It all began on the day when I made my first order on Wolt's app: I had trouble navigating through it and finding what I wanted. Thinking it might just be a one-time problem for new users, I continued to feel the same in my next orders. Knowing that I was not the only one, I decided to take it as an opportunity to practice my UX skills by exploring areas to improve in Wolt's app.

Wolt expands its business through network effects. First, they partner with the trendiest restaurants to get people excited. Once they get the first engagement, they rely on word of mouth to generate more interest. With increased interest, more restaurants join Wolt, add value to the platform and attract more people, thus creating a virtuous cycle of growth.
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Based on my understanding of Wolt's business model, I assumed the primary target action in the app was to create an order, so that they could get the product and Wolt could generate revenue.

To facilitate business growth, other target actions would be to invite friends (to increase customer base) and to redeem codes or earn Wolt credits (customer retention).

I conducted usability testing with 5 Wolt’s users to uncover any pain points that they experienced while using the app. Users were asked to complete a series of tasks as I observed the interactions and took notes of any problems that occurred during the test.

After gathering insights from the interviews, I carried out affinity mapping to group the obstacles that users encountered under common themes and features in the app, and specified which part were the issues found.

To prioritise the usability issues found, I took a data-driven approach known as the severity framework to prioritise the usability issues found by evaluating their severity ratings, which can be calculated by the following formula:

Below are the key findings:
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• Navigating through the app & information processing share the same severity ratings and are the top two usability issues
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• 100% of users found navigation exhausting as the content was overloaded, 80% felt that the content was poorly arranged
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• 100% of users had issues with going through the long list of restaurants as they were unable to sort or filter the results
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• 60% of users found the restaurant categorisation redundant and unclear, 100% of users found certain features and buttons redundant

• Task criticality: How much impact does it have on the business or the user if the task failed? (1 = low, 5 = critical)
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• Impact: How much has it impacted the user trying to accomplish the task? (1 = suggestion, 5 = blocker)

• Frequency (%): Number of occurrences divided by total participants

As navigating through the app and information processing are the two main issues, I drew the current information architecture (IA) of Wolt app to analyse its structure and how different pieces of information were organised.

My objective is to reduce the cognitive effort required for users to achieve their goals. I highlighted areas in the IA that contributed to users' pain points and created a list of questions on how to create design solutions for them.

I created a revised information architecture to highlight the app’s key features and improve the overall organisation and navigation throughout the app. I highlighted areas where I have made changes with the same colours and numbers corresponding to the current IA for easy comparison.

Information overload discouraged users from taking the target action as they do not have a logical flow to follow, resulting in a poor (or even no) decision-making process.

To provide a simpler and clearer user flow, I performed the following content rearrangement:
• Reduced clutter by removing non-order-related content
• Replaced content in carousel cards with Wolt's latest promotions only
• Further separated the restaurants' categories into two groups: Wolt’s Curated Selection & Recommended for you
• Created individual cards for each category with a title and description

All restaurants and stores within the delivery area of the user’s address were shown without being categorised. Users could not sort nor filter the results, which was one of the top frustration they had.
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To improve user experience, save time and reduce the cognitive effort required to get to a specific result, I:
• Added the number of results shown
• Added the “filter” button which combines sorting and filtering functions
• Filtering criteria were based on the existing information shown on the restaurant card

Less time spent on searching for relevant content = More time spent on browsing = Higher chance of ordering  

Users found the current suggestion tabs confusing and the search results are hard to scan through.

To provide a clearer layout, I:
• Added "Recent searches"
• Added the title "Popular searches” above the suggestion tabs to be more clear
• Removed "My recent order" as it was not related to the search function and could be found in Discover
• Added filters in search results

‍The redundancy of features and buttons with different names left users confused and difficult to find what they need.

To simplify the user flow and make the section more organised, I:
• Combined “Earn Wolt Credits” & “Credits and Tokens” and renamed it into “invite friends”
• Removed "Order again" as "Order history" already existed
• Removed settings at the bottom and moved all setting-related content to a separate screen under the setting icon

As I rearranged the previous three sections of the app to be related to making orders only, the remaining content and features were moved to the Profile section. I further separated the Profile section into three parts:

• The first part is about user’s interactions with Wolt regarding orders (e.g. tokens & credits, favourite restaurants)
• I named the second part "Help & Support", which is about getting in touch with Wolt whether it is related to orders or not
• The third part is settings, I further categorised it into account settings and privacy-related settings

What started as a personal complaint about the app turned into an endeavour to recreate the user experience and a valuable lesson in designing for corporates. I understand how easy it is to create an unsolicited redesign of an existing app as I am shielded from all the constraints and challenges faced by the designers and developers who created the original one, whereas in the real world there are financial, technical, and business constraints that could impact the app design.

For example, I assumed one of the reasons why users cannot filter the results is because Wolt would like to make users read through the list to increase the exposure of the partnered restaurants. And if the filter feature is not available in the initial app structure, the developer has to create new API features to implement it and pass the QA test, which will cost money and take time to develop. In the end, what comes off as a simple feature involves complex decisions and requires a strong reason to justify the act of adding it to the app.