Restaurant Tip Jar

Project overview

ChowNow doesn’t have its own delivery drivers and uses third party delivery services like DoorDash Drive and Uber. When diners tipped, they were only able to tip the third party driver and couldn’t leave additional tip for the restaurant, leaving many restaurant operators dissatisfied. This capability would be a differentiated feature for ChowNow and support sales goals.

Six months before I joined the project, another designer had conducted user research and low-fidelity testing for this feature to understand timing, interactions, and overall willingness to tip. The testing had positive results and sentiment with diners and she left me with her explorations and some suggestions based on user feedback.

Previous Explorations

Designs that were tested six months before I joined the project

Brief & explorations

Goal

Enable restaurants to receive tips on third party delivery orders while not alienating diners due to tipping fatigue and protecting delivery tips.

Brief

Evolve the previous explorations to incorporate more brand personality and make the tipping feature more noticeable to diners. The pilot test for this feature would be on web, so post-order push notifications would not be an option and round up would not have enough restaurant impact, so a flat dollar amount was a requirement.

Explorations & Testing

I explored different visual treatments and interactions within the design system, bringing in more ‘friendly’ copy and brand imagery.

 

We ultimately tested two prototypes hoping to learn:

  • Overall sentiment of the concepts

  • Feedback on interactions and copy

  • Sentiment and perception of imagery

  • Effectiveness of progressive disclosure

Testers...hated it (and were kind of angry)

Diner sentiment had changed

A lot changed during the six months between the two rounds of testing — diner sentiment around tipping became much more negative, which aligned with overall ChowNow data trends of decreased % of diners tipping and decreased tip amounts.

“If I'm going to pick up an order from a restaurant, I usually don't tip, I guess in COVID times I did because like, times are tough, but right now, like times are tough for everybody.”

The animation and interaction made the restaurant tip feel mandatory

  • Progressive disclosure over-emphasized the feature.

  • Some diners assumed that they would need to select ‘Other’ and input ‘$0’ in order to opt-out of restaurant tipping.

  • While they might also feel Driver Tips are mandatory, it seemed to be a non issue since most diners saw that as something they always do and an assumed cost.

 

👏 There was some positive feedback

Some diners liked that they had the option to tips the restaurant, that tipping was more extensive than other platforms, and that it was clear who each tip was going to.

let’s rethink things

Coming out of the user testing, I started to think about how we could approach this differently without giving up on the feature and the goals that were set. There was a quote from the research that really stood out to me:

“If I'm picking up in person, I may give that person, who's handing me my meal a couple of dollars.”

  1. How can we update interactions so that restaurant tipping feels optional and lightweight?

  2. How can we make restaurant tipping feel more like throwing a couple of dollars in a tip jar and less like a double transaction?

The Tip Jar

We tested a new concept with a lighter touch and a different interaction. We removed progressive disclosure to de-emphasize the feature and to be more transparent upfront.

A more whimsical approach made the feature feel less transactional

Testing Prototype

“I think it's a very interactive and cute way to make sure that some tip also goes to the restaurant staff.”

 

Introducing Animation

After testing success 🚀, we added in an animation to add to the whimsy and a fun surprise for diners who add to the tip jar.

 

outcomes

The Beta and subsequent A/B tests were so successful that a full rollout of the feature was accelerated

There was no impact on diner conversion or negative impact on Third Party Driver Tips

  • Average Third Party Driver Tip: 15% of subtotal (compared to 12% for all Third Party Tips)

  • % of Orders that received $0 Third Party Driver Tip: 11% (compared to 22% for all Third Party Tips)

  • Average Fair Share Tip: 9% of subtotal

The Team

Design Researcher: Jenny Cheuk Product Manager: Julia Guyadeen Engineer: JD Wolk