We have partnered with Athens Chick-fil-A owner & inventor of the milkshake – Shane Todd – to implement a new delivery feature within the Chick-fil-A One mobile app by providing customers with an easy and convenient way to Send Care to others. This initiative elevates the traditional guest experience, eliminating the need to leave the comfort of your home without sacrificing service quality. We aimed to build a functioning MVP using Figma to show the new experience of sending meal add-ons, gift packages, and e-gift cards to loved ones.

Our client, Shane Todd, believes the first thing people think of when hearing ‘Chick-fil-A’ is care. Chick-fil-A’s customer service and value exceeds fast-food expectations. However, only about 1⁄4 of all Chick-fil-A locations in the United States use their own form of delivery, allowing platforms such as Doordash and Uber Eats to dominate. While Todd’s three Athens locations have delivery service, he wants to go beyond and give customers the ability to send orders to others to show they care.

Our plan for this project is to innovate the Chick-fil-A delivery service. We will be integrating a tab into the already-existing Chick-fil-A One mobile app that allows customers to send their peers, friends, and family members Chick-fil-A care packages. Beyond this, we hope to come up with unique and recognizable care packages, distinct branding, and transferable marketing techniques that could potentially be used by Chick-fil-A corporate. 

The target audience for this project is 18-65-year-olds and families in the Athens community. Shane wants this project to go beyond college-aged customers and make it accessible to any age range and demographic.

Our goal for this project is to first make the feature work for the greater Athens area. Then, we want to make it compatible for Chick-fil-A to integrate into their national Chick-fil-A One app in order to promote their caring customer service and their in-house delivery service.

Prior to meeting with Shane, we began investigating the Chick-fil-A One mobile app, comparing various fast food and delivery service mobile apps, researching delivery services in general, and determining Chick-fil-A’s brand and visual style elements. 

The Chick-fil-A One mobile app has two immediate options: ‘Pickup at restaurant’ and ‘Deliver to me’. The Deliver to Me option requires the user to first add their address, then choose either Doordash or Chick-fil-A Delivery, if a nearby Chick-fil-A location offers it. Choosing Chick-fil-A Delivery allows the user to choose their notification preferences, delivery options, arrival time, and any other instructions for the driver. We will be using the already-existing Delivery feature as inspiration for creating our Sending Care feature, as Shane wants it to be the third option upon opening the Chick-fil-A One app. 

A recent survey conducted by US Foods determines that food delivery apps are at the top of complaints for modern consumers, including both customers and their deliverers. Many of the issues stem from unclear communication, or a lack thereof, between the customer, restaurant, and delivery driver. Overall, food delivery service apps tend to have a bad reputation and negative experience for everyone. We are taking these complaints into consideration and working to make Sending Care a simple, transparent, and efficient function of the Chick-fil-A One app.

Our team began by reaching out to local Athens Chick-fil-A customers to gain insight into their opinion on the new service while evaluating their delivery preferences. I drafted survey questions to ask customers that would give us the best idea of any major concerns and areas of improvement we should focus on while creating the prototype. The list of questions can be found below:

With the help of Chick-fil-A’s marketing team and email reach, we were able to send our survey to customers and as a result received over 375 responses in close to a week, with the main goal of reframing user practicallity for future design.

From the responses, we discovered some interesting findings that supported our goal and need for the new feature. Some of the highlighted responses are below:

During this early phase of the project, I focused mostly on the user flow and how the user would navigate this new feature. I wanted it to resemble the current app as much as possible by Jakob’s law. Therefore, we kept all the screens but created a new CTA button on the main homepage with the option to “Send Care”. This would be the beginning of the new feature flow. Moreover, I wanted the restaurant and meal selection process to be as similar to the original as possible so I incorporated that element into all flows as well.

I then started working on our first sending care option — meal add-ons. I decided on adding it to the order confirmation screen, after the meal selection, where the customer would review their order. With the new addition, customers will have the option of either having the meal delivered by itself or making it even more special by adding items like a flower, handwritten card, or Chick-fil-A merchandise.

Additionally, I had to take into consideration how the recipient would receive the notification of their delivery and how they would be able to confirm delivery details such as time and method of delivery. So I built out a different user flow focused exclusively on the recipient.

For the beta, I focused on creating our second sending care option — Gift packages. For this, one of our designers created gift packages for a variety of occasions such as birthdays, date nights, graduation, and more that can be added to meal delivery. Our purpose behind creating these specialized packages was to elevate the perception of what people thought when they think of fast food delivery. We want Chick-fil-A to be a part of the moments that mattered most.

I kept the same restaurant and meal selection flow as the meal add-ons but with the option to choose the gift package before choosing the meal. Moreover, by selecting a gift package and meal, customers will still have the option of adding the add-ons if desired.

For the 1.0 prototype, I built out all the individual flows of the gift packages and completed our last sending care option — e-gift cards. This idea came about when we met with Shane and he had concerns about if recipients didn’t live within the radius of a Chick-fil-A that offered delivery. Going back to his vision, he wanted to be inclusive to everyone, no matter where they lived, and wanted to have an option for them to receive care.

Therefore, we decided to incorporate e-gift cards which can be redeemed at any restaurant nationwide. We saw this as a great way opportunity to expand delivery options and customer engagement on the app since cards can only be redeemed within the app. Customers currently don’t have the option to buy or send e-cards directly from the app.

Since this was a totally new feature, I had the leeway in designing this experience from scratch. We started by creating some sending care card designs as well as incorporating some of the existing card designs from their website. Within this flow, users can choose a card design they like or on occasion, add a dollar amount, and optional note, and have the e-gift card delivered by text message or email which can be added to the recipient’s Chick-fil-A One app wallet.

Additionally, another concern that Shane had was what if the recipient didn’t like the meal that they were sent or wanted to add another item to the order. As a result, we created an option to allow recipients to continue with the order or add to/edit the order. If they would like to add an item to the order, they would have to pay for the additional item but would not need to pay delivery fees, etc.

For our 1.1 prototype, I finalized all screens and user flows to create a high-fidelity, functioning MVP. It incorporated all the original screens of the app, plus the new sending care feature. When customers tap the “Send Care” button on the home page, they will be directed to a new homepage with three options — Meal delivery, Gift packages, or E-gift cards. Depending on the user selection, they will now have the option to not only send a meal to loved ones but make it an experience to remember.

After many months of working on the prototype, I was able to finalize all elements in preparation to present the final deliverable to our client. I believe he will be quite surprised by our work in making his vision into reality. Hopefully, he will take our work and present it to corporate where they will use our idea and prototype as the base model for implementing this feature within the existing Chick-fil-A mobile app. Moreover, having completed this project, I have fine-tuned my Figma and leadership skills which I will take into my post-graduation endeavors.