Subway

The new ordering system was effectively a new app inside the existing Subway one, built in a new way with its own design system. With it nearing launch at the time, my task was to bring the Home Page of the app into line, as well as a more general refresh, cutting back on content that research had determined was of little value (News, Jobs, Social Media) and strongly pushing the new ordering functionality, rewards, delivery and offers.

Various different routes were created and tested, eventually settling on a tabbed concept, split between ‘Order’ and ‘Rewards,’ these covered the 2 primary uses of the app; users ordering food elsewhere (either on their way to a store or via delivery) and users within a store wanting to make use of their reward points. I created simple, bold, largely typographic imagery that sat alongside elements supplied by Subway’s in-house marketing team.

These concepts were subjected to repeated rounds of testing via UserTesting.com, which was my first experience with that platform. It was very interesting, I’d create interactive prototypes in Figma, write up a scenario and question set, submit it to the platform with our preferred user profile criteria, then review the resultant recorded video sessions. This really sped things up, being able to get feedback rapidly, iterate, test again etc, as well as being able to easily compare the views of existing customers to non customers and the like.

Here’s an example of one testing scenario;

“Imagine you are a customer of Subway and want to start using the mobile app to order food and build up / spend loyalty points, so you have downloaded the app.

You will see two different prototypes of possible Home Page designs for the Subway app, which we will ask you to complete a number of different tasks with. The prototypes are large so don’t worry if they are slow to load, take all the time you need, we value your thoughts and feedback.”

The onboarding element of the project involved addressing a number of issues. Testing and analytics suggested that users found the process a bit long, and without clarity around why information like date of birth or postcode were being asked for, reported being uncomfortable or reluctant to provide it. While the GDPR section offered a lot of control, it was leading to large numbers of users opting out of comms, not ideal for the business!

I worked closely with Subway’s legal team to find a more minimal, but still legally compliant, GDPR solution, being able to shrink down to a single question effectively. Giving content to those more sensitive questions was a solid win, with testing subjects who refused in the original flow now being more than happy to offer up their DoB once they knew it was to get a free birthday cookie.

We also collectively worked to remove questions we didn’t need, shrinking the form down to one page, hiding conditional questions, speeding the whole process up. It was hoped to go further in a future update, dropping last name, email and even password once back end developments allowed.