Redesigning the Grab Feed

bUSINESS PROBLEM

2. Slow Loading Times Affect Bounce Rate

Our market resides in Southeast Asia, with many users not having access to high-speed internet.

In Indonesia, the web-view Feed could take up to 60s to load, resulting in some users thinking “Grab app is slow, I’ll use another app” (verbatim)

! Research Finding

Some users thought they couldn’t use the app before the home screen was fully loaded

The web-view Feed also had stability issues - users would encounter flickers while scrolling, which in turn discouraged engagement

CUSTOMER PROBLEM

4. Too Many Info = Content Blindness

In a single screen view of the Feed, users have to process so much information.

“I never read the text… too lazy to read”
“I usually just look at the pictures”
(user research verbatim)

CARD SORTING WORKSHOP

Content Audit

To take a holistic view of the current app, I initiated and led a card sorting workshop involving over 30 different stakeholders.

The goal was to figure out what content belonged on the Feed, or where instead in or even outside of the app they should go.

Groups of 5 were given a list of 40 use cases and the exercise was broken into 3 steps:

1. Think like a user - As a user, where would I expect to find this?
2. Derive user’s mental model and motivations behind step 1 - As a user, I want to achieve X
3. Think from Grab’s perspective - What business metrics could be used to measure the success of each screen/section?

White - current use cases
Pink - main app screens
Blue - home screen sections

An example result of one group's sorted cards

Half of the workshop group, consisting of product managers, engineers, researchers, content creators, copywriters, business owners and data analysts

Retrospective

Content Audit
During the redesign process, I had initiated a card sorting workshop that produced promising results, but a content audit was unfortunately out of scope for this redesign since it involved too many cross-team efforts. The goal was to pick this up again in 2020, but it was then deprioritised due to Covid-19. I still strongly believe a good content audit would increase appropriate business metrics for the Feed and by extension, the whole app!

Carousels?
In this redesign, we made the decision to not implement carousels since many users across the SEA market perceive them to be data-heavy. As we moved from a web-view to native experience, this also reduced engineering cost. However, I would've liked to be able to experiment more and analyse the impact of carousels since they help save on real estate.

Testimonials

Product Owner
"Hillary delivers impressive value without any prompt, but just because she realises it's the necessary next step. Her work for feed 3.0 was the clear example of this attitude. The overall project is backed up with serious analysis of user behaviour and competitors benchmarking. It was presented to the team in a clear and concise way."

Lead Engineer
"Hillary's initiative and sole ownership of the design for Feed 3.0 has been outstanding. The designs for the CMS and the client are engaging, clutter free and look to improve the existing pain points of the Feed. Her candour and eagerness to seek advice from engineering members and product team has ensured that we build features in a non-complex way and are shipped on time."