started the process to design the user interfaces. The new order tracking has the following features;
1
Let the users track the rider’s location throughout the route
2
Showing the order status and the rider's upcoming path on the map.
Design iterations
In the new version, we expanded the trackable area.
↑ Design iterations
After going through a few design iterations, I came up with this first version design.
↑ Snippets from the first version
Operation transparency
One of the main things I wanted to highlight in the first version was the operation transparency – The rider's route creation is automated based on the delivery time selected by the user. So as an example, there is a possibility that the first and the last customers of the same route would be in the same building. Usually, the riders are assigned smartly which doesn't let them drive long distances. Sometimes they do 8-10 drops around the same area. When we display the map to the user with the rider location throughout the route, the user might wonder as to why the rider is going in circles without delivering their food – For this reason, I wanted to indicate to the user that the rider will be attending a few other customers before delivering their order.
↑ Examples for routes – sometimes the rider is closer to the user but attending another customer
The stakeholders didn’t like this idea…
The riders could be very close to the user’s location but won’t deliver because of the user’s selected delivery time. The stakeholders believed that indicating multiple deliveries might leave the user wondering “why my rider is making other deliveries” – and they thought the user might not understand the concept of the delivery time, once they see the rider, they would expect to receive the order as soon as possible. But I still prefered showing the multiple delivery indication on the map so the user has more context.
But after the feedback from the stakeholders, I had to remove all the indications on “multiple drops”. During this time, I tested my designs with few internal users. That led to a few other updates as well.
The following design shipped publicly.
↑ Final designs
1
Modern design → We clearly made the tracking experience better. The users are able to track their rider throughout the route and also the map has rich information.
2
User’s trust → These updates are helpful to improve user's trust. But, personally, I would still prefer to show the note about multiple drops for better operational transparency.
3
After 2 years → Dahmakan still uses the solution I did for the tracking as it is. I left Dahmakan around the end of 2019. Following my leave, they re-branded Dahmakan as Pop Meals. Now they have a colour and font update on the whole app. But they still use the same order tracking solution I worked on.
Working as a solo designer in a team was an exciting experience. It had few downsides but overall I was able to take full ownership of the product. When I look back, I can proudly say, I was a part of almost every single pixel of the Dahmakan app. This order tracking improvement was one of my favourite projects. During this project, I managed to learn the technical aspects of location tracking, the limitations when it comes to working with turn-by-turn navigation, how to update an existing design solution without confusing the users and also, how to work through pushbacks from the decision-makers.
