McDonalds

Redesigning the Japanese McDonalds delivery app

Client

McDonalds Japan

Timeline

January 2019 - Ongoing

My Role

UX Design

Tools

Sketch, Invision

Project Overview

This was spec work for a major Tokyo Design Agency. Details have been changed due to NDA's.

Japan is a unique country with unique user needs. For example, name forms require 4 fields instead of two to disambiguate Kanji names and their correct pronunciation. For a product to be successful in Japan, it needs to be localized for the needs of Japanese people. Due to these unique localization requirements however, often times innovations in UX or trends in UI will reach Japan a little more slowly compared to other countries.

My objective was to redesign the Japanese McDonalds delivery app to improve the UX for Japanese users

Project Index

Research

There are three McDonalds apps in Japan

From left to right: One app for information and coupons, one for ordering for in-store takeout, and one for delivery. I found this to be very interesting as it appears that the apps operate independently from one another.

All three apps appear to follow different brand guidelines and use a different design system
The McDonalds coupon app is quite popular at #4, but has a 2.5 rating. (Uber Eats is #2 with a 4.5 rating)
Ranking drops dramatically for the delivery app at #19, and has the lowest rating of all three apps. (1.6)

Market Research

Finding official published customer data from McDonalds is quite difficult. Although the company shares sales information on their official site I couldn't find any official data on customer demographics. I did however, find some independent studies.

Customer demographic data

64.7% of male teens, 58.9% of males in their 20's go to a hamburger shop more than once a month.
53.2% of female teens, 61.5% of females in their 20's go to a hamburger shop more than once a month.

1 in 4 smart phone users regularly use the McDonalds mobile site

Slightly more general customers are female compared to male. (Far left chart values)

McDonalds coupon app has a 41% monthly inactivity rate on Android, this the lowest of their competitors (App ape 2017)

Considering that smartphone usage per day for all age groups is over 3 hours per day, one could assume a certain degree of tech-savviness in regards to app usage. (Nielsen 2018)

Additional findings

McDonalds customers prioritize searching for a low cost meal over the tastiest burger
Customers highly value the speed from order time to when their meal is served
Customers value a casual or relaxed setting

Source:
https://lab.testee.co/mcdonald-mos-research
http://www.dims.ne.jp/timelyresearch/2011/110515/
https://media.bizmake.jp/example/3c-mcdonald/#1_Customer
https://drm.ricoh.jp/lab/useful/u00009.html
https://iphone-mania.jp/news-217034/
https://moduleapps.com/mobile-marketing/11763rpt/

User Interviews

”公式のアプリは使います。でもデリバリーのアプリは知らなかった”。-３０代男性

"マック食べたい時、UberEATSのアプリ使ってた！マックのデリバリーだと注文の最低金額決まっていた気がしたなぁ"。-２０代女性

"I use the McDonalds app for coupons. It's really convenient. I hate remembering passwords on apps". -Male mid 30's

"I get coupons from the app occasionally. I don't like how pages open up in the browser". -Male early 30's

"I use the normal McDonalds app, there's another app too? What's the difference"? -Male early 30's

"When I want to eat McDonalds, I just ordered it from UberEATS. The McDelivery app has a minimum order" -Female early 20's

I conducted three very casual unstructured interviews. All 3 subjects were unaware of the existence of the McDonalds delivery app but expressed positive opinions about the McDonalds coupon app.

With this information I decided to focus on McDonalds delivery app and add some functionality from the pickup ordering app. Customers seem to be satisfied with the current coupon app overall and if all three apps operate independently it may be difficult to coordinate the backend of coupon issuing and validation across different apps. This feature can be incorporated into future iterations.

Define

Personas

With this information, I created a provisional user persona

Ideate

User flows comparison

I compared DoorDash, GrubHub, Dominoes JP, and Burger King JP user flows

DoorDash and GrubHub are two of America's most popular food delivery apps
Dominoes has the simplest flow. Guest checkout option requires just as much data input than signing up
Burger King app doesn't offer delivery, only take out

Next I compared the flow of the McDonalds delivery app to the McDonalds coupon app

McDonalds app is more of a nutritional info and coupon app, many pages open up in the browser
McDonalds delivery app has a flow similar to their desktop service
Both app's UI looks a little unpolished compared to their US competitors

Finally, I took the best parts of all the user flows to create my own flow for the redesign

Simplified user flow - Delivery, Take Out, and Store locator lead to the same flow
Sign up / Log in is done at the beginning, letting users order in less steps
Address information is registered during signup and saved. The address is then confirmed before finalizing payment

Task flows comparison

I compared the McDonalds delivery app task flow to my proposed task flow based on successful competitors

Address and payment method confirmation is all done on the cart screen, decreasing the number of task flow steps
This may lead to increased number of orders completed, less drop-out rate
Uber Eats (#2 on the JP App Store with a 4.5 rating) has a similar task flow, as well as DoorDash

Wireframes

I created a set of wireframes based on my user and task flows

Iterate

Style guide

McDonalds official brand guidelines

Hi-fi mockups

I applied the style guide to create hi-fi mockups of all screens

Reflection

Researching and interviewing in Japanese, as well as working with Japanese language is challenging. One must understand the nuances between languages to offer a good User Experience.

There are many assumptions here that cannot be validated without further user research and testing. For example, maybe Japanese customers prefer to confirm their address at multiple points in the user flow.
Japanese fonts tend to be smaller and have a tighter line spacing compared to western scripts.
Localization is UX. Especially for Japan, an app must be localized for the local market.

Joel Lipton 2019