SETTING CONTEXT

What is a Meal kit delivery service?

Green Chef is a subscription-based meal-kit delivery service which sends you weekly boxes of pre-portioned ingredients of three meals based on the meal plan you choose.

THE CHALLENGE

Understanding the objective

The product team realized that many users were skipping orders for consecutive weeks leading to lost business.
I was the design lead on this project, working over a period of 5 weeks.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Understanding the user - Why users skip?

30+ customer calls, surveys and insights from customer support team helped identify 5 key user user needs.

1

Changing meal preference

One of the biggest reasons that people skip a week is due to them not liking a particular week’s recipes.

"I don’t like salmon/potato. I usually skip the week you’ve salmon or potato in your recipes."

2

Changing delivery days

'Change delivery day for one week’ showed up in 26.6K customer service tickets.

“My meals are scheduled for delivery on Wednesdays. Is it possible to reschedule one week to a Thursday or Friday?”

3

Changing delivery address

'Change Address for one week’ showed up in almost 10K customer service tickets.

"My house is going to get tented for a few days starting tomorrow (Wed). I would really appreciate if I could change the address for delivery for this week (Friday) to xxxxxxx"

4

Changing box quantity

"Is it possible to get two boxes for this week or am I too late? My parents are coming to town."

"We are having company next week and I would like to change the order to 2 boxes for that day only, then return to my 1 box order. I don't seem to be able to do that ... can you assist?"

5

Non- subscription orders

"I want 2 boxes every week - 1 PALEO and 1 VEGAN. How do I do this?"

"I want to get 2 boxes delivered to the same house. How do I add another order?"

Limited flexibility during planning and scheduling phase forced people to skip weeks, cancel the subscription or bounce around to a different meal kit service.

DESIGN PROCESS

Design kickoff

A day long sprint with product, engineering and design to get collective understanding and brainstorm solutions.

User needs

Flexible meal ordering features— menu type, delivery day, delivery address, quantity of boxes.

Business needs

Increase ship rate by reducing the number of skipped weeks.
Design should be scalable to include any products we want to sell later on as an add-on, e.g., wines/sauces/kids menu, etc.

Constraints

Users can only switch meal plans; they can’t swap the individual recipes.
The delivery day can be modified, but the user has to choose from one of the pre-assigned delivery days for their zip code.

Assumptions

This would be a solution for users who like to order meals from Green Chef and only skip in case of lack of flexibility.

The design solution

It became evident that with no flexibility, users skip. There was a need to enable users to edit/modify different aspects of their weekly orders.

Original order journey

Each week only if all factors are suitable, the user will place an order. Even if a single factor fails, the user will skip.

Proposed journey with Modify order

Add the option to modify different aspects or the order.

Sketching the interfaceI begin with sketching out low fidelity ideas on paper.

Wireframe iterationsThen create wireframes based on the initial feedback and work towards a more detailed vision of the solution.

The first concept added an ‘Edit delivery’ option to enable one time modifications to each order– incrementally updating the old design.

Existing account's page

The original design didn’t allow changing menu for a week, the only way to achieve that is by changing the meal plan at subscription level.

Concept I - Wireframe

Added an 'Edit delivery' option to each week's order. Clicking on Modify will open a modal window with all options to modify the order.

The 80 / 20 rule
User research showed that 80% of the time the desired flexibility was the same— to change the menu.

The option to modify the menu being the primary use case, I explored ways to make it more discoverable.

Concept II - Wireframe

Like Amazon's product page offers recommended products similar to the one you are viewing; the new design offers similar menus if you didn't like the current one.

FEATURES

Upcoming week’s menu

Users can see recipes for their upcoming orders up to five weeks ahead; giving users plenty of time to manage their deliveries in advance. Users can do one-time modifications to a single order without having to modify their entire subscription.

Linear calendar view
The linear calendar using tabbed UI works as a clear navigation to access and quickly jump to any upcoming week.
A user can see the status overview (scheduled/skipped) for each week without having to click on each one of them.

Standard calendar view
The standard calendar view existed in the old UI, something users actively used. This provides an alternate view for users who prefer the more traditional month view to manage their deliveries.

Modify Order
The popup lets users make one time modifications to their Upcoming order. Users can modify their delivery day, address, serving size, menu or number of boxes ordered for that week.

Skip Order
The action allows users to skip meals for that week. Users see a popup with an option to skip order or get a different menu in case they did not like their meals. It surfaces alternate menus for those who didn’t explore them on the previous page.

FEATURES

Order Something Else

Green Chef has a range of meal plans to offer, but users never get a chance to see them easily. This discovery experience highlights the plethora of choice available at Green Chef.

Users can try a taste of something different by effortlessly switching to another meal plan for a single order without changing all future deliveries under their recurring subscription. Scrolling down to Order Something Else section allows users to see suggested menus and swap their current menu for a week.