Design a new feature for Zomato that could help users choose healthier dining options. Walk us through your design process.

Question

Design a new feature for Zomato that could help users choose healthier dining options. Walk us through your design process.

Asked at Zomato in the past year

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Clarifying questions

Mission - “better food for more people”. What’s the overall business goal for Zomato at the moment? Imo, they’re focused on 2 things, increase penetration against competitors such as Swiggy/Uber eats and generate revenue. Designing a “healthy dining option” caters to the first one - adding a new customer segment. I will focus on designing this with the outcome to onboard this niche in mind.
Assuming this is cross platform - Android/IOS/Web - yes.
Are we focusing only on outdoor dining or delivery as well? - Only outdoor dining.

Scope - Design a health-conscious dining experience in Zomato in a bid to improve adoption and grow our market share.

Personas and use cases

User (health-conscious or not)
- I can discover restaurants that cater to my health needs:
  - Provide options with dietary restrictions/allergens - Lactose/Gluten/Soy/Nuts
  - Provide options for my calorie targets
  - Provide options to maximize a macronutrient - carb/protein heavy
- I can know the meal options/portions before-hand and confirm the availability
- I can make reservations at these restaurants
- I can see reviews particularly for these criteria
Restaurants
- I can surface various pivots on my meals around dietary restriction and alternatives, calories and macronutrients.
- Ingredients for these are often bespoke and limited, I can surface availability upfront.
- I may be a niche restaurant focusing on health-conscious customers, need Zomato to treat me as such.
The system
- Should be able to provide filters to allow users to find the right restaurants.
- Should provide a ranking on various factors such as versatility, price etc.
- Should allow restaurants to onboard with a “health-focus”.
- Needs to be able to validate and vet whether restaurants are meeting these needs.

Solution

Challenge	Solution	Success criteria	Priority
Discoverability - Users find it difficult to filter through restaurants meeting their bespoke health needs.	Create a “health-focused” badge for restaurants and have a spectrum of health scores. This would be calculated by how versatile they are - accommodate restrictions, offer nutrient/calorie data etc. [Impact: High, Effort: Medium] Create a separate filter for this in the product for restaurants that qualify for this badge. Provide sorting based on health score, price, distance etc. [Impact: Medium, Effort: Low]	Acquisition/Activation: # of restaurants with health-focused badge, sliced by cuisine/geography. Avg # of reservations made for healthy restaurants. # of users adding the “health-focused” filter, sliced by geography/demographic. Engagement: %age of “healthy” meals which accommodate for restrictions/nutrient intake per healthy restaurant. # of users making reservations at such restaurants.	1
Availability - Even if a restaurant has options for my needs, I drive up there and find it’s out of stock.	Add a # of portions left indicator against each healthy meal, which is updated in real time. [Impact: Medium, Effort: Low] Allow customers to optionally even “reserve” a meal to avoid conflicts with multiple customers arriving at the same time. The count is revoked after 20 mins beyond reservation time. [Impact: Medium, Effort: Low]	Acquisition: # of restaurants providing this insight. %age of meals with this insight per restaurant. Engagement: # of users “reserving” meals. # of meals “revoked” after reservation.	3
Rating/Confidence - The restaurant is meeting the standards it claims on a regular basis.	Zomato handles validation for the first time/during onboarding and assigns a score. Not scalable but would be very fool proof. [Impact: Very High, Effort: High] Peer-based scoring system driven by reviews left by customers. Health-conscious ones would be happy to participate in the ranking, and have a specific rating survey that they can fill out at the end of the meal. Less fool-proof, can be spoofable. [Impact: High, Effort: Medium]	Engagement: Percentile distribution of health-score amongst healthy restaurants. # of sharp variations against present ratings and newly given ones.	2

Nishant Kumar · Answer 2 · 2024-01-21T16:54:13+0000

CQ:

What’s the goal - Allow people to have healthier eating options as a sustainable living
Why now - we have done some survey around the same, and we think to go about it
My role - PM at Zomato
Any specific location preference - you decide; depends on data study that has been done; in metros people may be more health conscious by virtue of awareness; initially we can think of doing a pilot and then scaling it up; lets go with Delhi
Any timeline, constraints I should think of - 2 months, NA

Approach -> User persona -> User needs/pain points -> Solutions -> Metrics -> Tradeoffs

User Persona:

Consumers - prioritising for consumers given the scale and opportunity to make an impact
Restaurants
Delivery Boys

User Needs:

Before order
1. Not sure what to order
2. From where to order
During order
1. Not aware of how many calories of food I have ordered
2. No indication of food suitable if suitable to body conditions - wrt digestion, allergic etc.
3. From where to order the most healthy food - P1
4. Not aware which is the most healthy food - P0

Have prioritised user needs as indicated above basis urgency of need and impact to be made

Solutions for ‘Not aware which is the most healthy food’:

Allow to filter food basis calorie content, body suitability, freshness, distance from where it will be served etc. - P1 (M effort, M impact because it again is dependent on user action)
Create health score index for every item present on Zomato which can help a user decide what to order - P0 (H effort, H impact)
Generate health score for items in cart - P2 (H effort, low impact compared to the 2nd point since 2nd point will help the user to take decision first on what to send to cart)

Ranked the initiatives basis effort and impact

Metrics:

Acquisition:New user sign up
Activation: Avg time taken for first order
Engagement:
1. No of unique orders/customer in 30 days timeline
2. Avg health score per order

Tradeoff: Might lead to decline in orders being made in case users see poor health score for the food that they want to order which can be measured by below metrics:

DAU/WAU/MAU
Revenue trend - daily, weekly, monthly
30 day Churn rate

Mitigation:

Toggle based control to user to show health score for the food items

Sanpreet · Answer 3 · 2024-01-20T09:10:04+0000

Clarifying questions

- I am assuming to be the PM at Zomato à Yes

- Any resource or time constraints à No

- I am aware that Zomato works in India so we would be targeting India geography à Yes

- I am assuming that, help users choosing healthier options means for ordering or we are also concerned about dining out options à Let’s consider only the delivery options

Product goal

- To assist health conscious customers have the opportunity to relish the food without guilt

User segments

1. Family with younger children

2. Students / young age professional living alone

3. People living in group of friends

4. Old age people living alone

Secondary user segments

a. Restaurants

As we are talking about India, I guess the 2nd user segment would be the tricky one to cater as students and young professionals living alone have to do all by themselves so they prioritise ordering instead of cooking themselves

Pain points

1. Discovery

a. What, from where

2. Knowledge

a. Macro & micro nutrients

b. Allergies

3. Taste

a. Hesitation in trying new things

b. Speculation about the health and tasty combo

Solutions

1. Health icon [ impact – M | Effort – L]

a. Click on the icon – May be with dumbbells and food pictures on it

b. Quick filters with a tap of offers, price, cuisine etc

c. Info about the food and health aspect

2. Talk back personal assistant [ Impact – H | Effort – M]

a. Conversation enabled such as – I will be running 10K tomorrow morning, suggest something healthy and fulfilling

b. Based on the chatgpt like functionality – crunch information and suggest nearest alternatives

c. Can talk about the price, delivery time, etc

d. Take the order and place it for you

3. Healthy offer menu [ Impact – H | Effort – M]

a. It would be like introductory pull to try healthy options

b. Select the sports, goals such as weight loss or increase strength

c. Personalize the suggestions based on the history and interest

I Would like to prefer healthy offer menu as a MVP so that we can understand customer insight and provide recommendations. So we move further then we can think of adding features such as talk back assistant to smoothen the journey

Key metrics

1. Active exploration of healthy offers

a. % and number of total order

2. % conversion

a. Total people ordering health menu /People exploring health menu

3. Suggestion acceptance rate

4. Avg time spent

a. More or less than usual order time