Uber Eats
ROLE
Primary Researcher
SKILLS USED
UX Research
User Testing
Heuristic Evaluation
TIMELINE
10 Weeks
Winter 2025
UberEats is designed to make food delivery fast and convenient, connecting users with local restaurants at the tap of a button. The app aims to simplify ordering, tracking, and checkout for a seamless dining experience without ever *really* leaving the comfort of your home.
But imagine a food delivery service where finding a meal was effortless, pricing was transparent, and checkout was clear—no second-guessing, no hidden fees, just a smooth ordering experience.
The Challenge
Ordering on UberEats feels like navigating an airport without signs. Experienced users rely on learned shortcuts, but both new and frequent users face unnecessary friction.
The Competitors
To understand why UberEats users experience friction while ordering, we needed to examine the core issues impacting navigation, transparency, and overall user experience. We analyzed who our main users are, how they interact with the platform, and how UberEats compares to competitors in the food delivery space.
We compared UberEats to leading competitors such as DoorDash, Grubhub and McDonalds, evaluating their app store ratings, unique features, and approaches to pricing transparency. This helped us pinpoint areas where UberEats falls behind and what opportunities exist for improvement.
By gathering insights from real users and industry benchmarks, we identified key friction points that disrupt the ordering experience—insights that guided our approach to making UberEats a more intuitive, transparent, and user-friendly platform.
By mapping user pain points and their severity, we gained a clearer understanding of where friction occurs in the UberEats experience. While both new and experienced users face challenges, certain frustrations—such as unexpected fees and unclear delivery updates—stood out as critical obstacles to user trust and retention. The severity chart below visualizes these pain points, helping prioritize areas for improvement.
These insights helped us assess UberEats’ performance across key experience factors that influence customer trust, ease of use, and long-term engagement:
Ease of use
Simplify navigation and ordering to reduce friction and improve efficiency.
Building Trust
Increase pricing clarity and minimize unexpected fees to strengthen user confidence.
Driving Loyalty
Personalize the experience to keep users engaged and encourage repeat usage.
To Conclude UberEats is successful, but loyal customers need a more seamless experience. Improving transparency and navigation will reduce friction, build trust, and increase repeat usage. These insights set the foundation for future testing and development.
Although this case study did not extend into prototyping, we created a few example screens to illustrate potential improvements. These mockups highlight opportunities to refine the user experience and could serve as a foundation for further exploration and iteration.
