DoorDash

Creating new spaces for aspiring restaurant owners

During a week-long design sprint, we designed Dream to Table, a new business accelerator program and local food competition concept for DoorDash. The goal of the program is to promote culinary and cultural diversity by helping aspiring restaurant owners open businesses in their community.

Overview

Setting the stage

It can take years, even a lifetime, for an aspiring restaurateur to achieve their dream. And that winding road can be even longer and harder if they are a minority or member of a marginalized community.

Our team took part in a week-long student design sprint with DoorDash to explore new ways the company can support the push for social progress. 

During that time, we concepted and prototyped Dream to Table, a new business accelerator program and local food competition which helps aspiring restaurant owners open businesses in their community.

At the end of the week, we presented our idea to members of DoorDash leadership and were chosen as finalists in the sprint challenge.

THe Brief

How can DoorDash use their platform and resources to continue the push for equity and social progress?

Research insight

Not every cuisine or cultural group has an opportunity in every city.

"Every Flavor Welcome" is a DoorDash slogan. But our research on the topic suggested that while  every flavor of cuisine is, indeed, welcome to utilize the DoorDash platform, not every cuisine or cultural group has an opportunity in a city.

That said, further user research also showed that there is a growing desire among consumers to support more local businesses, particularly products and services offered by minority-owned companies. This became the guiding insight for our project.

Opportunity

DoorDash can commit to sharing their physical and digital real estate with underrepresented groups.

DoorDash has a strong digital platform and a growing physical presence which they can use to give voice and opportunity to underrepresented groups. The app draws millions of users every day, and the emergence of delivery-only DoorDash Kitchens represents the company's effort to become a physical part of certain communities.

Strategy

Foster local entrepreneurship and welcome new businesses by engaging the community.

By helping aspiring business owners to get their project off the ground, and simultaneously inviting communities to take part, DoorDash can help welcome new cuisines and cultures to cities and towns across the country.

Not only that, this strategy sets DoorDash apart from the crowd of food delivery competitors by planting the brand's flag on a higher ground. The company can change the rules of the game by winning customer loyalty on the basis of something beyond convenience.

New Dream to Table filter on the home screen

Interactive content on individual restaurant pages

Design Process

sprint prep

Designing on a deadline

Before diving into ideation and coming up with solutions, our team took time to assess the problem, survey the industry and consumer landscape, and identify the most impactful areas to focus our energy during the short time period. 

Workflow

Leveraging Figma's flexibility for all-in-one design fun

We used a shared Figma project as mission control for our entire design sprint. Everything from opportunity and mind mapping to wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes were built in the tool. Figma handled everything we threw at it. Running a remote design sprint was not easy, but the experience showed us the possibility to do great work at any distance.

Research and Strategy

Market research

Finding a gap in the market

In our kickoff with DoorDash, we learned that delivery services are a category built on convenience. The feature set is largely commoditized across platforms, so customer loyalty is hard to come by. It’s generally passed back and forth on any given week based on the promotions available.

Additional landscape research affirmed these factors, yet we also found an unrealized differentiation tactic — telling a different story that goes beyond delivery.

User Research

We explored customer expectations and what it means to be a local restaurant.

DoorDash marketing touts the app as a way to explore your city through food, but looking at the app we saw the same focus on national chains featured in every other platform. 

In ideating, we considered the problem from different perspectives to explore the most impactful solutions. 

User Flow and Wireframes

Refining the in-app experience

Sketching the user flow helped us to explore different ways to present Dream to Table content in the app while remaining consistent with the design system.

Screen Design

A robust design system helped us move faster.

After sketching out the user flow and wireframes of the new interactions, we moved straight to high-fidelity mockups in Figma. The speed of this transition was yet another benefit of using DoorDash’s robust design system.

We kept our designs in line with DoorDash’s current visual style, so the majority of our decisions centered on bringing attention to Dream to Table features for both new and habitual DoorDash customers.

Introducing Dream to Table

Dream to Table is a business accelerator and local food competition that leverages DoorDash's digital and physical assets to help aspiring restaurant owners open businesses in their community.

How it works

Dream to Table in action

Dream to Table competitions can be held in any city with a Doordash Kitchen, with a focus on expanding to cities that have less diversity in their cuisine (and sometimes, their culture).

In-App Experience

Building community and competition into the DoorDash mobile app

Our primary challenge, beyond developing the competition structure, was determining how to integrate the Dream to Table user experience with the existing app design. On one hand, we wanted to break the script enough to draw attention to the new feature. But we also wanted to provide the same seamless experience users have come to expect.

Discovery

Balancing context and convenience to raise awareness.

Ordering with DoorDash is a habitual act for many people. We wanted to break the script
through visible but unobtrusive tactics.

On-load alerts and a new icon in the top navigation to entice customers to explore Dream to Table restaurants. The icon filter could be repurposed to a more general "Local" filter after the competition ends.

Personalized Restaurant Pages

Restaurant photos add a personal touch

DoorDash allows local restaurants to reach more people, but that extended network comes at the cost of less face-to-face interaction with customers.

Since personality is often a local restaurant's biggest selling point, we made sure to feature photos of the competing chefs.

Profile Videos

Chef videos give people a peek behind the scenes.

In addition to missing out on the personal touch of a local eatery, DoorDash customers don't get a chance to feel or compare the particular ambiance of each place.

New profile videos, accessed by tapping the restaurant thumbnail, allow customers to learn more about the cultures and cuisines within their community.

Competition Dashboard

Customers can track the competitors' progress in the app.

Dream to Table design elements to the existing restaurant thumbnails and restaurant pages to make them stand out.

Rewards

Earn promotions for supporting local businesses.

Since each order counts as a point, customers can easily see their impact on the competition score. Repeated orders during the competition also earn them valued promotions like free delivery.

Marketing

Food delivery has become a habitual act, especially with the massive uptick in usage during 2020. We knew that creating a buzz around Dream to Table would be an important part of the project’s success.

Promotional Ads

Posts on social media, including organic posts and targeted ads in competition locations, will raise awareness and offer context about the event.

Website

The promotional site lets people see the events in different cities, track the competitors progress, and learn about the competitors’ culinary and cultural history, as well as their dream to start a business.

Product extensions 

For delivery customers, the final dropoff experience carries even more weight than the purchase process. We found an opportunity to personalize the experience with a custom bag and scannable Thank You card which links the customer to an Instagram filter to share their experience.

Measuring Success

Exploring the intersection of business and design

DoorDash Dream to Table is not a shipped product, so I do not have real-world outcomes to discuss. That said, I developed a few potential metrics to show how DoorDash might measure the impact of this work.

Business objectives

  • Reinforce brand values
  • Increase sales through loyalty purchases

Potential performance metrics

  • Daily app usage rates
  • Interactions with Dream to Table filter
  • Conversions for Dream to Table restaurants
  • Conversions without a promo code
  • Net Promoter Score
User Feedback

Users said the Dream to Table experience felt spot on for DoorDash and made them excited to order.

We tested the new app experience with six users familiar with Door Dash and delivery apps. Our research goals were to gauge user understanding of the Dream to Table concept as presented in the app experience, and to address any unwanted friction points we may have introduced into the ordering process.

A majority of users understood the concept through the combination of informational alerts and new design elements (e.g. banners, icons). A few expressed interest to learn even more about the competing chefs. In an effort not to clutter the app, we will rely on the marketing through various social media channels to support and tell the story and create awareness for users.

Reflections

  • The sprint format was incredibly challenging but highly productive. The experience encouraged me to include more time-bound activities into my everyday work to fuel productive sessions.
  • Proper research and user testing is difficult to achieve with a short timeline. That said, massive platforms like DoorDash create feedback loops across many channels, so we learned a lot about how to reach insights using quick-and-dirty research tactics.
  • Consider “invisible” moments of the user experience. Designing for moments before and after the customer orders their food drove home the importance of thinking beyond the interface to the moving pieces behind DoorDash's entire service design model.
  • Competing for a large client was exciting. Their feedback boosted our confidence in our thinking and our process.

Team