Duffl
A UX Design Case Study
NOVEMBER 2023 - DECEMBER 2023
Overview
In the fall of 2023, I enrolled in a Fundamentals of User Experience course, diving into the world of UX Research and UI/UX Design for the first time. This course transformed my perspective, providing me with a framework to approach design challenges thoughtfully and systematically.
Over six weeks, my team and I worked on addressing a real problem within the UCLA community. Our focus was Duffl, an app launched in 2019 by two UCLA students with the ambitious vision of delivering snacks to students within 10-minutes using electric scooters. While the app had quickly become a campus favorite, its usability issues were hard to ignore. Our goal was to enhance Duffl’s functionality by creating a more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces.
My role
I worked on both the Research and Design teams, contributing to:
Crafting a research proposal to set clear goals, objectives, and methods
Conducting user interviews and usability tests to uncover pain points
Translating insights into design improvements, focusing on navigation and layout
Timeline: November - December 2023
Tools: Miro, Figma, Canva
💡 The Challenge
While Duffl had successfully built a fast and reliable delivery model, its user experience didn’t match the speed of its service. Users struggled with clunky navigation, and essential features like product details and delivery updates were lacking.
How might we make ordering on Duffl more intuitive, ensuring students can quickly find products, track their deliveries, and communicate seamlessly with drivers?
🛠️ Defining the Problem: Why Was Duffl Frustrating Users?
Despite Duffl’s rapid delivery promise, the app’s usability didn’t keep up with its speed. Users struggled with finding products, navigating categories, and tracking their orders, often leading to frustration rather than convenience. Through user research and usability testing, we identified four key obstacles that were disrupting the experience
🔍 Research Methods:
🔬 User Interviews – Conducted 10 semi-structured interviews to understand usage patterns.
🔬 Persona Development – Created “Andrew,” a representative Duffl user, ensuring our design addressed real student needs.
🔬 Usability Testing – Evaluated navigation pain points, search effectiveness, and delivery communication gaps.
🎨 Our Design Thinking Approach
To solve these problems, we followed a human-centered design framework:
🔹 Empathize – Engaged real users to understand their needs.
🔹 Define – Identified the most pressing UX issues.
🔹 Ideate – Brainstormed solutions to address pain points.
🔹 Design – Developed a prototype with improved navigation, search, and communication
features.
🔹 Test – Conducted usability testing to refine and iterate.
This structured approach ensured that every design decision was backed by real user insights.
🔎 UX Research: What We Learned
👥 User Research: Understanding Duffl’s Audience
We spoke with frequent Duffl users and students who used similar delivery apps, aiming to understand their:
Motivations – Why do they order delivery instead of going to a store?
Navigation Struggles – How do they search for and browse products?
Delivery Expectations – What are their concerns when tracking orders?
👤 User Persona: Andrew Thomas
Before diving into research, we needed to define who we were designing for. We created Andrew Thomas, a junior at UCLA who relies on delivery apps like Duffl to fit his busy, on-the-go lifestyle.
Andrew represents our core user base—students who need fast, seamless, and reliable delivery but struggle with navigation and product discovery on Duffl.
📲 Usability Testing: Refining the Experience
In order to provide ourselves with the most representative opinions from users and a chance to expand on points made, we conducted 10 mediated semi-structured interviews.
To validate our redesign, we tested our prototype with real users, focusing on three core areas:
In-App Messaging – Does an integrated chat feature enhance communication with drivers
Delivery Progress Page – Is the tracking system clear and informative?
Navigation & Search – Are users able to find products more easily?
📝 Usability Test Insights
✅ Users found the redesigned navigation more intuitive.
✅ The in-app chat feature made communication with drivers feel safer.
✅ Clearer category labels reduced search confusion.
Each round of testing helped us iterate and refine our designs, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Key Findings & Pain Points:
Navigation Issues: Users found the separate search and browse functions tedious and confusing.
Ambiguous Categories: Many struggled with vague and unlabeled icons.
Delivery Communication Concerns: Participants expressed discomfort relying on personal text messages for delivery updates.
Limited Product Information: Users desired detailed information, such as ingredient lists, stock availability, and cart contents.
📊 Affinity Diagram: Organizing Our Research Insights
To identify key UX pain points, we grouped common themes using an Affinity Diagram. This helped us categorize users’ challenges with navigation, delivery communication, and product visibility.
Key takeaways from our Affinity Mapping:
✔ Users struggled with Duffl’s disjointed search and browse functionality.
✔ Many wanted clearer product categories and descriptions.
✔ Concerns about privacy and lack of in-app communication with drivers.
🚀 Our UX Solutions: Transforming Duffl’s Usability
We focused on simplifying the Duffl experience without sacrificing its speed and reliability. Key improvements included:
Simplified Navigation
🔹 Reorganized product categories for clearer, more intuitive browsing.
🔹 Reduced steps needed to locate and order items.Favorites Feature
🔹 Allowed users to quickly reorder frequently purchased items with one tap.
Real-Time Delivery Tracking
🔹 Integrated a live order tracking map to enhance transparency.
🔹 Improved the delivery progress page, making it easier to review and confirm orders.In-App Messaging
🔹 Enabled seamless communication between users and drivers.
🔹 Improved privacy and convenience, reducing reliance on personal texts.
These changes made the app faster, easier, and better aligned with the needs of its target audience.
