Dobartek Apps

Food delivery service

"All you can design" buffet

In the competitive food delivery landscape, Dobartek.hr managed to thrive and expand even though they were browser based since 2013. But apps are the way to go, so we designed an application for two mobile operating systems in order to ensure competitiveness and market positioning for this company. We've produced 450 screens UX/UI cases and these provided ease of use, a fresh new look, acquired new users and gave better response.

What we did here

Project Managment
Data analysis
Information Architecture
Product Design
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Illustrations
Photography
Handoff
Quality Assurance
Screens designed
450
Project length
18 mo.
Platforms
iOS, Android, Web

Design Approach

The project was huge and it took discipline to remain agile and attentive to detail until the end. Having to build from scratch is both a blessing and a curse. We led and managed the design process and pretty much nailed it. At least the users think so because app reviews are great.
Research
PRODUCT DESIGN
UX/UI
  • UX
  • UI
  • Handoff

USER
INTERFACE

SIMPLICITY

The target was simple UI design with clear information hierarchy

TYPOGRAPHY

We've utilized Apple’s and Android system font families, and matched native text styles and sizes

VISUAL LANGUAGE

Kept the elements clean. Minimal design for maximum refficiency

PHOTOGRAPHY

Shot it ourselves. Under our own art direction, we organized food photography sessions for all featured restaurants.

First steps

Market research and client analysis gave us this: user behaviour should be fairly similar to competitive apps and not stray from industry standards. Time was the most precious resource we had and it was crucial to organize a solid, multi stage production plan. It's what we always do. Because being disorganized and not sticking to the plan leads to caffeine overdoses and midnight despair

product journey 01

Organized files and workflow

Web app and current user analysis

Simple and clean
layouts

Custom Illustrations

Custom photos

Prototype & QA

Tools used

From idea to completion, here is the procession of tools and apps we've used. These provided workflow speed, easy collaboration, efficient prototyping and a seamless developer handoff. Hanging on to them for dear life.

Figma

prototyping, user interface design

Our mainstay for user interface design. Figma is great for handling large projects with multipe cases and screens. When in need of quick updates and a fast workflow, look no further.

Adobe Photoshop

MOCKUPS & PHOTO MANIPULATION

There are now many like it, but there is only one real Coca Cola. And there is only one real photo editing tool. It's in our nature.

Adobe Illustrator

ILLUSTRATIONS

Their tagline is "Illustrator is around you" and one has to admit this to be true. With this tool you can make any visual element of choice and it's sharp at every size: graphics, logos, icons, illustrations, the works. Used by millions, it is also used by us at Aras™ Digital Products, and for good reason.

Trello

PROJECT MANAGMENT

Our guide through the dark forest. Boards, lists, cards and tasks, all customizeable and expandable. This is how project management tools need to be built.

Production timeline

With a multitude of skills and technologies involved, this project was a serious affair and this shows on the timeline. Most of our allocated time was spent designing the interface and covering a plethora of app cases and states.
PRODUCT DESIGN & UX
UI
DEVELOPMENT iOS & ANDROID
Illustrations
Food photograpy
Design QA

Show Time!

We did the market research and organized our team accordingly. Boy were we tempted to start designing from the get go! Of course that kind of kickoff would spell disaster, so we sighed deeply and first set up our tasks, milestones, checkpoints, individual progress tracks and other boring bits that actually kept our project on track. It worked.

Product journey

02

User Experience Design

This is it, the part where we make it or break it. It's a food delivery service app, and it doesnt get much tougher than that. So we put on our "hungry user" shoes and figured out how to fulfill a simple user need in as few meaningful steps as possible.
Research
USER EXPERIENCE
PROTOTYPING
Explore
live prototype
Key components
Additional items

UX Process

"Do extensive research. Wireframe with confidence but don't marry your presumptions. Allow fresh ideas in as they come. Test test test, preferably on some users. Involve the client. Take the feedback, refine. Compare, refine further, test again. You get the picture. It was about linearly iterating in stages and keeping an eye on the final product. The kind of product that will actually deliver an "experience". We've involved developers into the process and engineered chosen components separately in order to avoid bias and designer blindness.

product journey

03

User Interface Design

This is where our product forks into two separate native apps with same basic functionalities yet slightly different aesthetics and visual language. Common denominator were simplicity and brand standards. Clean. Pleasing. Likeable.
UI Design
Illustrations
Photography
iOS
DESIGN

iOS App Dobartek.hr

4.8
Out of 5

Dobartek.hr apps will make the process of exploring and ordering the next perfect meal a breeze. Quickly find your restaurant, food and add-ons, order it all in a few taps and then kick back and relax while we take care of your hunger. Want to pick it up yourself? You got it, we do that too. It's simple and it works - overall a very tasty iOS experience

Onboarding

There is a cute little tutorial available, a three step salvation for the non tech-savvy. Pick a place, pick a dish, order. Just like that, you've learned how to do it yourself.

Pick up or delivery?

Yes, both are available. You can determine the location manually, let the app detect where you are in Croatia, or pick a spot from your own list of saved adresses.

Registration

This can be skipped in order to first explore the food. We don't want to twist your wrist into submition. In order to order (!) you'll have to register though. One can do this via a Facebook profile which makes life easier.

Home

This is where we show you what's available around you. You can filter it out and search by parameters of your choice. Noteworthy: we will show you currently closed places as well. In case you're just looking.

Restaurant

This step will tell you everything about the restaurant - reviews, food type, favourite dishes, prices, delivery time - the usual bundle of useful info. You can favorite both dishes and restorants and reach those favorites easily afterwards. This is actually a killer feature of ours that everyone loves.

Order confirmed

After your place your order, the restaurant has a 3 minute span of accepting the deal. If they don't, you'll get notified immediatelly. Overbooked restaurants can manually flag themselves as "closed" - a useful and common feature in the industry. But the 3 min acceptance threshold will save users a ton of time in case a restaurant is under too much heat and forgot to stop new orders.

ANDROID
DESIGN

Android App Dobartek.hr

4.7
Out of 5

It was a case of bringing one great experience to two different platforms, and bring it we did. With the iOS version looking a little bit better. Because Apple stuff looks a little better than Android stuff. But this is just our opinion, so there you go. Anyway, the UX is great in both versions and they perform just as well.

Fulfilling a simple need

We combed through many food delivery platforms on a mission of detecting pain points and polishing out our experience accordingly. Exiting the whole restaurant when you thought hitting "back" will simply return you to the menu, that sort of thing. Today users like this app and aren't afraid to say so through reviews. It is simple, it works and people return to it as their platform of choice, both Android and iOS users. And that's all that matters, actually.

The native approach

04

Custom illustrations

You'd be amazed with what $10 can buy you online in terms of illustrations and
icons. Those bundles are cheap and look sort of ok and definitely work. We could
have done that. But we didn't.
Planing
Illustrating
Mastering

The perfect fit was needed

There's a plethora of cases and states in our app and we needed illustrations that give proper context and simplify things. So we've made a list of everything and brainstormed through possible solutions for each individual case. And then there was the task of defining a visual language that would fit into the user interface client's branding. Finally our designers produced a set of illustrations ready for app production. Sounds easy! It wasn't.

A custom job

05

In-house photo production

Good looking food apps need good looking photographs of food. There is no workaround. And so the decision was made to set up our own studio and start producing photos for all partner restaurants
Planing
Art direction
Photography

A proper setup

Photography was quite a challenge. There was just as much planing and preparation as there was actual shooting. We wanted simple art direction with single color tabletops, lightweight and easily switchable. A selection of plates, woodboards, and other props comprised our set. Sessions were long because we really needed to get this right and refused to leave things half done. The attention was on small details, table compositions and camera angles, and it was all worthwhile. We got what we needed though - these pics do get the juices going.

PRODUCT JOURNEY

06

Design QA

The often overlooked Quality Assurance is the most important final touch. Precise frontend execution is crucial in bringing our vision to life. So we've collaborated with the development team, gave feedback on the visual interpretation, took the heat for being too nitpicky and finally signed off a product that was 100% true to design. No more, no less.

Pizza sir šunka

od 18kn

pelat, sir, šunka, masline, origano

Omiljeno jelo
Component padding

Should be 20 pt

Click here to fix

Client’s Story

dobartek.hr started out as a student project in 2013 and since grew into a stabile company with a fair share of the Croatian food delivery service market.

Business that changed the way of ordering and delivering food in Croatia.

From just a few orders a week to hundreds of thousands of satisfied users ordering food on a daily basis, the in-house built systems worked well and enabled rapid growth. But keeping pace with the up and coming competition meant having to build native mobile apps. This opened up the future and was in line with the company's reputation of having smart, performing technical solutions.

2013

Founded

+150.000

Users

+150

Restaurants

7

Cities

Next Project ↘