The Challenge

Jumia is an e-commerce ecosystem that provides innovative, convenient, and affordable online goods and services to consumers. The leading e-commerce platform, currently operates three separate consumer apps—Shop, Food, and Pay.

While each app serves a specific purpose, the CEO envisions consolidating them into a single SuperApp to provide users with a unified and streamlined experience. The challenge is to seamlessly integrate the functionalities of Shop, Food, and Pay into a cohesive and intuitive interface that enhances user convenience, engagement, and overall satisfaction.

ⓘ This is a concept project.

Objectives

Create a Unified User Experience: Develop a SuperApp that seamlessly integrates shopping, food delivery, and payment functionalities, providing users with a unified and intuitive experience.

Facilitate Cross-Team Collaboration: Foster collaboration among designers from Shop, Food, and Pay teams to leverage their expertise and create a cohesive design that reflects the strengths of each domain.

Optimize Existing Design Systems: Evaluate the design systems of current apps and propose enhancements that ensure consistency, scalability, and maintainability for the unified SuperApp.

Enhance User Satisfaction: Prioritize user-centric design to enhance satisfaction, engagement, and retention, taking into account the preferences and expectations of existing users.

Ensure Technical Viability: Collaborate with the technical team to assess and address the challenges associated with merging the functionalities of three distinct apps into a single, technically sound SuperApp.

The Approach:
Research, Testing & Iteration

  • The goals and objectives of the CEO and stakeholders:
    • Provide a seamless user experience to customers by combining multiple services into one app.
    • Grow customer loyalty, user engagement and revenue by offering multiple services through a single platform.
  • Conduct user research and testing on the current three apps.
  • Adopt a human-centered design approach with methods such as prototyping, testing, and iteration.
  • Continuously involve stakeholders and gather feedback.

Key Considerations

Diverse User Behaviors: Users engage differently with each app, each catering to distinct needs (shopping, food delivery, and payment). Designing a SuperApp requires understanding and addressing these diverse user behaviors.

Collaboration Among Design Teams: The task involves bringing together designers from three different teams, each specialized in Shop, Food, and Pay. Ensuring effective collaboration and communication is crucial for a successful SuperApp design.

Design System Integration: The existing design systems of Shop, Food, and Pay apps may have variations in visual elements, navigation, and interactions. Harmonizing these design systems while maintaining a coherent and consistent user experience poses a significant challenge.

User Experience and Satisfaction: The success of the SuperApp hinges on creating a user experience that surpasses the combined benefits of the individual apps. Balancing the familiarity of existing users with the introduction of new features is essential for user satisfaction.

Technical Feasibility: Assessing the technical feasibility of merging different functionalities and databases from three apps into a single platform is a critical aspect of this project.

Working with the Design Team

ⓘ This structure would be highly dependent on Jumia’s current product team organogram. It assumes that the 3 apps will still be available to users before & during the SuperApp’s launch.

Organisation

A design team structure focused on the unified design system, the SuperApp, and the current three apps:

  • Design system team: 3 designers, each from Jumia Food/Shopping/Pay team.
  • SuperApp team: 3 designers, each from Jumia Food/Shopping/Pay teams.
  • Current apps’ teams: each team has 2 designers focused on delivering critical design updates before the SuperApp’s launch.

Expected Outcomes

  • A SuperApp prototype that seamlessly integrates Shop, Food, and Pay functionalities.
  • Improved collaboration and communication among design teams.
  • Enhanced and optimized design systems for a cohesive visual and interactive experience.
  • Increased user satisfaction and engagement with the unified SuperApp.
  • A clear roadmap for the technical implementation of the SuperApp.

Design Systems Process

Key pillars: user-centered design, collaboration, and iterative design.

Part 1: Analysis

  • Review the current design systems in use on the three apps.
  • Audit the design of each of the three apps.
  • Evaluate the strengths of each app. Sample evaluation metrics would include consistency, usability, scalability, technical feasibility and brand alignment.
  • Create a new design system that incorporates the strengths and eliminates inconsistencies.
  • Ensure a consistent look, feel, and user experience across the SuperApp.

Part 2: Merging

  • Creating wireframes and prototypes that explore different ways of combining the strengths of each app
  • Create wireframes and prototypes exploring ways to merge the strengths of each app.
  • Utilize a design tool such as Figma (first preference), Sketch, or Adobe XD.
  • Test prototypes with users.
  • Iterate on the design based on user feedback.

Visual Exploration on Figma