I remember my Teacher back in school always saying, “everything that has an advantage, has a disadvantage”. I didn’t understand his view until very much later when I started to delve into products. Every product is good but can be better. This statement is relative. Products are created to solve a problem or serve a purpose.

When developing a product, extensive research is done and it doesn’t end at the development stage. This is so because for every pilot stage or prototype there is a specific target audience. As the product gains more ground and enters the market, specifics change, possible users’ problems are discovered and there will be a need for improvement. This is why there are always different versions or updates of a product. Use Mobile phones from any top company as an example. You will see that the latter is an improved version of the former.

Our product management team here at Side hustle decided to study a product that made its way into Nigeria in 2021. We decided to review the user design thinking process and also work on some users’ problems while using the product app. The product app in review is the Glovo mobile app.

About Glovo (case study, Lagos, Nigeria)

Glovo is a food ordering and delivering service app built and developed to solve the user’s courier problem. The app aims to serve the convenience and reduce time constraints for its users. The app has successfully partnered with top businesses and currently offers one of the cheapest prices in the market in terms of courier services.

The Problem Glovo aims to solve

Courier platforms are created to solve the problem of distance, receiving and sending goods or items in real-time. There is a problem of high delivery charges, late time turnover, damages or goods in bad condition. In addition, the issue of getting edibles, especially from your desired place of choice in real-time.

Thinking Process

• Starting with the brand colors on the mobile app; which are shades of yellow and white. These colors portray youthfulness, happiness, spontaneity and safety. Already the brand is representing what they have to offer and how they want its users to feel while navigating or using the app.

• Process flow: Going by the existing design of the app, it is structured to follow a five-way step;

• Sign up/Log in to the app↔️Pick your location/address↔️Search for the business/eatery↔️Search through the menu & order ↔️Checkout and make payment.

The App existing user flow is broken into Epic and User story

Epic:

As a user, I want to be able to order food or grocery and have them delivered wherever I am, in record time.

User story:

I want to be able to sign up for the app

User Story:

As a user, I want to be able to select a store of my choice to place my order from.

User Story:

As a user, I want to be able to see stores near me.

User flow obtainable on the mobile app

Having this background knowledge of the app, we took a step forward by sharing ideas and ideating on Miro on possible users’ problems and possible solutions.

Our ideas are grouped into 4 different parts;

• Adapt: Core features we expect the Glovo team to adapt such as the Customer helpline, Calendar Alignment and sign-up with google account

• Modify: Users' homepage to be uniform across all users (part of the research shows some users do not have all the available deliverables options). Uniformity in Payment same applies here, we have some users having the option to pay with cash available and at other times unavailable.

• Eliminate Notification. Before getting to the notification panel, you’ve to go through your account details. Which most users might not care to do. Hereby, making the feature redundant. Also, the numerous FAQs. Most users will find it difficult to go through the long list of FAQs before getting an answer to their question.

• Substitute: Instead of having the Notification hidden, the Notification icon can be introduced at the top right corner of the homepage. Instead of lengthy FAQs, this should be summarised and categorized in order of importance or frequency.

Next, we moved to identify these problems, creating a new user flow on whimsical, dividing it into epics and user stories and conducting a user survey on these problems.

User Problems

Epic:

As a user, I want to be able to order food or grocery and have them delivered wherever I am, in record time.

User Story: As a user, I want to be able to sign up with my Google account.

Acceptance criteria

Given:

I, the user, have a Google account

And is on the signup page

When:

I click on the Sign-up with Google

Then:

The user is signed up

User Story: As a user, I want to be able to cancel an order and receive a refund

Acceptance criteria

Given:

I, the user, have made an order

And has made payment

When:

The order hasn't been fulfilled or prepared

And I made more payments than expected

Then:

The order is canceled

And a refund is made

User Story: As a user, I want to be able to call the customer care line to lay a complaint

Acceptance criteria

Given:

I, the user, have made an order

And has experienced bad service or needs a refund

When

The rider refuses to deliver at an exact given location

And I made more payments than expected

Then:

A call is made to the helpline

And resolution is given

User Story: As a user, I want to be able to receive calendar notifications for new deals

Acceptance criteria

Given:

I, the user can log in with a valid email

Accept receiving new updates via mail

And accept to sync phone calendar with Glovo App

When

There are new deals

And special promo coupons

Then

I, the user notified on the phone

And receives mail

User Story: As a user, I should be able to make payments through a transfer or card.

Acceptance criteria

Given:

I, the user, have placed an order

When:

I want to make payment by transfer or card

Then:

I can make payment by transfer or card.

New User flow chart for Glovo Mobile App

Our new user flow solves the problem of contacting customer service via mobile and also improves users to get notified of new deals directly on their phones. The addition of the notification icon to the homepage will also make it easier for users to check notifications.

Furthermore, we conducted a user survey on a small group of 15 users on these features and here are some of their responses;

• 20% of the responses on getting notifications to show that they would love the introduction of the feature. 33.3% wouldn’t mind and are indifferent. This shows that there is a willingness to accept or embrace this feature.

  

From the responses of these users, you can tell that some of them have experienced difficulty in reaching the service unit. Due to the fact of no helpline available and the only help activity on the app containing so much information that the user does not find related to his issue.

Nevertheless, one thing users commended the Glovo mobile app for is the quick response time in terms of delivering orders.

To conclude this analysis, the team created a new wireframe on Whimsical that could be adopted by Glovo.

In conclusion, the Glovo mobile app is great and currently solving its user's needs in Lagos, Nigeria. However, the need for improvement can not be overlooked and with this analysis, we believe the product app will have an increase in retention and usage rate.