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& UI/UX Design

Careem - Dine Out

In the immediate post-Covid days - as the offline world started to come back to its rhythm - the need to build a discovery platform for offline experiences became paramount for us. The process involved figuring out the right people problem to target, mapping out a clear user journey, designing intuitive UX, and bundle the existing services with the new offering to add more value.

Situation

I joined Careem in the year 2021 when the Covid restrictions were easing and the world was slowly returning back to what was normal for us - going out on weekends, hanging out with friends and relatives, finding new experiences or activities to do, going for concerts etc.

But, how many times have we struggled with making a decision about what to do this weekend or simply where to go for dinner tonight? I realised this could be a problem for many other while trying to organise a small team lunch - being new to the city, it was more difficult for me than I had imagined.

Luckily, I had joined Careem when it was aiming to become a superapp and any new business opportunity was taken seriously. I was part of the Careem loyalty program team and when I told my Product partner how we can leverage this new service to expand our loyal users base, he was onboard from the get-go!

Challenges

Primary challenge was to get a quick Proof of concept to build confidence and momentum within the team without wasting any time or resources.
Next challenge was to build or hire a team of designers and engineers to take up this new project.
Lastly, we knew it was going to be a very research heavy project and we only had 2 UX researchers as part of the team so, it was imperative to look out for a budget-friendly research agency to help us out.

Resolution

Getting the team onboard

When you go to UAE, you'll probably hear of the Entertainer app that is basically a treasure of deals and coupons and somehow that is also the primary platform of discovery. Not because it was the best but because there was no other. That's where I started looking and went deeper to figure out a sliver of opportunity for us to convince the team that it's worth going after.

Careem, being a superapp, already has a huge network of partner merchants that can be leveraged to expand our services from online to offline segment by making discovery of places easier and quicker.

But, what is the people problem?

The very first step was to establish a concrete people problem that we'll be solving for. I hired a team of researchers for a month on contract under my supervision to help us answer the 2 most important questions -

How often do people go out and find places to go to?
How do they make or finalise this decision?

We took a three-pronged approach -

A preliminary survey rolled out to the entire Careem user base to get quantitative data on how often do people go out and how do they make those decisions -
1. There is no one-stop trusted tech solution out there for inspiration on going out activities
2. People rely on recommendations from friends, family, influencers etc. which they find to be very subjective

Next, we conducted Focus-group discussions in our two major markets - UAE and KSA to understand the exact moments of going out - recent experiences, how did they decide, what factors did they consider, what difficulties they faced etc. to get a deeper insight on what all problems can we solve for.

Once we had established that F&B is the go to market to start with, we rolled out another detailed survey to the entire Careem user base to get more focused insights on their dining experiences.

Look at how others are doing it

We did a comprehensive study of the most popular competitors in both UAE and KSA market and created a benchmark for us to start with.

Lets start designing

Journey mapping

Based on all the above discussions and insights, we created detailed user journeys for someone who decides to go out to eat/drink. We mapped out different stages of their journey, the information they need and the pain points they might have at each step.

Concepts exploration & early testing

Before we moved onto the designing phase, I organised a Crazy-8 brainstorming session with a diverse group of people - PMs, designers, engineers, VP of Finance, marketing folks etc. The purpose was to diverge and explore as many different solutions as we could.

Once we had a complete understanding of what features we want to build and what are the must-have information that makes or breaks the user experience - we created a few design concepts to test out with users to get an early understanding of what might not be working.