An end-to-end UX process for a food and grocery delivery concept built for smaller towns and cities — the underserved middle ground between big-city delivery apps and no delivery option at all.
Most food-and-grocery delivery apps concentrate on large metropolitan cities, leaving smaller towns underserved despite real demand. Local Grub's premise: a direct-to-consumer delivery platform for smaller cities, targeting busy professionals and working parents aged 22–45 who have the income but not the time to shop and cook from scratch.
I started with desk research into established players in food-tech delivery, studying their UX strengths and where user feedback showed them falling short — since a new entrant needs to be better where competitors are weakest, not just present. From there I built a detailed user persona to keep design decisions grounded in a specific person's goals, not an abstract "target market."
Jessica & John Smith
"Family is our number one priority."
A dual-income family with two young children. Both work full-time and are pressed for time in the evenings; they love cooking and eating together but increasingly can't fit it in around work and childcare.
I mapped Jessica's journey across four stages — download/login, discovery, checkout, and delivery — capturing her actual in-the-moment thoughts and frustrations at each step, then pairing every friction point with a concrete design opportunity.
"Do I have to set up an account to get started?" → Social sign-in (Facebook/Google) to remove onboarding friction; clear restaurant vs. grocery split with a visible search bar and social-proof reviews.
"How much does it cost to use this service?" → A single-screen checkout with a transparent cost breakdown, plus a map-based ETA screen (similar to ride-share apps) so delivery never feels like a black box.
With the journey map as a foundation, I built out the full user flow — sign-up, restaurant/grocery selection, item browsing, cart and checkout, live ETA tracking — before moving into low-fidelity wireframes to pressure-test the structure, then high-fidelity screens once the flow held up.
Core user flow, validated against the journey map before any visual design began.
Any product handling payments has to earn trust before it earns a transaction. I focused on two levers: usability (frictionless onboarding, transparent checkout, clear order tracking) and aesthetics (highlighting top-rated restaurants and social proof throughout). A bright, approachable colour palette reinforced the brand's friendly tone without undermining the sense of a trustworthy, well-run service.
Local Grub reinforced a principle I still apply directly: a journey map is only useful if every stage produces a specific design decision, not just a diagram. The strongest part of this project was resisting the urge to jump to screens — the persona and journey work up front made the checkout and tracking decisions almost obvious once I got there.
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